Every
year around this time, I struggle to find new words
to offer to our loyal FlyingTypers’ readers.
I am not immune to the warm responses inspired by our
annual Christmas story, and I would be posturing if
I said it doesn’t feel good to know it is so well
received. However, the pressure mounts to say something
new; to not rehash the things you already know; to provide
some meaningful insight into our holiday gathering.
You
know we are a family business in an age when most companies
yearn to proclaim that simply for the feel-good cachet
it affords them. People love a good legacy story. We
just celebrated our 40th anniversary and no, you can’t
put a price on that. In a world where everything has
been commodified, you still can’t buy time or
experience.
My
father, mother, and I—sprinkled with some help
from my siblings—run the gamut of responsibilities
to keep Air Cargo News FlyingTypers current,
interesting, successful, and engaging, and we do it
every hour of the day, every day of the week, 365 days
a year. This is not an exaggeration. I return home for
holidays and it has become routine to ‘take a
meeting’ in the living room with my father, whether
it’s pre-Thanksgiving dinner or post-New Year’s
Day celebrations. We have a drink and warm by the fire,
and I have the bonus of petting a very old, very sweet
dog when these conversations occur, but we are still
working. Time off isn’t just a luxury—it’s
a frivolity. You don’t become an industry leader
lying on the beach.
This
year, I shook my brain like a snow globe to see what
new holiday tradition might flutter to life and reveal
itself as an interesting share. You know about the Santa-decorating
tradition; the pancakes; the sausage; the presents;
the tree; the movies; the pizza parties. What can I
tell you that you don’t already know? For as cloistered
as our family holidays can be—immediate family
only—we routinely open our proverbial doors to
the FlyingTypers community. So what haven't
you heard?
My
father talks about air cargo a lot. He is the most dedicated,
hard working person I know in the air cargo business
aside from my mother. If he isn’t talking about
air cargo, he’s talking about music, or aviation
in general. But air cargo and its people are always
at the forefront of his mind. The air cargo community
is his great concern. And as anyone who has sat down
with him for an interview well knows, once you get him
started it’s best to just get out of his way and
let him go. You learn more that way.
I
am not an aviation historian, and my knowledge of air
cargo barely breaks the surface of what my father knows.
It can be difficult, then, to engage in the conversations
he finds most comfortable. And here is where I tell
you something about our Christmas that you do not know,
and have not heard.
Every year for the past several
years, I have accompanied my parents to St. Luke’s
Episcopal Church in Forest Hills, Queens. I’m
not remotely religious, but as an introvert I enjoy
the quiet, solemn atmosphere of the church, where the
common greeting is a subtle head nod and a slow blink.
I don’t particularly follow the services, either—I
am, admittedly, there for the choir songs, the music,
the ceremony, and the feeling of the environment, and
I have a sneaking suspicion my father is there for the
same reason.
Built
in the 13th century English Gothic style, St. Luke’s
has a high, vaulted ceiling with wood beams that bend
and bow inward, like the hull of a ship flipped upside
down. It’s a light, airy space, filled with rich,
dark wood and cool stone, and in the winter warmed and
lit with dozens of candles, which hold sentry at various
perches around the church, under windows, above aisles,
and lined along golden candelabras.
 My
father began attending St. Luke’s when he first
moved to New York from Chicago at the age of 11. It
was at St. Luke’s that he studied the catechism
for children—every year, he points to the uppermost
peak of the church above the entrance and says, “I
studied in a small room called the narthex, with other
children who were all younger than me.” The beloved
butter cake we consume every year for Christmas began
as a post-church treat for my father. Back then, it
cost him 99 cents and was purchased from a German bakery
on his walk back home.
My
father’s “spiritual guide,” as he
calls him, was a dramatic, energetic man named Reverend
Thomas Blomquist, who once worked as a batboy for the
Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. According
to my father, his confirmation as a member of St. Luke’s
did not result from his understanding of the doctrine,
but rather because “I knew so much about baseball.”
My father was confirmed with holy water drawn from a
clamshell baptismal font that still sits on its pedestal
today. It is so large I would not be surprised to learn
it originally birthed Venus on the shore. In writing
this I learned that Rev. Blumquist had served as a naval
chaplain during World War II; he brought the giant clamshell
from the South Pacific when he returned back home. Fifteen
years old at his baptism, my father was taller than
the reverend, who had to reach up, standing on his toes,
to pour the water over his head.
To
this day, my father claims “baseball and butter
cake” made him “as much a Christian as the
Baby Jesus,” but I think it was more than that.
My father, ever loquacious, always filled with information
he longs to share, grows solemn, respectfully—almost
dutifully—silent when we attend St. Luke’s
on Christmas Eve. Air cargo, the subject about which
we have revolved our lives, retreats like a fog back
out to sea as we moor ourselves to the choir’s
clarion call. Music, my father’s other ever-present
passion, rolls in and permeates our thoughts. We open
our hymnals and sing along, and my father sings, and
I imagine he remembers himself as a young boy learning
about faith, community, and being one with others. I
imagine this is where he learned how to create a space
for the family he would one day make, how to create
a space for the cargo community—where he learned
to share, and listen, and quiet his mind. Every other
day of the year he animates with talk about lithium
batteries, security, historic preservations, and the
wonderful companies with which we’ve formed a
cargo family. At St. Luke’s, for the two hours
we are singing, listening, and clearing our thoughts,
a cleaner, uncomplicated version of my father emerges.
One that once walked himself home after lessons in the
stony narthex above a modest but beautiful church, that
talked baseball with a kind and loving spiritual father,
a boy who stopped at a German bakery for 99-cent butter
cake.
On
Christmas Eve, I share with my father something other
than air cargo. We sit and listen to exquisite voices
rising high to the rafters in harmony, we join our voices
to the stream of sound and let it fill us as it fills
the space. There is nothing quite like voices singing
together on one of the darkest days of winter. It does
something to the mind and body when you give yourself
over to it—if you've ever wanted to feel at one
with those around you, go somewhere you can sing with
people.
We
love you, air cargo, but I cherish the man who comes
home from St. Luke’s without the cargo monkey
on his back. Geoffrey Arend, Patron Saint of Air Cargo
Reportage, inevitably reemerges on the first of the
New Year, but the cargo community should take comfort
in this brief respite. It’s what makes him so
good at being a part of this community—it’s
the spirit that revives his passion for the year.
We
hope you enjoyed this peek into another corner of our
Christmas, and I can only hope to have something new
and interesting to share next year. Until then, FlyingTypers
wishes you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Happy
and Healthy New Year.
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