January is a waltz between a warm den and the bleak and frigid landscape.

Inside, movement is unhurried, ritualistic. The fire crackles. The gentle cadence of the cat lapping water is a dreamy incantation. You drift into the kitchen. Creaky floorboards spill their secrets in your wake.

From the deep silence of this winter morning, each sound is its own poem. Even the coffee has a pulse, cascading from dripper to mug like a dark and fragrant river. The rhythmic clanking of sugar spoon against ceramic mimics rustic wind chimes. A plume of steam dances like a risen cobra.

Outside, dawn slowly breaks. A lonely titmouse greets the day. No need to rush. Trust. You’ll know when it’s time to leave the den.

Whether you’re walking to the car or the woodshed or a mile down the road, you are ready for a sacred pilgrimage. Days like today, when the air stings like nettle, invisible treasure is afoot: silence for deep listening; stillness for the same; nothingness to spark discovery.

As your feet drum against the frozen earth, consider the world that sleeps below: the dormant roots and seeds, the creatures cozy in their burrows. And when the soft light kisses your windburned face, consider the sun, ceaselessly rising, ceaselessly giving of its warmth. Consider how you are both — the dreamer and the rising sun.

January gives you what you need. The wind sweeps through what’s still here and the titmouse sings out. You hum a few shaky notes, unearth buried treasure on the long waltz home.

All That Simmers

The new year calls for a fresh start. Or at least a fragrant simmer pot. Creating a stovetop potpourri can be a fun and soothing ritual. Start with a pot of water. Consider what you’d like to invoke: brightness (lemon slices), warmth (cinnamon sticks) or clarity (rosemary sprigs)?

There are very few rules.

Bring the water to a boil. Add your ingredients. Reduce the potion to a simmer. Enjoy.

Allow this aromatic blend to work its healing magic on your space for up to several hours — but be sure to add more water as needed.

 

Winter should not be considered as only negation and destruction. It is a secret and inward working of powers, which in spring will burst into visible activity.

—Henry James Slack, The Ministry of the Beautiful

 

New Year’s Dip

In the Netherlands, thousands plunge into the icy waters of the North Sea each year on New Year’s Day.

Doesn’t a warm bath sound better?

And on January 4 — in the dark, earliest hours — a celestial shower.

This year, thanks to a sylph of a crescent moon, conditions look good for the annual Quadrantids, a spectacle known to light up the night sky with up to 40 brilliant meteors per hour.

Bundle up. Bring hot tea. Make a wish.

Revitalizing a Tudor home with light and love

By Cynthia Adam   •   Photographs by Amy Freeman

A new chapter in an historic Sunset Hills home is being written by renovation warriors Adrienne Johnston and Zach Haines, who are bringing light and youth to a venerable, old home. Seth, their beloved pet, may just be their design avatar, as he has already benefitted from their redesigns.

For instance, Seth ambles past Johnston, silently crossing the sun-soaked kitchen to a new French door. Pausing nonchalantly to push it open, he heads outdoors.

The owners considered all angles in making their redesign functional, and the new door, which opens to a side garden, was installed with him in mind. “And for the light and access,” Johnston says.

As the French door silently opened then closed behind him, I squeaked, “How’d he do that?”

“I installed a spring hinge on the door so Seth can let himself in,” she grinned. “I get that reaction a lot.”

Seth may have been the inspiration for certain design decisions, but seems not to appreciate the smart herringbone pattern of the new kitchen floor. Nor did he notice the sparkling white quartz countertops that arrived to Johnston’s delight just that week — about snout high by his reckoning. He was immune to all the subtle details, from ceiling to floors, that his owners spent months poring over and selecting.

The neutral and large kitchen — the beating “heart of the house” — became the initial focus of the couple’s efforts. The kitchen, in fact, is where Johnston — a marketing director working in sales and product development for Culp Inc. in High Point — often works remotely, as pandemic norms called for new ways of using available space. “I also move to the sun porch. I don’t like working from only one space.”

Then Johnston anticipates the next question as Seth remerges in the kitchen: “What is he?” she quips about their 70-pound dog. “Much larger than I expected.”

As it happens, “DNA revealed that Seth’s a Bernese Mountain Dog mixed with Brussels Griffon and a little bit of poodle. I owned him a year before I met Zach.”

And consider this: The couple married just last summer, midst a flurry of renovations and a stubbornly unending pandemic.

Haines is the head soccer coach at High Point University. He walks into the kitchen, refilling a coffee mug, before heading out on a recruiting trip to South Carolina. “I really enjoy recruiting,” he says, encouraged by having completed a strong season.

Following a five-year program at North Carolina State in design and textiles, Johnston went to work with Culp, a leading provider of upholstery and mattress fabrics. She also works on occasional fabric projects with designer friend Linda Lane.

