For Jeff Rapsis, the 50th anniversary on July 31, honoring the final day of operations for Boston-based Northeast Airlines, is personal.
More for him than many others.
He grew up in Nashua intrigued by Northeast Airlines, the company that helped New England fly and explore during the early days of commercial aviation. Concord was a destination.
He loved the logo someone attached along the way: a yellow bird, cartoonish with welcoming eyes. He loved aviation, which is why Rapsis is the executive director of the Aviation Museum in Manchester.
And, more than anything else, this reunion will hit home for Rapsis because his father, Captain John Rapsis, was a pilot for Northeast when he died in a plane crash at Moose Mountain in Lebanon in 1968.
Thirty-nine people died; 10 survived.
Jeff was 4 years old.
“He was trying to land, but he flew too low,” Rapsis said. “The accident was big news.”
Rapsis wants this reunion to be big news as well. He’s bringing back some of the old crew – pilots who flew circa 1950s and ‘60s, before Northeast merged with Delta Airlines 50 years ago, in 1972.
Pilots, some in their 90s, are expected. So are women, called stewardesses back then, who have shown great interest in returning to the Granite State.
“When all the marketing started, it worked because people still remembered,” Rapsis said.
“We’ll have a group of stewardesses, and they’re buying whole tables to see old friends. When else would they see them?”
The reunion costs $75, earmarked to benefit the museum, located at the old Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in Londonderry.
The reunion, held at the Hilton in Manchester, is open to anyone who wants to hear more about this era – when airlines were run by the federal government, the widespread reach of commercial flying was on the rise, giving the industry a glamorous and adventure-filled look, and pilots and flight attendants were admired more than they are today.
There was a buzz about flying, up through the 1960s, Rapsis said. Thanks to Northeast Airlines, Concord residents felt as though they were in on the ground floor of an ever-expanding industry of excitement and wonder, and Rapsis counted on this nostalgic formula to lure alumni to reunite.
It worked.
“It’s the spirit of the airlines,” Rapsis said.
The Yellowbird mascot, source unknown, emerged in the 1960s. Northeast planes, Rapsis said, stood out like pop art, with a yellow tail and wings and a white fuselage.
Yellowbird’s likeness, born in 1966, was shown on the outside of Northeast planes – near the front door and the name of the airline – on a limited basis by the time Delta merged with Northeast in 1972.
By then, though, Yellowbird, its wings spread proudly, had a home on lapels and T-shirts and plane tickets. Plus a spot in local minds, especially among children.
“No one had seen canary yellow and white worldwide,” Rapsis said. “It was startling at the time, like pop art from the ’60s, and that made them a memorable company for that time.”
Northeast began in 1933 and focused on expanding travel, offering passengers a bigger world after World War II, especially when the airline grew, later featuring flights to Florida, Chicago, Los Angeles and the Caribbean.
Yet Concord residents old enough to remember will always think of Northeast Airlines and Yellowbird as their own, local and nostalgic.
And nostalgia will fill the air at the Hilton on July 31. Lynda Valdez will be the special guest, hired by Northeast Airlines in 1969 as a stewardess and still active for Delta, 53 years later, as a flight attendant.
Artifacts related to another plane crash in 1954 in Berlin will be displayed. And people who recall the crash of Flight 946 in 1968 are coming back.
Some might remember the Yellowbird jingle’s lyrics from the ’60s: “Yellowbird, our service is No. 1. Yellowbird, we make your vacation fun.
They’ll remember Rapsis’ dad, too.
“I never really knew him, but 50 years later I’m meeting all these people who knew him,” Rapsis said.
“I talk to people who knew my dad, and when they hear my last name, they ask if I’m his son.”