The Moment

29 years ago, a few hundred twenty-somethings, maybe a smattering of 30-somethings and perhaps a 40-something or two migrated west to open the Honolulu Flight Attendant Base for my then airline-employer.  Shortly after the base was established, an announcement came that we would soon be shedding our venerable, traditional beige uniforms, one of the last vestiges of a previously Proud Bird airline, wrent asunder by a corporate robber-baron in bankruptcy proceedings.  The new aubergine uniform was seen as an outward vestige of our company's metamorphosis, its transition into a new reality.

For time immemorial, youthful exuberance has a way of magnifying momentousness.  The proud bird beige had become a symbol of the past, a great past but one whose day had come and gone.  Replacement pieces were nearly impossible to come by.  Individualized touches of "flair" had become de rigueur and it was sometimes difficult to determine if you and a fellow crewmember were actually even wearing the same uniform.  So, when the day came to molt and emerge anew, the young ones of the Honolulu Base led the way in celebration.

A daybreak gathering at Sandy's drew a diverse crowd from the far-flung corners of the Pacific:  early morning arrivals from the "Guam bomb", from Sydney, Auckland, and Manila joined those local comrades free from duty at the beach.  The Honolulu Base was known for "sunrise services".  None was as jubilant, as colorful, as epic as the one captured in this evocative photograph.

FRIENDS, almost 30 years later, are scattered but forever bonded by a momentous tick of the clock of circumstance.