“I met Zach about a month after he moved here to become head soccer coach at HPU,” she says. Haines had just relocated to the Triad from Denver, and, while he grew up in Jamestown, most of his friends now live elsewhere. 

At that time, he was living in Winston-Salem and Johnston was living in Greensboro, yet both worked in High Point. They met April 7, 2019, for coffee at Krankies in Winston-Salem — and ended up staying for hours, but not for the java.

The two shared mutual good friends, and their connection, Haines says, was instantaneous. Even soccer played a role in their relationship.

“He had gone to Carolina and played soccer there. I grew up playing soccer,” she adds. “So, we both love the [soccer] series Ted Lasso.”

Johnston then lived in a bungalow on Wright Avenue nearby, one that was in the process of being remodeled. Haines moved in and liked the house despite its small size.

Now the couple, with Seth firmly by their side, are joyfully restoring their first truly major reno, one spring hinge, refinished floor, relocated wall and aesthetic update, at a time. 

Room by lovely room.

They have wasted no time in pulling the 1926 Tudor into the 2020s.

The first floor is largely completed apart from one room off the kitchen.  The second floor is still under renovation. The rustic third floor, Haines’ lair, is both home office and a sportsman’s retreat, just as he likes it.

No matter the many hours logged as DIYers, the couple is as in love with the house as they were when they found it. Dauntless and dogged remodelers, they have earned their chops. 

“It made sense. I liked the financial aspect of buying this house,” Haines says. “Adrienne liked the design aspect.”

She was no stranger to fixer-uppers, taking mental notes as her parents renovated at least five houses during her youth in Raleigh.

“My parents would fix up the house while we lived in it and flip it,” Johnston says. “I grew up interested in the redoing craze … obsessed with (the television show) Trading Spaces when a kid.”

Proof of her obsession?

“I had a ‘Trading Spaces’ themed 10? 12? birthday party where my friend had to come help me paint my bedroom, sew curtains, paint furniture, etc.” At the time, she had a bedroom downstairs with an adjacent bathroom: “My parents let me paint the bathroom bright fuchsia, along with the ceiling in my bedroom. They were always very encouraging and supportive of all of my art endeavors,” she says.

Handily, Johnston’s folks live in Sunset Hills on Madison Avenue, becoming avid pet sitters when renovation calls.

“My love for houses came from my mom — one thing we’ve always bonded over, spending free time rearranging furniture (all the time), styling shelves, drawing a million dream floor plans of our houses just for fun.”

Now in her early 30s, Johnston’s youthful obsession was about to be put to test.

“Zach and I had started thinking seriously for first time about buying a fixer upper. We put an offer in on a house that didn’t work out. We looked at others.” Yet Johnston was conflicted. 

“I didn’t think I could love a house as much as my first house.”

The pair resolved to stay put and renovate the bungalow’s small kitchen and back porch. Assisted by Lane, the kitchen redesign opened up and improved on an already charming home. Then they walked straight into their destiny.

“We were two weeks into that kitchen renovation when we were out on our daily walk and came across the for-sale sign in the front yard of a Greenway Drive house,” Johnston says.

An imposing, large Tudor was situated on a heavily shaded corner near a park. “It was big,” Johnston thought uncertainly.

“But Zach was smitten.” 

They made an immediate appointment to see the house.

“Zach was already 100 percent convinced before we showed up [to meet the Realtor]. I was hesitant because I’ve never really liked Tudors … and this house was very big. And we had just started a renovation!”

Perhaps too big.

The Tudor was triple the square footage of their bungalow, she says. Then, she smiles. “I have to say I was pretty sold the minute we walked in.”

Again, blame the pandemic. Blame Johnston’s need for a project. But neither Johnston nor Haines wanted to rethink it. The Tudor had to be theirs, and the couple made an offer on the spot. They later rented the bungalow to a close friend.

Johnston, formerly a sworn “maximalist,” found the “new” house comfortable and cozy, if a bit closed off and dark. It needed a bit of minimalizing.

The couple celebrated with champagne in the empty house after the owner kindly offered a key. “We had the most fun afternoon, brought a cooler over and popped champagne in the house that hopefully was going to be ours,” she recalls.

“We got to know the owner, Jenny [Forbis], during the buying process,” she says. They found her absolutely charming. What’s more, “she loved this house so incredibly much. She had raised her kids and grandkids here and wanted to sell it to someone who would love it as much as she loved it.”

More excitement was afoot.

“Zach and I got engaged three days before we closed on the house,” she adds. “I was completely shocked because I didn’t think he had a ring yet.”

