Columbia Falls native pens book on career at Boeing

A Columbia Falls native has penned a fascinating new book on the Boeing company and his career and insights into the company during the 1960s.

John Andrew, the nephew of longtime Columbia Falls former postmaster Teddy Andrew, grew up in Columbia Falls and Cut Bank.

His new book “Boeing Metamorphosis, the launching of the 737 and 747, 1965-1969,” is co-authored with John Frederickson.

Andrew went to high school in Columbia Falls and graduated in 1949. When he was a freshman, he got a gig with former Hungry Horse editor Mel Ruder and carried film for him on many assignments, Andrew, who is now 90, said in a recent interview.

“(Ruder) wanted me to a sports a reporter,” Andrew recalled.

But he had his sights on bigger things than writing about high school sports. In a roundabout fashion, he received a degree in civil engineering from Gonzaga University and later graduated from Harvard Business School.

He found a job at Boeing, applying in person by simply filling out an application. Little did he know at the time that Boeing, based in Seattle, had drained the area of qualified engineers.

“I was prepared to work in hell if it meant a paycheck,” Andrew recalls in the book.

He started out at $2.20 an hour.

Andrew went on to design and engineer one of the largest buildings in the world.

The factory to build the 747 in 1966 would be about 250 million cubic feet. Andrew was featured on the front page of the Seattle Sunday Times with a scale model of the factory, which would be built in Everett.

The newspaper photographer wanted a girl in the picture to jazz things up, Andrew recalled. So he posed with a temporary office worker in a red dress smiling at the mock-up. Her name was Carol Haugen.

“I never saw 18-year-old Carol again,” Andrew noted in the book.

The photo got him into hot water with his wife, too. She was stuck home with their small children, he recalled.

Boeing would build the plant on 760 acres of woods. The first aircraft rolled out off the assembly line a few years later.

It set a Guinness Book of World Records for building volume: 210 million cubic feet.

Andrew has set his sights other exploits since Boeing.

In 2017 he was featured in the Daily Inter Lake as his quest at the time was to ski every developed ski hill in North America.

At the time he had skied about 550 of the 700 hills. He’s still as active as ever.

Andrew’s book is available on Amazon and other booksellers.