When I started in the air cargo business with Seaboard Word Airlines in the 60s, Richard Malkin was already a legend. 
      He used to come into SWA offices at JFK and interview our top brass.
      People like Richard Jackson, our CEO, John Mahoney, and Al Levinson were community figures Richard brought forward in features. 
      Simply put, looking back more than half a century ago, the younger Bill Boesch thought that if Dick ever interviewed him, it would be the mark of having made it in the air cargo industry.

The Air Cargo Genius

      You see, when it came to reporting, thinking ahead, or for that matter reasoning what was happening and what it all meant to a fledgling industry, including what would happen tomorrow, Richard Malkin was the only voice out there.
      Now looking back at what he wrote, thought, and contributed leaves no doubt that our industry was walking with a shepherd of the air cargo form.
      Richard Malkin was by any measure a genius of air cargo.

He Talked To Me

      And then one day in the 70s it happened.  My secretary told me Richard Malkin was on the line. 
      For a moment I didn’t know what to do and thought it might be a mistake. 
      Nervously I picked up my phone and instead of saying hello, as I normally did, I said my name—just in case the call was a mistake.  Richard said he wanted to interview me about how air cargo was doing and discuss in some detail my ideas about the future. 
      I froze again for a second. 
      The future, I thought?
      I was lucky to know what would happen tomorrow. 
      But I said “sure.” 
      He asked me if I would meet him for lunch at the Wings Club in New York City.
      The Wings Club comprised wonderful, comfortable rooms lined with leather chairs and aviation pictures and trophies inside the Biltmore Hotel in Manhattan. Lunch with Dick Malkin—what more could I have dreamed would happen? And me as the story subject.
      I showed up at the Wings Club an hour early just so I wouldn’t be late and waited for Dick in the lounge area outside of the dining room. 
      The pictures on the wall of the past Presidents of the Wings Club and a framed note from Charles Lindbergh added to my apprehension over what the hell I was doing there, and I almost left. 
      But just then, Dick walked in wearing his signature grey suit. 
      He knew my face, which surprised me, and said “Hi, Bill” with a big smile. 
      Immediately I felt at ease. We walked into the dining room together and all the waiters stood at attention and almost saluted him.

Lessons Learned In Word Pictures

Life & Beyond

     Over the years Dick interviewed me many times on the future of air cargo, but that first meeting with the man who witnessed and wrote brilliantly about that first great air cargo movement, the Berlin Airlift, is burned into my memory. 
      Our industry has lost one of its greatest supporters and founders. 
      I can only hope all the people coming up in this great air cargo industry can find the space, time, and sensibility to respect its founders and brilliant thinkers like Dick Malkin.

History Alive

Bill Boesch