Book Reflects Boeing's Colorful Past -- Anecdotes Celebrate 75 Years Of History

Condensing 75 years of The Boeing Co.'s history into 500 pages was more than a two-year chore for author Robert Serling, but the results, heavily sprinkled with anecdotes, make it entertaining reading.

In "Legend & Legacy. The Story of Boeing and Its People," (St. Martin's Press $24.95) Serling packs plenty of stories about the old-timers, such as founder William Boeing, who built his first airplane on Lake Union, to today's company leaders, including Chairman Frank Shrontz and rising star Phil Condit (777 division manager and executive vice president of Boeing Commercial Airplane Group).

Serling, who lives in Tucson, Ariz., spent about six months in Seattle researching the history. He said he conducted 140 interviews and listened to dozens of others on tapes from Boeing's archives. He includes information about Boeing's Wichita, Philadelphia, Huntsville and other plants to show that not quite everything Boeing touches happens in the Puget Sound region.

The book includes many fresh stories about sales presentations, last-minute adjustments to cut prices, arguments about where to place engines and problems with the first in-flight flushable toilets.

Boeing asked Serling to compile the company history because of his success writing about airlines, said Harold Carr, vice president of public relations and advertising. The company has purchased 180,000 copies, which are being mailed to employees and retirees.

Serling has written about Continental, Western, North Central, Eastern, TWA and American airlines, plus a book with Frank Borman, deposed chairman of Eastern Airlines. He is the author of the popular novel "The President's Plane is Missing."

Serling, a former United Press International bureau manager in Washington, D.C., got hooked on aircraft and airlines after his coverage of a North Central DC-4 crash in Virginia after World War II.

"I even started reading Civil Aeronautics Board investigation reports in my spare time," he said. He later took a $25-a-week pay cut to become UPI's aviation writer rather than bureau manager. He said his novel about the president's plane made enough money to launch him as a full-time writer.

Writing a history for a company loaded with meticulous engineers had its hazards, but Serling said there was no censorship.

Boeing scientists, engineers and others have become world leaders in many fields as they pursued quality products. Along the way, they also had fun - like the famous Tex Johnston barrel roll in the Dash 80 over the Gold Cup races on Lake Washington. Sometimes they brushed with death as they tested new concepts.

The author maintains that it has been the people who gave Boeing its legacy. Although the book mentions hundreds of those people, some are bound to be missed. But familiar names such as Sutter, Schairer, Pennell, Cook, Wells, Steiner, Holtby, Welliver, Maulden, Tharrington, Pitts, Miller, Boileau, Boullioun, Buckley, Nible, the outspoken retired chairman T Wilson, and dozens more on the job now and from the past, add their flavor to the tale.

One disappointment is that there isn't more about Shrontz's early days at the company and his early life. Like some of his predecessors, he has kept a low profile. But readers undoubtedly want to know more about the man who directs this enduring company toward the 21st century.

Serling said it's his fault there isn't more about the chairman. "I just didn't press for it," he said.

Today, managing 150,000-plus people so they communicate, are motivated, feel they are important and contribute, while building successful products is the challenge facing Shrontz. As industry competition heats up globally, his job is a lot more involved than deciding what project to pursue next, as in the early days.

Serling says the new 375-seat 777 widebody jetliner and Boeing's role in space will help it maintain its place as a leader in transportation.

"If you look at where we are today in space, we're like we were in the airplane business in 1930," Bob Hager told Serling. Hager is vice president and general manager of the Huntsville division where Boeing space station and other space efforts are based.