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Why?

Mike Schneider

    Connor “Red” Murphy and I had worked at the center together about six years before he was promoted and became my crew chief. Prior to that we had worked fairly close for five of those years. He was 14 years older than me, a nice guy. I was happy for him, and saw no problem with him being my supervisor.
    While working as an air traffic controller has its hectic periods as all airlines attempt to get their planes to major airports at the same time so people can make connections, once they do and take off again, those busy rushes are often followed by hours of exceedingly slow periods.
    That’s when you get to know the people you work with, often better than you know your own family members. You learn their strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, problems, desires, goals—just about everything but their most closely guarded secrets, and sometimes even those.
    A devout, old school, Roman Catholic who attended Catholic schools from first grade through high school and a year at Notre Dame, and who believed the church should have held onto Latin following the Second Vatican Council, Red had two top priorities in his life, his faith and his family—wife Louise, and their three daughters, Willa, Mary, and Anna.
    Originally from Michigan, he also liked to talk about the Detroit Lions, Tigers, Red Wings, and Pistons, plus the Michigan Wolverines. I was Cleveland Indians, Browns, Cavaliers, Crusaders, and the Ohio State Buckeyes. We enjoyed friendly banter back and forth during those teams’ seasons. No matter how badly our favorite teams did, we always respected each other’s feelings, didn’t rub it in.
    With him being older his kids were also older. My oldest was in third grade when Red was promoted, while he had two in college, and Willa, who had just graduated from Miami of Ohio, moved to southern California and landed a beginning job in the movie industry. For a while she was all he wanted to talk about—the late model Mustang she purchased, her apartment in Compton, her work as an assistant producer.
    “Actually, an assistant to an assistant producer,” he said, “But I know someday she’ll be running the place.”
    The first six months he was my supervisor everything went smoothly. As was the custom there, he approved any and all annual leave I requested, including as little as an hour at the beginning or end of a shift, or even in the middle. During slow periods he’d sit with us at the sector and shoot the breeze about sports, current events, the latest fad items people were buying—all the normal stuff.
    He gave me a good rating that continued an upward trend with most categories being marked ‘exceeds,’ or ‘far exceeds,’ requirements, adding two to the far exceeds list, setting the ground work to give me a quality-within-grade increase the following year.
    Then everything turned to shit.
    He no longer sat and talked with us, still approved leave but often grumbled about it, stayed at the desk, or withdrew upstairs to the supervisors’ office as much as possible.
    And I became his target.
    During crew meetings he’d single me out, complaining about this or that thing I might have done, always petty things that others also did but he always used me as his example. Things like taking too long a break. There was never an official time limit but some people took advantage, would stay in the TV room for an entire half of a football game, or sometimes for the whole game, while I was generally back in about 20 minutes, though occasionally longer when talking with a fellow controller about something that didn’t feel right walking out in the middle of, like a parent having died, or a wife suspected of being unfaithful.
    At rating time he saddled me with one that was totally opposite the first one. No more ‘far exceeds,’ only one ‘exceeds,’ and all the rest just ‘meets’ requirements. It was so bad, and blatantly undeserved, that when I went to the union and we had a meeting with Red, his boss, the union rep, and myself, after hearing the story his boss said to him, “Tear that thing up and start over.”
    At first I thought he had changed because the union had begun mimeographing a monthly newsletter and I was one of the writers. But there was another writer on the crew and Red didn’t mess with him. Then I thought it might have been that I was divorcing my wife of 10 years to marry my first girlfriend. After all, he was a rabid Catholic and 45 years ago the church still looked upon divorce and remarriage as a huge no-no. However, a few months later when another crew member filed for divorce to marry a woman he had recently met, he still received a good rating, and didn’t get the jabs and snide remarks that were always launched toward me.
    Meanwhile, for anything to do with family, Red would bend over backwards to help. When my young son was in the hospital for 17 days with what was probably Guillain-Barre Syndrome, he allowed me all the time I needed to visit him each day, and a couple times didn’t even charge me leave for it. Also, when my eight year old daughter, who had never flown, thought an airplane ride would be pretty cool, he pulled all the strings to arrange and approve a twenty minute United Airlines flight from Cleveland to Detroit for us, and gave me the whole day off. To align with the rules of the fam trip program you were supposed to fly at least two hours for a full day off. But, as I said, family was one of his priorities.
    It was like Jeckyll and Hyde.
    I put up with it until one time when the electricity went out in Oberlin in the middle of the night for a half hour and about 10 of us who lived in Oberlin were up to an hour late getting to work. I lived close, had the distinction of being the first one in, only 15 minutes late. And the only employee who received a letter of reprimand for it. Again I went to the union, the letter was withdrawn.
    But that made it clear to me he was setting things in line to be able to fire me so I requested a crew change, got it, and life returned to normal.
    Five years later I had to leave the FAA when a medication I required, and still require, conflicted with the government’s Class II Flight Physical standards.
    I never did figure out why Red had changed so radically, thought about it a lot in the beginning, less and less as time passed. I’m guessing it hadn’t crossed my mind for at least the past 15 years, maybe even longer.
    Then one morning last summer I picked up the newspaper, opened the local section to the obituaries and there was the reason, plain as day. Or at least what I think was the reason.
    Red’s wife, who was in her 80s, had died after 60+ years of marriage. Red and his three kids were listed as survivors, but now instead of Mary, Anna, and Willa they were Mary, Anna, and William!
    The way I have it doped out, shortly after he was promoted, which pretty much coincided with Willa’s move to California, Red and his wife must have discovered, or she told them, she was living as a man. His religion, morals, and indeed most of society, could not tolerate such radical behavior in the mid-1970s. I believe he needed to vent his anger, frustration, and probably feelings of being a completely failed parent, toward someone and my divorce, coupled with my monthly articles in the union newsletter that were critical of supervision and management, likely made me the logical choice.
    The obit said William lives in Tennessee now so I googled him. He owns a production company and teaches courses related to movie making at a major university. He and his wife have three children, all grown.
    Over the years I’ve seen several obituaries from which gay children, alive or dead, have been purposely omitted. Because William was included in his mother’s, I’m assuming Red has accepted his son for the man he is, and now that I know, wish Red, his children, and grandchildren all the best.

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