The couple took possession July 8, 2020, working on the house a month before moving in. They took down wallpaper, ripped up carpet, refinished floors and painted every surface.

“The flow of the downstairs was strange and kind of tricky to figure out,” she says. They knew they wanted to do a big renovation but couldn’t resist living in the space before they started. “Zach put together the budget.”

“Very practical,” she adds. “In typical Adrienne and Zach fashion we started renovating the (Tudor) kitchen two months before our wedding.”

They got married in Manteo on July 24, 2021. There was a perfect full moon, they recall, and they pared the guest list down to 100 given COVID. After a trip to Ocracoke, the newlyweds returned to a massive project.

“Linda had taught me quite a bit during the renovation at the bungalow, so she was an incredible resource,” Johnston says. “Also, we got lucky with great subcontractors. One is just incredible.” She coyly jokes about withholding his name given artisans are in high demand. “And having people you trust on the job is key,” she adds. Meanwhile both mothers, who are design and artistically savvy, were helping.”

“I tell him he married his mother,” Johnston jokes, exploding with laughter. He is surrounded by designing women, she says.

Her mother studied art history at UNC. Haines’ mother is an interior designer. The couple faced a sprawling project that would benefit by the input of both mothers and designer friend Lane.

But Johnston, who “always underestimates herself,” according to Haines, had spent years of college inside design labs. She wanted the redesigned kitchen to be calm, sophisticated and a little bit dramatic — new classics with a light touch.

She prepared an immediate punch list:

1. Move the back door to central location to help with flow.

2. Create sight lines between kitchen and den. (House always felt very disconnected between staircase.)

3. Add more windows to kitchen for more natural light. (very dark, and I can’t handle a dark kitchen.)

4. Add side yard access for our dog.

5. Have a kitchen area where people can hang out since they entertain a lot and both of them love to cook.

Inspired “by an Amber Interiors kitchen I had seen on Instagram, I used that to help guide my decisions,” Johnston says. “I started taking [online] SketchUp courses for interiors because I don’t have a computer-aided design system,” she says. She also happened upon floorplanner.com, which, she says, is “not super advanced but got the job done. It also helped me be able to pitch different layouts to Zach because they have a 3D mode to visualize things beyond just a flat floor plan.”

Using Photoshop to figure out proportions and fixtures, Johnston determined how tall the backsplash would be, the scale and placement of light fixtures, countertops, and even the configuration of cabinetry and hardware.

The couple knocked out a wall, filling six garbage cans with rubble.

“There were no sight lines, so we opened it up,” Johnston says. 

The previous owner’s design relied on a rainbow of colors, wallpapers, stained glass and faux painted surfaces. “The interior was wild,” Johnston says.

Stained glass throughout the house was not original but part of a prior reno. One window “seemed ecclesiastical,” Lane notes. And light blocking.

Tudors famously lack natural light.

“And light,” Lane adds “is the key to these houses.” 

Fortuitously, a friend of the couple worked with Visual Comfort lighting and stayed with them during the High Point markets. She suggested classic pendant and other kitchen lights and made lighting suggestions elsewhere. One was brought straight from the showroom.

The emerging décor is an evolution of the couple’s style. Johnston mixed family pieces from both sides. An inherited vintage sofa in a luminous fabric from an aunt in Palm Beach is a focal point in the breakfast area. A vintage chair and console from Haines’ family are in the living room.

Johnston layered organic finishes, neutral colors and a mix of vintage and new rugs. She spent time, mastering hand weaving, dyeing fabric and screen printing. 

A vivid weaving of her own hangs in the breakfast area, inspired by one from Ghana over the living room sofa.

Influences from time spent in Ghana and Prague bring eclectic color to a neutral ground. The home’s new interiors are chic, lighter, more luminous.

“I always thought I’d be a maximalist, but I’m surprised I wanted it calm and quiet,” she says. “I chose classic colors and finishes.” Viewing this as a long-term home made her avoid trends. It has, in her words, “influenced decisions.”

In the living room, an art book about new bohemians is in a stack of art books, opposite a velvet mossy brown sofa upholstered with nail heads, snagged at a West Elm sale.

Mid-century slipper chairs were found at High Point Antique’s Center. These are Johnston’s prized possession. By sheer luck, Johnston discovered the coffee table originally belonging with the chairs at Lindley Park Vintage.

The third floor, Johnston says, is her husband’s domain, leading to a large, masculine space with a dart board and TV screens.

“Zach has free rein in the attic room; he comes up here every single night,” she says. “As a college soccer coach, he watches a lot of film and can work here.”

They have lots of plans to entertain, especially wanting to invite family members of the original builder over.

Generations of families over a century have loved the home.  “Jenny loved this house,” Johnston says. “We love this house.”

