- We were selling sex!

[LN-MOW]

NY Times

To earn his pay, Mike Mitchel collects boarding passes and helps passengers onto airplanes. At age 56, he lives with his mother, takes a yearly vacation to Las Vegas when the room rates are cheapest, and counts movies and music CD's as extravagances.

"I like to save," Mr. Mitchel said. "I'll pick up a penny."

Mr. Mitchel, though, could readily afford to walk past any dropped change. As one of the 17 remaining active employees who helped start Southwest Airlines 35 years ago, he is rich. Quite rich. A beneficiary of Southwest's profit-sharing program — like all the airline's regular employees — he owns about 50,000 shares of Southwest stock, valued at roughly $800,000. And that is just a quarter of a portfolio that makes Mr. Mitchel a multimillionaire.

When Southwest's zany service and skimpy flight attendant outfits drew national attention, Ms. Force ended up on the February 1974 cover of Esquire magazine, a not altogether happy experience for the graduate of a Baptist college. The photo made her appear shapelier than she was. "They airbrushed," she said. "They didn't tell me they were going to do that."

But it fitted Southwest's image. "We were selling sex," Southwest's current president and one of the original 17, Colleen C. Barrett, said of the early years.