Eastern Airlines may not exist any longer, but much remains from the many years that the Miami-based company was in operation. Now Broward College students will have an opportunity to earn service learning credit while archiving the fascinating Eastern Airlines artifacts and information that have been stowed away for years. In a unique partnership made up of the Broward College aviation department, service learning, and archives and special collections, the Eastern Airlines Retirees Association and History Miami, this ambitious project has begun. “It’s gearing up for fall semester,” said Andrew Dutka, Archives and Special Collections Librarian at the University College Library on Broward College’s Central Campus in Davie.
Broward College students began working with Dutka to process the collection last February. They sorted and arranged historic Eastern Airlines publications, operations manuals, photographs, posters, and pilot and stewardess uniforms,
“This is a multi-year project to process the Eastern Airlines Retirees collection,” Dutka explained. “The collection consists of more than 1,000 square-feet of materials and includes both archival resources (photographs, memorabilia, promotional materials, business records) and three-dimensional artifacts including airplane models, uniforms and the chair of World War II flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker.”