For Boeing families, company history is theirs, too

The Boeing Co. is turning 100 on July 15. Throughout the year, The Daily Herald is covering the people, airplanes and moments that define The Boeing Century. More about this series

At the Barnes household in Lynnwood, siblings crowd around a kitchen table. Stories fly as old photos rekindle memories of their work lives at Boeing.

“In our immediate family, we’ve put in 130.5 years at Boeing,” said Gerald “Jay” Gallagher, 61, who recently visited the home of his sister, Jean Barnes, and her husband, Dean Barnes.

The Barneses are both Boeing retirees, as is Gordon Gallagher, 69, another brother visiting that day. Anita Naylor, a longtime friend of Jean Barnes, was there, too. And yes, Naylor also put in decades with the company.

In a frame on the table was a picture of the siblings’ late father, Jerry Gallagher. He worked for the Boeing Co. from 1950 until 1983. From ’67 on, he was a leader in final 747 assembly at the Everett plant. Jay Gallagher, who also is retired from Boeing, said their father died in 1998.

For this clan and myriad others in the region, Boeing is a family affair — an employer of parents and their children, siblings and cousins, husbands and wives.

“I used to see Dad in the main factory. All of us worked at Boeing with Dad,” said Jean Barnes, 66. Their sister Jackie Andrews, now deceased, had a Boeing job, too. She worked in the wire shop in Everett.

Jean Barnes said her son, Tom Faurie, is another family member who worked at the company for a time.

And she shared her secret for how she got to know her husband. Dean Barnes, 71, worked as a Boeing custodian in the same building where Jean was a manager in production control. “He had been married, but lost his wife,” Jean Barnes said. She kept a jar of candy on her desk, and Dean would stop by for Hershey’s Kisses. They retired together in 2005.

Jay Gallagher, also of Lynnwood, worked for years in metrology that supported in-flight tests. He retired in 2014 after working the last eight years in Everett. He was involved in static tests for the 787.

His brother Gordon, who splits his time between Lynnwood and Mesa, Arizona, was a machinist who made interior panels for Boeing aircraft.

Naylor’s father, Keith Marsden, wasn’t able to join the group recently, but the Bothell man has vivid memories of working with his daughter.

At 96, Marsden can’t recall exactly how many years he spent with Boeing. He does remember his last day of work: March 31, 1975.

He had worked at Boeing’s Plant 1, on Seattle’s Duwamish Waterway, and at Plant 2 near Boeing Field before coming to Everett for his last 12 years with the company.

“When I started in the Everett plant, we had to wear coats because the doors weren’t on there yet. It was the largest building in the world,” Marsden said. “I was in quality control at the Everett plant. Basically, I’m a machinist. I was a lead, responsible for rejected parts and whatnot.”

In his long career, he worked on Boeing’s B-314 “Yankee Clipper,” a flying boat produced in the late 1930s and early ’40s, and on the 747 into the 1960s and ’70s.

And while he was in Everett, he helped his daughter Anita land a Boeing job.

“I told one of the shop supervisors at the time, ëI’ve got a daughter you should have working for you.’ I just talked about her, and said, ëYou’ll get a day’s work out of her,’ ” Marsden recalled.

For Naylor, that day’s work turned into 37 years with the company.

“Back in those days, the 1960s, a parent could recommend someone,” Naylor said. “I remember him telling me, ëDon’t do me wrong. Keep up the good name.’ I did well by him.”

She started as a dispatch clerk at Boeing Plant 2 before coming to the Everett plant in 1968. “I got laid off in 1971, but came back in 1977,” said Naylor, 68, who lives at Lake Shoecraft.

She worked in Boeing records, and later as a lead in stores. When technology changed that job, she went to school for computer training to help other Boeing records staff with the transition to computers.

“I was there from the 727 up to the 787. The last place I worked was interiors, the stow-bin area,” Naylor said. “I retired in 2010 after about 37 years.”

Naylor looked to her father as a role model at Boeing. “He is a delightful person, and he was so dedicated to his job,” she said. “He was a lead in inspection. He was so thorough with what he did — sometimes too thorough. But he made sure he did everything right.”

Many in the area have family ties to Boeing, although they never worked for the company themselves. Kelvin Whitney-Scism Barton grew up in a family of Boeing workers and Boeing suppliers. He is retired from Everett Transit and now lives in Blaine. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Barton said, he worked altering Everett bus routes to Boeing to jibe with the company’s security concerns.

His grandfather, Ralph Scism, worked at Boeing’s Renton facility building shipping containers for parts. During World War II, Barton’s grandmother, Marie Scism, worked at the plant near Boeing Field as an assembly line mechanic. “The family does not know if she worked on B-17s or B-29s,” Barton said.

Barton’s uncle, Glen Scism of Whidbey Island, worked at Boeing’s Renton plant as a toolmaker. He retired in 1970.

They weren’t Boeing workers, but Barton said his father and brother both worked in machine shops that made parts or repaired equipment for the company.

In the Barnes house, the siblings looked at a keepsake photo and explained its history. Their father and two other men, in 1960s suits and ties, had just completed a power test on the prototype 747, RA001, dubbed the City of Everett.

“I kissed the first tail of the first 747,” Naylor recalled. “I was working second shift at the time, and they brought it in from the paint shop.”

The Gallaghers, Barneses, Naylor and her dad couldn’t be more proud of their work or their company.

“We talk about the old days at Boeing all the time,” Naylor said. “I worked with a lot of wonderful people. We were well taken care of. We were well paid. We worked hard. I take great pride in Boeing.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.