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In
everyone’s life there are a few select occasions when the human
spirit
Cries out to preserve the moment. When we look back
upon younger days we
remember that feeling in relation to lighter moments…
the first car, the
winning touchdown, the high school prom. As we
mature, the moments
inevitably take on a more serious note… graduation
from college, a wedding
day, the birth of a child.
There is one occasion, however, which for young and
old alike creates a
different reaction. When we experience the death of
a relative or a close friend,
we seek not to freeze that moment in time but rather
to reconstruct those
earlier times of pleasure. We talk of “living a full
life” and of “life going on”
and of what the deceased “would have wanted”
Companies
die too. We are fond of reminding ourselves that corporate
entities are only shells but clearly they have
personalities of their own and just
as clearly those personalities reflect the
amalgamation of people and purposes
which make up each of them.
And so it is with Western Airlines. This company
will be no more and
we are overwhelmed with a nostalgia which pressures
us to remember the good
times and to understand why this company’s
personality can mean so much.
Certainly it lived a full life: oldest airline,
humble beginnings, colorful people,
record profits, record losses, new routes, new
airplanes, regulation and
deregulation, love affairs and would-be mergers,
partnerships and
near-bankruptcies.
Surely
we should be gratified that the death is of natural causes; it is
not
the mercy killing that it would have been just a few
years ago. Western Airlines
is passing on with class and dignity, its burial with
honors befitting its heroic
efforts. And life does go on and this unique
company, if it could express a final
wish, would want the lives of us who mourn it to go
on as well, with joyful
memories and a secure knowledge that a fortunate few
of us really knew what
it meant to be “The only way to fly.”
March 1987
These thoughts were
written by Tom Greene, Vice President and General Counsel of
Western, an eighteen year employee who wished to capture in a few
words the emotions shared by many employees during Western’ final
days. |
.Inc
