BOB HAMMARLEY
PILOT
DEN



With regret, the GONE WEST of F/O Robert Hammerly (need info)
-FARPA Newsletter
(5/4/05)

US Airways Employee Retirements - July 2003
Robert Hammarley,  Metrojet Captain,  BWI
-http://www.justplanenews.com/retirementsjuly2003.html
(7/4/05)

ROBERT J HAMMARLEY 	
Born 20 Nov 1942	
Died 18 Apr 2005 
Age 62
At 33040 (Key West, Monroe, FL)	
SSN issued in Illinois
-SSDI
(7/5/05)

Email to Ace Avakian & Billy Walker
I've been tracking Bob and think I have found info on him.
Did he go with US Airways after FL and did he get involved as an ALPA officer?
I just read a history of ALPA which mentions a former FL pilot named Hammarley being MEC Chairman at US Airways.
-Jake Lamkins
(7/5/05)

Bob did a lot of project stuff for Ed O'Neil after coming with FAL.  He flew the line some as well.  
After FAL he went, I think, with Piedmont which ended up part of USAir then USAirways.  
He was on their MEC. Later he became the Executive Administrator under Randy Babbitt's ALPA presidency.  
Randy was the Executive Administrator under Hank Duffy.  Bob Williams was our Executive Administrator.  
I believe the Frontier pilot group was the first to implement that position within the MEC structure.  
Later other MEC's did the same.  After seeing Williams effectiveness, I am surprised we didn't think of doing that earlier.
According to Randy Babbitt, Bob Hammerly did an excellent job as the National ALPA E.A.  He was very pleasant to be around.  
I worked with Bob on many occasions and thought a lot of him.
Bob retired to Florida.  Later, I heard he was ill, but was surprised and saddened to hear of his "Flight West."  
I have not yet learned of the circumstances surrounding his demise.  
-Billy Walker
(7/5/05)

Here is an excerpt about Bob from the ALPA history FLYING THE LINE, VOLUME II, page 261-263, by George E. Hopkins.
It's from a section dealing with the 1990 ALPA President election.
 
 USAir was the Oakland of airlines. Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland: ”There is no ‘there’ there.” 
USAIr had grown so fast and was such an amalgam of previous airlines that it had no discernible identity of its own. 
USAir pilots habitually thought of themselves as old Piedmont, or old Pacific Southwest (PSA), or old Allegheny. 
Its leaders—Roger Hall (not the Roger Hall, but a USAir pilot of the same name), Joe Kernan, John Kretsinger, Chip Mull, 
and Bob Hammarley had agreed that to establish a sense of internal identity they ought not to be seen as puppets. 
In the days preceding the election, they had agreed that as an airline made up entirely of refugees and former local service carriers, 
their best interests would be served by voting for Kernan through two full ballots. 
On the third ballot, USAir would add its votes to the total for either Hall or Babbitt and determine the victor.
The BOD members assumed that USAir would not vote by unit rule on the third ballot and would spread its votes. 
In any case, USAir would become a player of the first rank.

 But, as we have said, a secret agenda existed. Bob Hammarley, like so many other USAir pilots, was a deregulation refugee. 
As a former Frontier pilot, Hammarley could be reasonably expected to oppose Roger Hall. 
As we have seen, Frontier’s demise coincided with the end of the 1985 United strike. 
Dick Ferris had made what was almost certainly a spurious offer to absorb Frontier if he could do so with a B-scale. 
Having just taken a strike on this very issue, United’s Roger Hall could not possibly accede to Ferris’s machinations, 
which amounted to a backdoor plot to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. 
So Frontier went bankrupt, and Bob Hammarley like hundreds of pilots from other airlines, notably Braniff, 
found new homes at the bottom of the seniority list of rapidly expanding USAir.  
But USAir’s sizable former Frontier contingent always believed, perhaps unfairly, that United’s pilots should have saved them.

 Hammarley’s position as USAir’s MEC chairman left him in an ideal position to influence his amorphous airline.
He honestly believed Babbitt was the better choice, but he agreed that, at first, USAir pilots should park their votes with Joe Keman. 
But if Babbitt could just stay alive through two ballots, Hammarley had a surprise up his sleeve. 
He had persuaded the USAir MEC to go for Babbitt by unit rule, which would certainly clinch his victory on the third ballot.
 
 At the time Broderick spoke to Brouillette, the first ballot was being counted and a lengthy delay was in progress. 
At that point, Hall had a bare majority of 50.1 percent. Randy Babbitt, listening to the results on an open mike in his room, 
actually began making his way to the convention floor to make his concession speech. 
But by the ancient parliamentary practice to which ALPA had long adhered, 
until a vote was officially announced from the rostrum, any member could change his vote. 
Brouillette’s piddling 43 votes pulled Roger Hall infinitesimally below 50 percent, 
so a second ballot would be necessary. Babbitt had reached the door of the convention hail before being turned around and sent back to his room.

 On the second ballot, Hall lost a few votes while the USAir pilots stayed firmly with Joe Kernan. 
Then, on the third ballot, Bob Hammarley sprang his surprise, and it was all over — Babbitt would be ALPA's new President.

-Jake Lamkins
(7/5/05)

I knew of Bob's death.  He was hired in the first class of Frontier pilots at US Air in October, 1986.
He got initially involved with ALPA over there through an ad hoc committee called the B=scale committee.
He was later the MEC chairman at the combined Piedmont/US Air/PSA as a compromise leader that had no history with any of those airlines.  
He was an excellent leader because he was a pragmatist...and a likeable one at that. 
He helped Babbitt get elected and they got along well so Randy hired Bob to be his Admin. Assist.
He stayed at my house in Denver for the 2nd or 3rd reunion at Frontier, before I moved east.  
He had already moved, with Gail, (she died of cancer 3 years ago), to Pittsburgh.  
I went to lunch with him once in DC when he lived part time in Georgetown and part time in Key West.  
I don't know for sure, but I heard that he died from emphysema.
-Rich Schwartz
(7/7/05)