Wayne R. Howe Oral History Interview
Part Two
So it was very much a working uniform?
It as a working uniform, except in those days we had no working uniform such as you has now. In other words, we had a good uniform and then we didn’t have anything. And there wasn’t anything, as I recall, we might have had a ski cap, we must have had a ski cap. But we had no real wintertime uniform and we had no real work uniform except straight Levis.
Do you think the stricter uniform standards may have something to do with the bureaucracy expanding so that then it becomes much more a military…?
I imagine you’re right Steve, on that part of it. I hadn’t really thought of it that way. But I think you’re probably right.
Because the sixties had that tremendous explosion in units.
That’s right, and I don’t recall whether the stricter uniform regulations came from the top or whether they worked up from the middle part. I suspect that Frank Kowski may have had something to do with it because he was quite active, of course, at the training center. And he was also very much interested in uniforms. So I think maybe he had something to do with it. Although I’m not trying to lay blame on him, that’s just my feeling that he may have had something to do with it. And I’m not saying it’s all bad. Some of the uniform was not, it wasn’t suited. I know it was when the women’s uniform was just starting in. And boy, some of the fights and arguments we had. Because, in all fairness to the men, they obviously didn’t know what a woman wanted in a uniform, but we couldn’t get a women to say what she wanted in a uniform either. So they didn’t know whether they wanted “airline hostess” uniforms or bright color, or what they wanted. It always seemed like they’d turn around and blame us for trying to put them into a uniform which they didn’t want, so it got to be quite a hassle for a while. But I think that we have turned out now a pretty good looking uniform, which of course is a continuation of what we had in 1946 and 1947.
