THE INTERVIEW: AL TOPPING! (PART 1 OF 3)

___

I first became aware of Al Topping in 1994 through his appearance in the film, "Death of An American Dream: The Pan Am Story". An outstanding video documentary that received a prestigious award, News Reporter Rob Fuller spoke on camera with Al at Miami International Airport. Al's final position with Pan American World Airways was Vice President of Corporate Communications--a position he held only two weeks before Pan Am's demise on December 3, 1991--a position that was synonymous with another dear friend of mine--Jeff Kriendler. Over and over I played the one hour documentary, listening to Al's account of the day Pan Am's Plan of Reorganization was withdrawn before Judge Cornelius Blackshear in the US Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York. I seemed to hang on every word Al spoke to Rob Fuller about terrorism and commercial aviation--about why the U.S. government failed to bail out Pan Am as they had Chrysler and Lockheed. And I was amazed at the wisdom and maturity in Al's words that I seemed unable to pull together for my own personal outrage at how an American Institution as huge as Pan Am could be allowed--in the words of Pan Am's last Clipper Pilot, Captain Mark Pyle "to fall into the abyss". There was something unique about Al Topping. Watching that video, I instinctively knew that this was a great leader, and a great man whose words were unmistakably forged by being "in the trenches" --just as Jeff Kriendler had been (we'll hear from Jeff in December here on "THE INTERVIEW"). These were no ordinary men. Destiny had been placed on their shoulders. In Al's case, through that final night at Miami International as he walked among scores of large commercial jet aircraft parked on the tarmac with the large blue Bodine style "billboard sized" letters: "PAN AM" emblazoned on the fuselages was surreal. Today, this is still an almost unimaginable scene for me to absorb. For leaders like Al and Jeff, "intestinal fortitude" met with a sobering reality. But long before this catastrophe, there was a story of Vietnam--a war one of my brothers served in. A nightmare. I was a little kid when my brother was drafted. But I remember him opening his Draft Notice. My parents went through hell for nearly two years. My brother--by the Grace of God--was one of the lucky soldiers who returned home alive. Five years later, Al Topping---amazingly---was "promoted" as Station Manager of Pan Am's operations in Saigon. A tall, handsome and highly competent man who grew to understand the Vietnamese culture, this interview is about the role Al played in the final days of Vietnam that is now legendary worldwide. I am privileged today to call Al a dear friend. Who would have imagined? But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

_____

By April 1975, US troops engaged in the Vietnam War had dwindled from a peak of 500,000 to 25,000. North Vietnamese Forces began to take over provinces without firing a single shot. When it became apparent that Saigon would fall to the communists, one man organized a daring feat to evacuate Pan American World Airways personnel and their families. That man is Al Topping, then Pan Am's Station Manager in Saigon. Topping and the lives of 463 people (along with hundreds of orphans) changed forever on April 24, 1975. His true life story was later made into an NBC TV movie entitled Last Flight Out (not to be confused with the 2004 movie of the same name) starring James Earl Jones as Al Topping and featuring Barry Corbin with the late Richard Crenna. The role of South Vietnamese Pan Am Ramp Supervisor Nguyen Van Luc (dubbed 'Pham Van Minh' in the movie) was played by Dr. Haing S. Ngor, M.D., a Cambodian who won the 1985 Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Killing Fields. Haing Ngor was senselessly murdered in Los Angeles in February 1986. Thanks largely to Jeff Kriendler and my membership (beginning in 1992) with The Pan Am Historical Foundation (Listed at the right hand margin near the lower portion of this BLOG page) I was able to interview Al Topping and finally meet him in Washington, D.C. last year during three days commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Pan Am's "Last Flight Out" of Vietnam. The Vietnamese friends I made were lovely people and for this author, the entire weekend was a true Honor. Here is my interview with Al Topping.

_____

MM: Tell us about your career at Pan Am.

AT: (smiling) Oh, man that is a story! I worked at United Airlines and that's where I started out in the airline industry in 1964, as a ticket agent at JFK Airport. One day we had some problems getting my uniform out of the dry cleaners. So, I went to work with my suit instead of my uniform. My supervisor said, "Where is your uniform?" I said, "I had a little trouble and I couldn't get my uniform out of the cleaners today". He said, "I like you in that suit". So, right there I got promoted to handling VIP's and from that moment on I began meeting a lot of people simply because I was no longer just selling tickets. And I started to meet some frequent travelers with Pan Am.

_____

One day I was helping a Pan Am Executive and he told me, "If you ever decide to leave United, give me a call", and he gave me his card. After five years at United I wanted to be a sales rep downtown. But at that particular time they didn't want to hire a black sales rep. Son I decided to call Pan Am and they gave me the job I always wanted, They hired me in a fast-track sales management training sales program, and after about three years they said, "We're going to transfer you to our sales office in San Francisco". At the time I said, "Are you kidding?" I had visions of Cleveland or Buffalo. But this was like going to Heaven! So, after a couple of years I was promoted to telephone sales manager. It was a challenging job in charge of 150 people in reservations.

