Renowned aviation writer crafts Alaska Airlines' history: 'character & characters' chronicles rise of state's main airline.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Alaska Airlines turned 75 last year, and to ensure the accuracy of its history in the state, a book was commissioned. But not just anyone would do, it had to be the top aviation writer in the country--one whose desire to fly was funneled into a journalism career at an early age.

"I was christened Jerome Roberts Serling, and I think I decided at the age of 4 that it was the lousiest name I had ever heard, he said. "I would be a sissy the rest of my life, so somewhere along the line I switched it. In Hebrew Jerome means 'nerd.'"

Former Alaska Airlines press chief Lou Canselmi, who accompanied Serling on the book tour, remarked that when he is with Serling, he never knows if it was a joke or the truth. "Wit or truth," Serling lobbed back.

Born in 1918, at 90 years old, he's spry and wiry with an impish grin and a quick tongue.

On Serling's 10th birthday, his father bought him a portable typewriter and he decided he wanted to be newspaperman. "It was pretty bad stuff then," he said. Journalism opened the world to him and helped him do the things that he would not of otherwise been able to do.

"I had an inferiority complex the size of a 747 fuselage, I was short, horribly near-sighted and wore these thick tortoise-shell glasses, and I had the general physique of an ant," Serling said. "And my heroes from boyhood were airline pilots and great athletes -Jack Dempsey and Red Grange and the air mail pilots--and these were guys who I knew I could never, never achieve what they did. And I guess at a very early age, I decided if I couldn't be like them I'd write about them."

His first newspaper job in 1937--which he mentioned was one year after the DC3 first came into service--was at the Binghamton Press, his hometown newspaper in New York state.

A small stature runs in his family as does huge writing talent. His brother, Rod, a screenwriter, was the host for many years of the classic 1950s to 1960s sci-fi TV series "The Twilight Zone."

Serling eventually specialized in aviation reporting and then in 1966, he left the security of his job as aviation editor with United Press International (UPI) and began to freelance.

He soon became known as an expert in the field and over the years, wrote the histories of North Central Airlines (now part of Northwest Airlines), TWA, Continental, Eastern, Western and American Airlines. He also wrote of the most important component of the airline business--the air planes themselves when he wrote...