Catch Me If You Can
In 1970 I was Treasurer of the senior class at Norte Dame International Preparatory School in Rome, Italy. This had been my school for three years and despite being a reasonably big fish in a very small pond (our class was a whopping 54-strong), I was what was called a “Day-dog” rather than a boarder. In those days of the late 60’s most of the multinational American, Canadian and British families stationed anywhere from North Africa to India would send their kids to Rome or Switzerland to go to school. Boarding students were the majority and local day students were the minority. Of the five officers of our senior class that year, two of us where Day-dogs and three were boarders. I suspect the boarders would have secretly liked to have been living at home, but in defense they adopted a sense of superiority borne of school immersion and intensity.
In 2001, six of us from that NDI Class of ‘71 (including three of us class officers) gathered in Las Vegas at the obvious spot, Caesar’s Palace, for our one and only (so far) reunion. Someone brought a yearbook and there we were, right up front. The class officers were highlighted on an early page, in a picture taken at the top of an airliner boarding stair as though we were about to board the plane. That plane was the maiden flight of TWA’s first Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet, the plane that had captured the imagination of the international traveling set. One of our classmate’s father was a TWA official who got us the permission for the photo opportunity. Naturally, those were the halcyon days before hijackers and terrorists, so no big deal allowing five teenagers onto the tarmac and the plane of the century.
Little did I know that at that very same time, a group of attractive young women, hand-picked for their looks and poise (in the pre-political-correctness of the day) were working for ONA, serving as flight attendants , going all around the world (including Rome), with one of them being my future sister-in-law. That group of young women flew together for the better part of a decade and have stayed close for the fifty years since. They get together somewhere in the world every year to reunion and swap stories about the good old days.
This year they decided to gather at the newly opened and renovated TWA Hotel in the old TWA “Flight Wing One” Terminal 5 at JFK Airport. This is a landmarked building that was designed by the Starchitect of the late 1950’s, Finnish-American Eero Saarinen, the same man who designed the St. Louis Gateway Arch and the ubiquitous Tulip tables and chairs. Saarinen is one of the iconic industrial designers of the mid-century design category that has become so popular today, especially in mid-century venues like Palm Springs.
My wife Kim was the chubby little sister who got graciously invited by her world-traveling, older, glamorous sister to fly free in jump seats. She even occasionally pretended to be one of the crew and thus, was almost one of the girls. As such, Kim got to know some of these women and when this year’s reunion got set in our home town of the Big Apple, we were asked to join in on the festivities. Now, I would not normally think of taking a staycation in a local hotel, much less an airport hotel at JFK. I’m in and out of JFK often and I do so as quickly as possible, so spending the night was not a logical concept to me.
But TWA Terminal 5 is special. I take JetBlue often and the TWA Terminal is adjacent and I always admire it when I’m in the vicinity. The idea of trying out the TWA Hotel seemed like a fun way to spend a Friday evening. It seems that the opening of the hotel a month ago was not met with rave revues by the travel & leisure press. The general consensus was that it had pushed to open too soon and the staff was not yet ready. Staffing a hotel at the airport is surely more difficult than normal. We ignored all that and headed out in summer Friday afternoon traffic for JFK.
When we pulled up to the Terminal, we were greeted by bellmen dressed like baggage handlers. Inside, the Terminal looks very much like I remember it with terrazzo floors and sweeping open spaces that make it look like George Jetson’s pad. They have old Lincoln Continental’s and those German 1950’s mini smart cars scattered here and there to add to the mid-century feel. The departure/arrivals board has that Saarinen tulip look and works with old-fashioned black flip signs that flip around and show real flights coming and going from the connected JetBlue Terminal. We checked in at the… check-in counter, and head up one of the recognizable walkway tunnels that look straight out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The hotel is located in two 7-story wings on either side of the Terminal. The wing we were in was the Howard Hughes wing, a nod to the famous TWA recluse owner. The room tries hard to be modern, retro and eco-friendly and comes off feeling very Euro-small in the name of efficiency. They must expect a good bit of partying here since the mini-bar is really a maxi-bar, maybe to make-up for the absence of a closet. Up on the roof there is a small but neat pool with another bar. Between the Terminal and the JetBlue Terminal sits a courtyard with a Lockheed Constellation, which looks right at home. Inside there’s yet another martini-serving bar.
Dinner at the Paris Cafe up on the mezzanine overlooking the Terminal interior was pleasant enough, but seemed more like a Johnny Rocket menu with Le Cirque pricing. At least we got to sit on and dine on Saarinen-designed tulip table and chairs, so it all felt in keeping with the mid-century feel. A brief tour of the TWA historic flight attendant and pilot uniform display made me think of Leonardo DiCaprio finding the pilot uniform tailor shop and walking through the TWA Terminal looking like a million bucks. That was in the day when pilots and flight attendants were the elite and were idols to us all.
Back in college, my economics advisor was Fred Kahn, the guy who went into the CAB and ended all this glamour by deregulated the airlines. That made flying a cheap and attainable commodity for the masses rather than the magical red carpet ride of that bygone era. This evening at TWA Flight Center was a walk down memory lane in many directions. I recommend it to people of a certain age who had the opportunity to fly around when they were young. Looking at this retro Terminal reminds me of the days when airports were special places and not just modern, efficient bus stations of the 21st Century (thanks, Fred). Now that I’ve done it, I’ll go back to moving through airports, coming and going as quickly as I can in this unregulated world that modern life has re-regulated (thanks TSA) in such special ways. So go ahead, catch me if you can the next time I fly out or in on JetBlue and be sure to tip your hat to the passing pilot or uniformed attendant since it may be Leonardo or at least somebody’s sister.