For Dad...

When thinking of heritage preservation and technology, my first reaction is archaeology and UNESCO sites. Tonight, however, my 71-year-old father is in Alabama for his annual reunion of Eastern Airlines workers. There are many people who remember Eastern Airlines, but frequently when asked people respond with puzzlement. So as I sat back and thought about all the old stories I over heard my parents talking about. It was years before they could talk about it in front of me. Even today, the anger surfaces as fresh as it was in '88 or '89. There are horrible stories of pain and suffering that will always stick in my mind, but the worst is the story of the lock down. My father was a work that day at Miami International Airport in the hangers for Easter Airlines when an announcement came over the PA system. It was a lock out. Employees had 15 minutes to retrieve their personal items and vacate the Eastern Airlines property or they would be arrested. Grown men from their 20s to their 60s were running to try and salvage at least a portion of their tools. The airline mechanics kept their tools mostly at work locked up - a moderate set costing several hundred dollars if not a couple thousand.

I try to put myself in my father's shoes and comprehend everything he must have been feeling: adrenaline, fear, and anger. Then once he was off property with what he was able to grab, the fear and shame that had to be brimming within him as he went home to tell his wife there was a lock down and the union was on strike.

So I asked him, while he is surrounded by friends and former co-workers, to see if they are willing to share their stories with me. I don't know what sort of response I will get, but my most secret desire is to record the oral histories of these men and their families from this time and create a database or archive.  I want there to be a record of the common man and how the collapse of an airline and failure of the union erased 42,000 jobs from the Miami market. I want there to be some level of recognition of the suffering and hardship these people, my father, experienced so there can be some level of healing before they are lost to us.

That is how I would utilize technology right now. This moment. Very simple, but very meaningful just the same.