Luckily, Johnston and Haines, who both love renovating, have found just the place to keep that love alive for years to come.

As for now, Johnston cannot imagine trading spaces with anyone.  OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry.

Marie Stone-van Vuuren colors her art with realism and wit

By Maria Johnson

How would a crow hold a cup of tea?

Set aside, for a moment, the larger question of why a crow would hold a cup of tea.

Right now, it’s enough to know that Greensboro artist Marie Stone-van Vuuren was determined to figure out how.

She studied pictures of crows’ feet.

Real crows’ feet, not the kind women are supposed to care about.

 

She took modeling clay, rolled out four knobby bird toes — three in front, one aft — and wrapped them around the handle of an earthenware mug until she knew exactly how a crow would latch on.

Which brings us back to the question of why a crow would do such a thing.

Answer: Because Stone-van Vuuren wanted it to.

Because she lives in a neighborhood full of crows, and they’re always in her visual field, pecking and cawing at her imagination.

Because the idea struck her as funny and absurd — a lowly crow taking a spot of tea, just as a distinguished Brit might.

 

 

When you look at it that way — and understand that one of Stone-van Vuuren’s favorite books is Young Years: Best Loved Stories and Poems for Little Children, an illustrated volume from 1960 — it seems inevitable that she would take up watercolor and ink to create three crows standing shoulder to shoulder, thinking crow-ish thoughts, while one pauses for refreshment.

Crow Takes Tea is one of her most popular pieces, in terms of affection and sales.

Which is nice, but not necessary.

What’s necessary is for Stone-van Vuuren to be delighted by her work.

“I’m not the kind of artist who likes edgy, dark, crude subjects,” she says, brushing off the notion that heavyweight art rests on heavy subjects.

 

“Maybe it’s academia that puts that idea out there. I don’t know. But it doesn’t leave room for the silly, the delightful, the fanciful,” she says. “I just want to be a lighter person.”

Growing up in Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, Stone-van Vuuren endured enough trauma to last a lifetime.

Her home was burglarized. Two friends were shot. She lived with domestic violence and alcoholism. Her congenital hip dysplasia required five surgeries.

“I was bullied and teased because I walked funny,” she says.

Art was a refuge. In high school, she drew portraits of musician Frank Zappa and taped them inside her locker. She decorated the chalkware lamps and statuary that her parents fabricated in their shop in Hamtramck, a blue-collar appendage of the Motor City. Her father showed her how to create faux surfaces, a skill that shows up in her work today.

 

“He taught me how to marble and do some weird effects,” she says.

When Stone-van Vuuren was 19, her parents moved to High Point to be near the furniture industry. She followed later, typing and organizing her way through administrative jobs at United Guaranty, the Greensboro Jaycees and the Center for Creative Leadership.

She crossed departmental lines at CCL.

“I went from administrative work to IT because I was really good with computers. I was on the help desk for a while, then I got into project management, and they were like, ‘Ooo, you can do graphic design,’ so I did more and more of that,” she says.

When a career counselor suggested that she get a bachelor’s degree, Stone-van Vuuren became a contractor to CCL and enrolled at Guilford College, at age 35, to study music.

 

But even with a degree — she taught classical guitar for a few years after graduating — music never came as easily as graphic design.

“I realized I was good at it, and I loved it,” she says with a smile. “It was all CCL’s fault.”

Visual art became her mainstay. She set two tracks for herself: a practical path for money and a whimsical path for joy.

As a freelance designer and project manager, she took — and continues to take — jobs from a variety of clients. She draws business logos, devises fundraising campaigns, illustrates books, paints pet portraits and renders site plans and buildings for developers.

“I married my love of art with my business savvy,” she says. “I found a way to join those two things. It’s like a Reese’s Cup, you know?”

For pleasure, she picks up a brush and turns her imagination loose — a practice she considers vital to her growth.

“When you get into the people-pleasing stuff, your art is on a slippery slope,” she says.

Stone-van Vuuren spends many happy hours in her home studio, spilling watercolors, ink and mica onto paper to create dreamy backgrounds. She might add reactive agents, such as salt or alcohol. Sometimes, she prints her abstract broths with leaves, grasses or other textured material.

To reveal pockets of chromatic energy, she snips the dried paper into card-size pieces. If a foreground figure suggests itself, she coaxes it out with ink or watercolor.

Other times, starting with a subject in mind, she sketches an image on paper, paints the shape with a rubberized masking fluid then drizzles color over the resist. When the background dries, she peels off the coating and fills in the blanks with her characters.

She favors outcasts — bugs, crows, squirrels, cats and the like.

“I like to shine a light on things people don’t like. I will make you like them. They might not be pretty, but if you look deeply, the beauty is there. Maybe if I draw it big enough, I can help you see it,” she says.

