Warbird Information Exchange

Ground crewman to history a dream job
Seattle Times 04/11/05
author: Erik Lacitis
(Copyright 2005)


Every weekday, John Little gets up around 4:30 a.m. and can't wait to get to the work. He walks for 45 minutes from his second-floor Georgetown apartment, past Boeing Field on East Marginal Way South, and at 6 begins the job he loves.

For the next four hours, until the Museum of Flight opens at 10, Little dusts and cleans some of the 88 planes on display.

Since age 3 or 4, Little, now 45, has been in love with airplanes. And these are not just any planes.

These are planes that fought wars -- American, Japanese, German, British, Russian.

These are the planes that took dreams and made them real, like the Gossamer Albatross II, with a span of nearly 98 feet, plastic and Mylar held together with almost invisible wires. It is the twin of the Albatross that in 1979 flew across the English Channel, powered only by a sweating, pedaling pilot.

Little says he knows he could earn more money elsewhere, but that doesn't matter to him. "This is a job for fanatics," he said.

He has been the "teacher of the teachers" who are the volunteer guides, said Eden Hopkins, spokeswoman for the museum.

From his apartment, he can see the museum and, at night, watch various kinds of military planes land at Boeing Field.

In the early-morning hours at the museum, it is just Little and the security guards. He has the cavernous museum all to himself, just him and, for example, a Spitfire LF IX fighter plane that flew on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

"You know, this Spitfire starred in that movie, 'The Longest Day,' and then it was owned by [the actor] Cliff Robertson. In fact, I think he considers himself more a pilot than an actor," Little said as he dusted the plane.

Airport memories

Four hours of dusting done, Little puts away the mechanical lift next to "Fred," a depiction of an early 1990s astronaut. "Fred" has been seen on local billboards advertising the Museum of Flight. Little has tried to piece together when it all started, this love for aircraft.

Maybe it was when he, his brother Thomas and his mom, Marjory, would take his dad, William, a traveling salesman, to the airport. Whether it was in Jacksonville, Fla., or Aurora, Ill., as the family bounced around, the ritual was the same: two weeks on, two weeks off; on Sundays, the family took dad to the airport; on Sunday nights, they'd pick him up.

On those trips, Little would spend his time at the airport on the observation deck, watching the planes.

"I was fascinated by their noise, their smell, their bright colors," Little remembered.

He got his parents to buy a set of the World Book Encyclopedia, and the only part he read was volume "A," for "airplanes."

He built something like 250 model planes, which, in his family's various moves, got junked.

In an era when some kids sniffed glue, the owner of the local dime store required Little to bring a note from his mother before he could buy airplane glue. "I can assure you he does not sniff it because most of it ends up on my carpet," his mother wrote.

After graduating from college, he signed up for the Marines' flight school. But Little's "mechanically weak back" meant he could be crippled if he ever had to eject from a fighter plane.

Little did qualify for a private pilot's license. When he left the Marines, Little lived in New Orleans and sometimes rented private planes. He doesn't fly anymore, the cost of renting a plane being too high.

Instant attraction In 1993, Little helped his brother move here for graduate school at the University of Washington and thought to himself, "Hey, this is the hometown of Boeing!"

He made a beeline to the Museum of Flight. A year later, he was working at the museum as a security guard, then in the education department, and now, as an "exhibit technician."

On a recent morning, he was dusting and cleaning the World War II planes on display at the museum's Personal Courage Wing. There was a Messerschmitt Bf 109E-3, described as "the most produced fighter aircraft and the workhorse of the German air force."

The thing about planes is, even if fuel and oil have been drained from them for display, you can never get rid of all the oil. The German plane leaks oil, a drop here, a drop there.

"If it's not leaking oil, that's a bad sign," said Little. The only way to get rid of the oil, he said, would be to take apart the plane and put every part in a cleaning solvent. But that would harm the plane, said Little, leaving metal against metal without oil. Better to just wipe it up.