From the Hangars

Delta Stories: 1930s Customer Service

Aug 08, 2014

Celebrating 85 years of Delta passenger service Enjoy this great story from those early days.

Barbara Woolman Prestondaughter of C. E. Woolman, Delta’ s principal founder and first CEO, described her father bringing stranded passengers home with him in Monroe, Louisiana. She is shown below (front left) with her sister Martha and mother Helen Woolman (back right) beside a Travel Air plane in 1929 or 1930.


She recalled: “All of a sudden he [C. E. Woolman] would call Mother and have four people he was bringing home for lunch because they’d had a mechanical [delay with the aircraft] and they were on the flight, so he just brought them home for lunch.

And Mother would say, ‘Barbara, run out in the yard and pull us some corn.’  And I’d go pull about 36 ears of corn and bring them in, and she’d drop them in the water, and lunch was corn and bread and butter and coffee.  And that was what we had to offer, and that’s what the airline passengers got when they were delayed.

And sometimes I’d wake up on a cot in the hall, and there would be a passenger that had gotten put off overnight that Daddy had brought home and put in my bed.”

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  1. Herbie Ryland | Aug 09, 2014

    The Woolman's lived at xxxx North Third St and also at xxx Glenmar St in Monroe, Louisiana. Both of these homes are still here and appear to be in very good condition. My Father, Herbie B Ryland, Sr. owned the Credit Bureau of Monroe in 1928 and Mr C E Woolman first appeared in our files on April 17, 1929.

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