She can go textbook on her subjects, zooming in to reveal subtle patterns, hues and symmetry. Goliath beetles never looked so charming.

She can go storybook, too, bestowing her critters with human behaviors and accessories.

A wolf wears a red scarf.

A goat mouths a pair of eyeglasses by one temple.

A praying mantis answers a knock at its door.

Three cats, dressed as the Magi, proceed bearing gifts.

 

A cockroach known as Mr. Scuttles lies on his back, spiny arms linked behind his head as he meditates.

Mr. Scuttles is a stock character in Stone-van Vuuren’s menagerie. She first drew him in the fall of 2019 as a part of Inktober, an online challenge that feeds artists daily prompts.

For the prompt “ring,” she drew Mr. Scuttles tapping a desk bell for service.

For “wild,” she put him astride a chopper-style motorcycle.

For “ancient,” she wrapped him like a mummy in toilet paper.

“Everybody loved Mr. Scuttles,” she says. “He’s funny. He’s a cockroach. It’s ironic.”

She points to a February 2020 group exhibit at The Artery Gallery in Greensboro, her last show before COVID hit. The works depicting Mr. Scuttles scurried out of the shop quickly. The gallery asked her to bring whatever cockroach art she had left.

“I think we sold almost all of it,” says Esia Ackley, co-owner of the gallery. “In fact, I purchased one. It’s Mr. Scuttles drinking tea. He’s in my kitchen. Other people might be like, ‘Why would you put that in your kitchen?’ but I like it. It looks like Mr. Scuttles could have a wonderful conversation with you. There’s a whole story you can imagine about it.”

Clark Whittington is another fan of Stone-van Vuuren’s work. He owns Art-o-mat, a Winston-Salem–based company that converts old cigarette vending machines into art dispensers and leases them to high-traffic businesses. AOM stocks the machines with $5 works from an international pool of creators, most of whom view the pocket-size art as a calling card that could lead to bigger projects.

“Marie always over-delivers,” Whittington says. “She doesn’t compromise her work just because of what’re selling.”

Her works for AOM — she confirms they’ve sparked lots of commissions — include 50-piece runs of bugs, robots, big-screen monsters and famous film directors.

Her love of cinema, especially costume and set design, extends to collaborations with her husband, filmmaker Stephen van Vuuren, whose best-known work is In Saturn’s Rings, a 2018 theater-released documentary narrated by LeVar Burton. (Read more in the June 2015 issue of O.Henry: https://issuu.com/ohenrymag/docs/june_2015_oh_ad_list/42)

Stephen van Vuuren also shoots and does postproduction work on commercials, music videos and indie films.

The couple’s company, SV2 Studios, embraces the creative output of both.

“We’re not following a conventional approach to life,” Marie Stone-van Vuuren says. “But any other way, and we would kind of be dead inside.”

She has stayed busy since the pandemic began. She continues to sell through fineartamerica.com and pixels.com, which reproduce her images on prints, pillows, tote bags, cards, yoga mats, and face masks among other items.

At 62, Stone-van Vuuren will resume gallery shows when she feels safe asking people to assemble indoors. She’s tinkering with the idea of virtual shows. She’s also reflecting on the nature of her work

“I kind of wanted to pause anyway, to take a step back and think about what I want to do in this next chapter. Moving forward, what does my art look like? I like to explore and do different things. We’re multifaceted people, and I think art should reflect that. I just want to see what else is in there and what will emerge if I give it room.”

Recently, she finished an Art-o-mat series featuring a notch-eared, crooked-tailed cat penned with a playful, mid-century flair.

“Is it high art? Nah,” she says. “But is it fun? Yeah.”

If the kitty tickles other people, that’s a bonus.

“It’s good to know my art is making people laugh in a good way,” she says. “Finding delight is a righteous goal.”  OH

See more of Stone-van Vuuren’s work at mariestoneart.com.

A short oral history of Piedmont Airlines

By Billy Ingram

 

Let’s face it. Commercial flying has devolved into traveling in a cloud-bound cattle car. Not only is there no decent cud to chew on, but the onboard entertainment too often consists of free-for-alls up and down the fuselage, flight attendants overwhelmed by Karens and Kevins prone to engage in unrestrained, unctuous behavior. Blanket or last-minute cancellations, overbooked flights, intrusive security measures, soaring ticket prices, interminable terminal wait times, claustrophobic accommodations — all adding up to an overall unpleasant experience.

That wasn’t always the case. There was once a homegrown airline with a can-do spirit, piloting truly friendly skies. A bygone era when flying was a genuine pleasure, when stepping through the airplane door made you feel as if you’d already arrived home. Piedmont Airlines was the vision of Winston-Salem entrepreneur Thomas Henry Davis (1918-1999), who transformed a ragtag collection of nearly obsolete aircraft into a world-class operation — and perhaps the most beloved air passenger carrier of all time. But don’t take my word for it.

Chris Runge, curator for Piedmont Aviation Historical Society: Piedmont Airlines started out as Camel City Flying Service in Winston-Salem. Piedmont CEO Tom Davis was asked to purchase [the company] in 1939. He changed it to Piedmont Aviation in 1940, they trained pilots for World War II — both in Winston and in Greensboro. When the war was over, he had all these employees, so he started an airline because he didn’t want to lay off all these people. They started out with three DC-3s. The first flight was February 20th of 1948. They were known as the puddle-jumping airline.

Capt. John Williams, Piedmont Airlines pilot from 1979–1989: Any time you’re a small-scale operation like that, they refer to [you] as a puddle jumper. In the beginning, Piedmont didn’t go too far away from North Carolina. The farthest they went on their first flights was Cincinnati.

Richard Eller, author of Piedmont Airlines A Complete History, 1948-1989: In the ’60s, Winston-Salem expanded rapidly due to several large industries that were really much bigger than the city itself. But they made Winston-Salem so much more important. Think about R.J. Reynolds [Tobacco Co.], which had been there for a very long time; Krispy Kreme was there; TW Garner [the makers of Texas Pete]; Hanes. And Piedmont was one of those really big companies.

Chris Runge: Piedmont made Winston-Salem the busiest airport in the state in 1963, based on departures. It had a huge impact on the city. There was the headquarters, a reservation center . . . They had a fabric center, a woodworking center, Piedmont Aerospace Institute. It was a really big deal.

John Williams: First off, it was not a job. Practically everybody knew everybody. Practically everybody knew everybody’s family. Who was sick, who’s going on vacation. It wasn’t a busybody, put-your-nose-in-somebody-else’s-business thing. It’s just like you were working with your family. That term, family — that needs to be stressed because after having worked for USAir, US Airways . . . American and Delta, none of them even vaguely resembled Piedmont Airlines. They were overly businesslike, very cool and efficient. At Piedmont, you were pretty much on a first-name basis with everybody.

Holley Greene Rogers, Piedmont Airlines flight attendant from 1983-1989: In the early ’80s, the job market was not that great. Every 23 year old in North Carolina was trying to get a job as a flight attendant with Piedmont. I thought I’d just do it for a few years and ended up staying for 22 years (with Piedmont and then US Airways). It’s not really a career choice; it’s a lifestyle.

They still allowed smoking when I got hired in ’83. I had to keep my uniform in a separate closet — it stunk so bad from the smoke. Flight attendants work hard today, but they don’t serve meals like we used to. We used to sling out a hot meal between Greensboro and New York, give everybody a hot towel, give them two drinks, clean up that cart and land. We really worked but it was still so much fun.

Sharon Carroll Williams, Piedmont Airlines flight attendant from 1984-1989: It was all about attractiveness when I started. Flight attendants had to be at least 5′ 3″ and you couldn’t wear glasses. They weighed us. You had to be a certain weight to get the job, and we never knew when we opened the door of an aircraft whether our supervisor would be standing there, which meant it was time to get weighed again. In the 1990s, airlines stopped doing weight checks because it was considered discrimination. The airlines found a way around this. During our yearly FAA [evacuation simulations], they made us exit through the smallest window, so that became the way they evaluated your weight.

Before I started, you could not be married and be a flight attendant. That was a strict rule. If you got married as a flight attendant in the ’60s and ’70s, you had to quit your job.

Holley Greene Rogers: The longer you stayed, the more seniority you accrued. You’re given a pay number the day you’re hired and that’s your number forever. That dictates whether you get on a flight or whether someone senior gets on ahead of you. The pilots never wanted to leave an employee at the gate. Something Piedmont would do, they’d say, “C’mon, you can ride jumpseat in the cockpit.” You would never see that with an airline today.

Chris Runge: The 727 has what you call your rear air stairs — the stairs that come out of the back of the plane. If a passenger missed a flight and the plane was halfway down the tarmac, the agent would call out to the plane, they’d stop, the pilot would drop the air stairs. The passenger would run out on the tarmac, jump up the back of the plane and they’d lift it up and go. Their motto was “Don’t leave anybody behind. Ever.” And they didn’t.

Richard Eller: The pilots were seemingly having the time of their lives. Because they flew to the same places a lot, that created a kind of family between the pilots and flight attendants and the people there. They stayed in the same places, they partied in the same hotels. There was a camaraderie.

Holley Greene Rogers: Every pilot I ever flew with was a gentleman. I never had any Piedmont pilots harass me in any way whatsoever. But they would tell some off-color jokes.

John Williams: Yes, we would share an off-color joke every once in a while — if you knew that nobody was going to get offended. But for the most part, we were encouraged to be southern gentlemen. We had a good time. There’s no question about it . . . but it was very businesslike in the cockpits and on the aircraft.

Capt. Lori Cline, Piedmont Airlines pilot from 1984-1989: I was not just the youngest female captain ever. I was the youngest captain, period. You cannot command an aircraft as a captain until you’re 23. I was able to get my certification on my birthday and I flew that day with my fourth stripe. So, conceivably, there can be no one younger. That was when I was with Atlantis Airlines [Eastern Express].

I was about the 14th . . .16th woman pilot hired at Piedmont. So, there had been many trailblazers before me. Of course, there were always pilots that had never flown with a woman before. It’d be like, “Oh, another woman in my cockpit.” That was a difficult time. They wanted to not like women pilots, but then, when they saw that you were professional and you were a nice person it’s like, well OK, maybe this isn’t so bad.

Holley Greene Rogers: Tom Davis understood that your employees are the greatest asset you have, and he treated us like gold. His son was a pilot and his daughter was a flight attendant for Piedmont.

John Williams: I flew Tom Davis a lot. He had a home in Wilmington, and we would fly from Winston or Greensboro, fly him down there as a passenger all the time. The thing that amazed me about him was — and I’m sure he probably had help — but he would come through the cockpit and greet everybody by their first name. That impressed me, that he went to that detail. He was quite the gentleman and scholar, just a great guy.

Chris Runge: Tom Davis made a point of knowing everybody’s name and that’s the one thing everyone will always tell you: that “he always called me by my name.” What they didn’t know was that, before he would enter a station on the system, whether it be Greensboro or Fayetteville or Richmond, he had a little black notebook and he would check it. Because the last time he was there, he would write down “tall red hair, David. Short black hair, Joe.” He would go over that list, refresh himself with their names.

Lori Cline: Piedmont was very progressive, even for the ’80s. There’s a famous picture of myself in the right seat of a 727 with Bill Wilkerson, who is a captain of color, and a young flight engineer who couldn’t have been 21. We took [the photo below] in 1986. That was very progressive for an airline to have an African-American as a captain and a female co-pilot on a 727. We didn’t take the photograph because it was anything we were trying to document. Captain Wilkerson had just gotten a new camera for his birthday and he said, “Let’s take a picture.” We re-created it for the 70th anniversary celebration of Piedmont Airlines in 2018 and presented it to the N.C. Transportation Museum.

You look back at it now as airlines struggle for diversity today and, gosh, Piedmont was doing it back in the ’80s. I think that says a lot about Tom Davis’ vision for the future of what the airline flight deck components should look like.

Chris Runge: One of the things that employees thought was most special at Christmas was that everyone got a crisp, brand-new $100 bill from Mr. Davis. He would deliver it to them personally. Eventually the airline grew into a major carrier with 24,000 employees, so he couldn’t hand deliver each one, but you do the math — 24,000 employees times a hundred bucks.

Lori Cline: One year we got $100 for Christmas and a check to pay for the taxes. Turkeys at Thanksgiving. They took good care of their people.

Holley Greene Rogers: I’m a baby at Christmas. I like to be home with my family. I only had to work my first two Christmases because they hired so many people after me. I usually had to work New Year’s Eve, but I didn’t care about that. It would be a little hard to be in a hotel with your crew, but the crew would always do something, somebody would bring some good food and cookies and we’d just make the best of it, you know? Sometimes you might be in New York or some lovely town with beautiful lights and you could walk around and see the sights. It was over before you knew it.

Lori Cline: I loved to fly Christmas. I didn’t have children at the time, so I would purposely fly Christmas because I always thought people with kids should be able to get to stay at home. You brought gifts for your crew, you brought a little Christmas tree, decked out the galley and decorated as best you could. And everybody would be in such great spirits and have a great layover. If you couldn’t be with your at-home family, you were with your airline family on a really special day.

John Williams: I only had one Christmas that I worked. That was just by pure happenstance. Lots and lots of New Year’s, but I volunteered to do those. A lot of people like to party on New Year’s. I never did, so I flew a lot of those flights. Got a good night’s sleep in a hotel room.

Chris Runge: Piedmont was named “Airline of the Year” in 1984. They started service to Los Angeles on April 1st of that year. You would fly from Greensboro to Charlotte and have a brief layover. That’s when they would board all the passengers who purchased the nonstop flight to L.A. They needed what was called extended range aircraft, the 727-200.

