=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2002/04/20/BA83660.DTL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Saturday, April 20, 2002 (SF Chronicle) Winged wonders/Exhibit features airline memorabilia Suzanne Herel, Chronicle Staff Writer There was a time when some airline stewardesses wore hot-pink miniskirts with orange go-go boots, looking more like "Austin Powers" fembots than servers in the sky. But serve they did -- tasty meals on china plates with real silverware. Nowadays, you can't even get silverware past airport security -- and please don't call the ladies stewardesses. The half-century of subtle shifts that reshaped commercial aviation from white-glove event to white-bread affair has been recorded in an exhibit opening today at the San Mateo County History Museum in Redwood City. It's a quirky assembly of swizzle sticks, souvenirs and ephemera collect= ed by the late John Hickey, a Hillsborough resident who became enamored of the airline industry after serving as a bombardier and navigator in World War II. When Hickey died in 1990 at age 70, his wife donated his collection to t= he San Mateo County Historical Association, which for the first time is presenting it in full to correspond with the 75th anniversary of San Francisco International Airport. In 1946, as an American Airlines ground employee in Chicago -- health problems disqualified him from a pilot's job -- Hickey began keeping the little things passed out on flights, said his daughter, Liz Keating, 52, of Denver. He met his wife on the job -- Bettie was too tall to be a flight attenda= nt - - and in 1959 the couple moved to the Bay Area, where Hickey filled their guest bedroom with his collection. He and two fellow enthusiasts formed the San Francisco Bay Area Airline Historical Society, and Hickey joined the International Swizzle Stick Association. When the airline wanted to transfer Hickey to New York, he declined and instead opened a food packaging design business -- always keeping an office with a view of an SFO runway. Flying frequently on business, he got to know the regular flight crews, who caught his fever and began searching for things that he didn't have. The treasure hunt, as Keating described her dad's hobby, became a way for her family to communicate with a man who retained the stoicism of his Boston upbringing. "My dad wasn't a demonstrative person, and that was kind of a way we all participated in his life," said Keating. Her mother died in 1998, and her sister, Maggie Bullen, 48, now lives in Salt Lake City. One year, Keating spent months needlepointing 25 airline logos onto a pillow for a Christmas gift for her father; one of Hickey's sisters commissioned an airline logo in stained glass. The items on display in the John Armstrong Hickey Collection of Airline Memorabilia range from swizzle sticks topped with exotic animals to pilots' wings to posters of a Pacific Southwest Airlines stewardesses proclaiming, "Flying is beautiful." "They had the shortest skirts in the airline industry," noted Mitch Postel, executive director of the San Mateo County Historical Association, which runs the museum. Many of these items are of the type that haven't been sky high for years. Like the sign reading, "Smoking permitted in back of these seats," Waterford glasses from the Concorde and place cards. Postel invited retired United Airlines pilot Walt Ramseur of Millbrae to help identify some of Hickey's pieces, such as the models of planes converted from bombers and cargo crafts. In viewing a collage including frequent-flier promotions, Ramseur was reminded of a short-lived gimmick in which United wooed businessmen with an offer to fly wives for free. "They followed that up with a thank-you letter," said Ramseur, a pilot from 1952 to 1991. "Well, some wives got hold of the letter who had not been on the trip. That led to some serious questioning, and United dropped the program." That was before deregulation, which came in 1978, when airlines competed on service, meals and comfort -- not price. It was a time when women dressed for the flight in heels and gloves, as = if they were going to a fancy restaurant, Postel said. "And who knows? You may be sitting next to Joe DiMaggio or a movie star," he said. "And when you were on the plane, that's the way you were treated." The intent of the exhibit, Postel said, is to show that flying was a different cultural phenomenon in decades gone by. "It was part of your vacation experience," he said. "You were on an adventure when you got on a plane in those days." Exhibit details The John Armstrong Hickey Collection of Airline Memorabilia will be on display for six months at the San Mateo County History Museum, 777 Hamilton St. , Redwood City. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day but Monday, and admission is $2. More information on the exhibit can be found at www.hickeyfamilyfoundation.org/airlinememorabilia. E-mail Suzanne Herel at sherel@sfchronicle.com.=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle