Memories fly for Delta Gang in Saugus diner

SAUGUS – They call themselves the “Delta Gang,” and they were witnesses to air travel?s golden age when celebrities strolled Logan International Airport?s concourses; everyone dressed up to go to the airport; and working for an airline meant a free ticket to see the world.?You could fly anywhere you wanted,” said John Pastore.The Revere resident and fellow Delta Airlines retirees Michael Palladino, John Shea, Jim Collins and Henry Petersen meet every Thursday, except holidays, at Hammersmith Family Restaurant in Saugus Center. They?re the loud bunch crowded into a booth and talking over one another as they sip coffee.The gang has well over a combined century of employment with Delta and the former Northeast Airlines. Work forged their friendships and pride in the work they did has kept their friendships alive and retirement fun.In the 1960s, and then in the 1970s when Northeast workers went to work for Delta, the airline was run with military efficiency and a strict dress and grooming code.?No matter which department you were in, all the departments were connected and the mission was to get the flight out,” recalled Collins.The Winthrop resident, who worked 33 years for Delta, maintains a Delta Gang website that helps former workers keep track of 240 fellow retirees. The group holds parties in June and December at Kowloon, and Collins credits a group of Saugus retirees with starting the tradition of meeting at Hammersmith.Working for the airlines 40, even 50, years ago meant holding a job with great benefits, including almost unlimited travel privileges that allowed Boston native Palladino to fly to Tahiti on his honeymoon.When work wasn?t the priority, Petersen said a party atmosphere often prevailed with airline workers swapping stories about seeing Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin or the Boston Bruins catching flights from Logan. At the time, few – if any – celebrities owned a private jet.?On any given day, you might meet three famous people,” Collins said.Palladino wanted to work at Logan since the day his grandparents took him out as a boy to Wood Island to watch airliners climb into the skies over Boston. Pastore repeatedly applied for an airline job, even crashing a Christmas party to ask for work.?I got hired but I had to work the next day – Christmas,” he said.The airline heydays were not all glamorous – workers braved Arctic winds blasting across Logan?s runways to haul luggage carts to airliners and maneuver “tugs” equipped with electrical starters underneath planes.The Delta Gang was also on hand when one of the airline?s jets crashed into a Logan seawall in 1973 with 89 lives lost.?They brought the plane parts into our old hangar. When you went in there, you could smell death,” Palladino said.Relatively few of the Delta Gang take to the air these days. It?s not that they don?t like to travel – it?s just that they miss the old days when flying meant something.?It?s become ordinary transportation,” Palladino said.