But they weren’t ready. They used the regular 727, which didn’t have the capacity to go all the way across the country without refueling. So they’d have to stop at places like Tulsa and, because they didn’t give the passengers nonstop service, at the end of the flight the pilot would come around and pass out $100 bills to first-class, $50 bills to coach. People would get off the plane and say, “You know, if you do this all the time, we don’t care about Tulsa. We’ll fly with you every time we come out here.” They were just so big on customer service. I mean, that was number one.

Lori Cline: Without a doubt, my favorite airplane of all time was the Boeing 727 for Piedmont Airlines, which was a workhorse for the industry during the ’70s and ’80s before it was retired for being considered inefficient, fuel-wise, due to its third engine. And to this day, before I retire, if I could get to fly one airplane again, it would be that classic Cadillac one last time.

John Williams: The 727 series was just a horse. It was a great flying airplane. I also liked the 767, both of them are Boeings. You can pretty much say any of the Boeings were tip-top, number one, but my absolute favorite was the 727.

I’m lucky. I’ve never had an engine shut down on its own. Never had a fire while airborne. Our training, by the way — I need to say this out loud — our training department fully equipped each and every pilot with all the tools necessary to react to anything that happened. They taught you every nut and bolt on the airplane. Our 727 training was, if anything, overkill. Components you couldn’t touch, that you couldn’t access, but you knew what it was, where it was and how to treat it in case something went wrong. The training these days? The emphasis on detail has been detuned.

Lori Cline: Piedmont’s flight training was known to be one of the more difficult schools. I remember watching an entire slide presentation on the windshield wiper assembly and the nuts and bolts that held the windshield wipers onto the windscreen and thought, “Oh, my God. It was like a 20-minute presentation on the windshield wipers. We haven’t even gotten to the engine yet!”

Sharon Carroll Williams: I tell this story in my book [Life at 36,000 Feet: Where Faith and Fear Connect]. One close call happened in Roanoke where the Captain couldn’t determine whether the landing gear was fully locked into position before landing. When landing gear fails to hold and an aircraft needed to “belly in” for a landing, it meant an increased risk of fire. As the captain explained the situation over the intercom, the passengers got really quiet. So we had to ready the cabin for an emergency landing, which included instructing everyone in the brace position, then we went about securing everything. When I looked out the windows, I could see all the firetrucks ready with the foam. When the landing gear held tight, the passengers erupted into cheers and applause.

 

Holley Greene Rogers: Piedmont was bought by USAir in ’89, but mostly everybody I flew with was hired by Piedmont. It was a completely different attitude. It wasn’t the same at all. We always hoped it would be Piedmont buying USAir, but stockholders wanted to cash in, so that’s how it turned out.

Richard Eller: They always called it a merger, but it really wasn’t. The old adage that some people quoted to me was that, “We’re going to blend cool Northern efficiency with warm Southern hospitality,” and that didn’t work. In those last couple of years, after USAir bought Piedmont, they tried to run it as two separate airlines. That didn’t work. People used to refer to them as Useless Air.

Chris Runge: August 4th of 1989 was the last flight. That’s when the real dismantling of Piedmont began. USAir started to institute their policies and their way of doing things. They ended service to the smaller cities. And gosh, they just . . . I mean . . . morale sunk, passenger complaints soared. They went from first to worst in so many categories like on-time performance, lost baggage . . .

Richard Eller: Every person I interviewed for the book and the documentary [Speedbird: The History of Piedmont Airlines] truly regarded Piedmont as a family. One of the pilots said that he was asked one time, “What are you going to do for Christmas? You going home to your wife and kids? Or are you going to hang out with your family?” Meaning the airline.

A couple of pilots said they told Mr. Davis that, if he wanted to start another airline someplace else, they would quit their jobs and follow him. It’s a testament to the kind of company that Tom Davis built with Piedmont, how loyal these folks were.

Rick Amme, news anchor WXII, Aug. 4, 1989: I said it all week and I’ll say it again: The Piedmont will not be the same without Piedmont Airlines.  OH

Billy Ingram’s book Hamburger2, (mostly) about Greensboro, is available as a free PDF for your Kindle or other devices at tvparty.com/1-hamburger.html

 

Photographs Courtesy of the Piedmont Aviation Historical Society

Against Desirelessness

 

The heart needs more than quiet,

more than a home without desire.

Sorry old masters, before I can let go,

won’t I need to be holding on,

refusing to let something loose?

In my fist, I hold the aroma

of spring, of roses, of mown grass.

In my ear, I can still hear the creek

and the wren’s song turned to scold,

as the snake comes down the tree

from her emptied nest. The touch

of the breeze as I open my palm.

— Paul Jones, author of Something Wonderful