Against the Wind - National Air Traffic Controllers Association

her husband was still living, Thomas quit the agency
in May 1985. But she wanted to remain active in the
movement. A month later, she began working out of
her home for AFGE and Thornton, whom she knew
casually from PATCO days.
Chuck Thomas was a handy carpenter and
crafted an office for his wife in a spare bedroom.
She quickly plastered the walls with organizational
charts, contact names at facilities,
travel plans, and signature tallies, which
grew slowly with the fragmented organizing
effort. As an outsider, one of her biggest
challenges was spreading the word to the
rank and file on the inside.
“Not too many people were willing to
go out on a limb and post stuff on the bulletin
board,” Thomas recalls. “It wasn’t readily
accepted in a lot of places. I give a lot of credit to
the people who were actively campaigning.”
Even her affable personality couldn’t break
through the ice at first in the labor-wary South. During
a swing through Florida with Bill Riley, the two
camped out for a day in the back of a franchise steakhouse,
yet spoke to a mere ten controllers from nearby
Jacksonville Center. Only two showed up to hear
their pitch in Orlando.
“I had a lot of tough meetings,” Thomas says. “A
lot of people hung up on me.”
More organizing activity occurred west of the
1985
7
Mar.
Mississippi River.
Gary Molen, a plain-spoken veteran at Salt
Lake Center, was one of many who picked up the
torch. His penchant for boots and wide belt buckles,
reminiscent of his Montana upbringing,
earned him a reputation
as a cowboy with a headset.
After joining the FAA
in 1968, Molen suffered
through a year of humidity
and crowds in Houston
while working at the center
before eagerly transferring
to a small en route center
back in his hometown of
Great Falls.
The center handled
traffic all across Montana east to
Fargo, North Dakota, and south to
Sheridan, Wyoming. When it closed in
1976 and operations were transferred to Minneapolis
and Salt Lake centers, Molen moved to Utah.
Growing up with a father who worked as a
union switchman and brakeman for the Great Northern
Railway, Molen understood the value of labor organizations.
He joined PATCO while still training in
Great Falls, but had to leave the bargaining unit once
he became a classroom instructor. When the strike
hit, Molen wrestled over his own good fortune and
Howie Barte presents a graphic containing a control tower and radar
sweep bearing the letters AATCC as the proposed logo for the group
at an organizing meeting in Boston. AATCC declines to adopt the logo,
Chapter 3: A Long and Winding Road
61
Gary Molen: During the 1970s, he worked
at an en route center in his hometown of
Great Falls, Montana. Molen was NATCA’s
Northwest Mountain regional rep from
1985 to 1993. / Courtesy of Howie Barte
which Barte and controller Kim Kochis collaborated on, due to concerns
that it favors terminal controllers. However, Barte uses it for organizing
efforts in New England.