_____

Then Pan Am began to go through one of their many restructurings, and they decided to go with a one-man concept of a 'Mr. Pan Am', so to speak at each location with sales, service and airport director all folded into one person. That was in 1972. And in all of my evaluations with Pan Am, I always put down that I wanted to be a Station Manager. So, my boss called me in one day and said there's a possibility of an opening coming available in the Pacific. When he said that, I was thinking maybe Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan. To cut to the chase, he said, "You could be our Station Manager in Vietnam". And my immediate response was, "No thank you!" The war was going on and Vietnam did not turn me on. So, he said, "Before you say no, why don't you go out there and take a look around?" So, I did and as we drew closer to the coastline of Vietnam, I was glued to the window like a kid, and I saw remnants of the war. But after spending about three days walking around, I saw that there were a lot of people from the United States, and Pan Am was operating a lot of civilian and cargo flights in and out of the country, so I accepted the assignment.

_____

MM: It's hard for me to imagine an American living safely in Vietnam at that time?

_____

AT: Back home, you would see and hear stories on the television about people flipping grenades into houses and stores and sidewalk cafe's. As a matter of fact, my first night in Vietnam, I was standing on the top of The Palace Hotel at the rooftop bar restaurant about dusk. And all of a sudden I started hearing a series of giant explosions in the distance with flashes of light as we're sitting there having a Gin and Tonic--and it just became so normal to hear every single night. Saigon itself was a bustling place. Sometimes I felt very secure. I had a car and a driver that the company provided. Traffic there was horrific. I'd say 90 percent of the traffic was Honda motorbikes, and I'm in a four-door Chevrolet Impala. At traffic lights, you're surrounded on all sides by these people looking in the car and you wonder, 'Who are all these people? Are they Vietcong?' Fortunately, nothing ever happened.

_____

Directly across the street from our house was the Vice President of Vietnam, and he had towers with gunmen at each corner of the rooftop. Then, on the other side of our house was the President of Air Vietnam, directly across the street from the U.S. Embassy. So, I felt relatively safe.

_____

MM: Ed Trippe (son of Pan Am's visionary founder Juan Trippe) told me that outside of JFK, Tan Son Nhut was the second-busiest airport in the world.

____

AT: Ed Trippe was absolutely correct. But by the time I arrived, the war was winding down significantly. We did have the R&R (Rest and Relaxation) flights carrying troops from Saigon to the Philippines, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Malaysia, Hawaii and Australia. In addition, we had scheduled flights and I got there in December 1972. There was a lot of pressure in this country for us to get out of Vietnam. Dr. Henry Kissinger finally reached an agreement at the Paris peace talks that all of the US troops had to be out of the country by February 1975. I can recall, by the way, the North Vietnamese literally checking our men off the lists as they would leave. At that point the peace agreement was signed and the war was basically over. Bit of course it really wasn't.

_____

MM: When did you first become concerned that Saigon would fall to communist forces?

_____

AT: In February 1975. That's when the pressure was really stepped up against the United States to exit the country and to reduce the amount of aid coming in. The South Vietnamese felt that they could not adequately defend the country without the same level of aid and so they started pulling back. As they pulled back, the North Vietnamese moved in. There was no resistance. As the weeks passed, province after province was falling and there were no shots being fired. This trend really concerned me. I had no experience in evacuation planning. It suddenly became obvious to me and to everyone that the end was literally around the corner. Our employees were getting concerned about what I was doing to help them out. I started communicating with our people back in New York. The most difficult part of this was although the country was falling, the South Vietnamese government was still in charge and we could not leave the country. So, I had 61 employees and their families. My challenge was, 'How do I effectively evacuate them with a workable plan without endangering their lives?'

_____

It all came to a head in early April, when a South Vietnamese pilot who was sympathetic to the war because his father was killed, took an F-5 fighter jet and tried to bomb the South Vietnamese President' home. That plane flew about five hundred feet over our ticket office which was filled with people at the time, People were screaming and running out into the streets. That hit the AP (Associated Press) wires...Saigon was under attack. But I was able to determine that this was an isolated incident. Nevertheless, I had to convince our people in New York (at Pan Am's Headquarters at 200 Park Avenue) not to cancel an incoming flight, because I had people with tickets waiting to get out.

_____

[Tomorrow, In Part 2: Al explains the tragic crash of a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy carrying orphans to the United States. In April 2005, I met one of the orphans at the 30th Anniversary of the "Last Flight Out" held in Washington, D.C.]