And Away We Went: Sixty Incredible Years in the Travel Agency Business

By Larry Austin

Larry Austin ran a successful travel business for sixty years, and travel of any kind tends to go hand in hand with adventure. In his true to life memoir, Austin relives some of the more colorful events of his career. Lucky for him, he had his wife, Eileen, at his side, to keep him just this side of sanity.

There was the time a truck driver, on his way to deliver luggage to important clients, ended up getting drunk at lunch and arrested in Arizona. Or the time Larry watched a man get beat up at the Breakers Golf Course in Florida while playing golf with American Airlines Executives. Or the time when a cat decided to throw up all over a clients food tray on a fancy flight.

Larry also used his connections as a travel agent to rescue two thousand Grumman employees from Iran when war broke out in 1979. He received a $250,000 grant from Hillary Clinton for the Long Island Philharmonic by just asking. Larrys first granddaughter was born as he boarded a flight home from St. Louis. Whatever the circumstance, Larry has enjoyed the ride, and you will, too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496902665

Larry Austin

Larry Austin has been in the travel business for over sixty years. He has been honored with the Ernst & Young Lifetime Achievement Award, the LIA Harry Chapin Humanitarian Award, and the LIA Lifetime Achievement Award. He has three sons and ten grandchildren. He currently resides in New York.

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© 2014 Larry Austin. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/09/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0267-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0265-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-0266-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014906187

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Credits

In The Beginning… .

Who Knew We Needed An Airline Appointment?

In The Early Years, Eileen And I Escorted Some Of The Groups

Want To Hear About One Of The Nicest Trips We Ever Took?

One Of Our Favorite Vacation Islands- Jamaica

Back To Jamaica-On Our Own

Travel Agents Have Many Headaches-And Pleasures

Letters From Clients Touched Me Greatly

We Found A Beautiful, Wonderful Hideaway In Mexico – But Don’t Know If It’s Still There!

Some Trips Are Hard To Believe

Please Don’t Break Your Leg On Your Vacation

A Sentimental Return To Bermuda – And A Scare

How We Picked A Hotel In Athens For An Asta Convention

Qns—In Unity There Is Strength—Usually!

12 Years And Growing

A Typical Work Week

Our Group Department Had Some Great Stories

Madrid, With A Surprise Ending

Expo In Montreal Caused A Lot Of Problems

Our Fabulous Far East Trip

The Blizzard Of 1978

Our Very First Cruise—We Loved It

A Fightening Evening At The New York Hilton

The Rescue Of 2000 Grumman Employees From Iran

A Special Evening With Special Friends

Meow

Arnold, Please Don’t Break Down The Door

The Extraordinary World Of Harry Chapin

Christmas In August

Amanda—Our First Of Ten Very Special Grandchildren

Eileen And The Concorde

Our Israel Connection

How Hillary Clinton Helped The Long Island Philharmonic

Golf In The Travel Business

September 11, 2001—A Day No One Will Forget

The Narbroughs

What The Travel Business Means To The Austin Family

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To my wife,

Eileen

Without your help and encouragement,

this book would not have been possible.

Thank you for 60 years of beautiful memories.

INTRODUCTION

Writing a book like this is never easy, but, as I started to look back over the years, I relived many of the things that contributed to the growth of our business and the people that played a part in it.

The one thing I can assure you is this was all true. Rescuing 2,000 Grumman employees from Iran when the war broke out, to marvelous trips to Hong Kong, Jamaica, Alaska, London and many wonderful cities in the world, actually took place.

Building a successful Travel Business takes a lot of devotion and hardwork. I was fortunate, though, to have my three sons, Jeff, Jamie and Stu working side-by-side with me and my dear wife, Eileen, who traveled with me, working on Group Trips, or just vacationing at great places all over the world.

I also want to acknowledge my dear Mother, Ada, who helped in the early years by coming out on the Long Island Railroad to babysit our sons when we were traveling with the Groups.

Most of the trips were fun, but some required a lot of hard work, as you will find out.

Enjoy the book—I enjoyed reliving it.

CREDITS

I want to thank all the people who helped put this book together at a time when I was still busy working at our Travel Agency, plus my job as Chairman of the LI Philharmonic and finding time to play golf.

I couldn’t have put it all together without the help of my wife, my daughter-in-law Robbie, my three wonderful granddaughters, Amanda, Danielle and Cosette, my assistant, Michele and my 3 sons, Jeff, Jamie & Stewart. Words cannot express to you how much I appreciate all of your support.

IN THE BEGINNING… .

People have often asked how we got started in the Travel Business. The road wasn’t easy or direct, and there were many other paths we could have followed, but there was one, totally unexpected, that took us into Travel, and now, looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I grew up on East 4th Street in Brooklyn, NY in the 1940s. I attended Public School 179 on East 3rd Street and went from there to Brooklyn Technical High School.

Brooklyn was a great place to grow up, being surrounded by family and friends and I have fond memories of my childhood. I was a 2-sewer man in stick-ball, if you know what that was—(a ballgame played in the street!)

My first year at Brooklyn Tech, I majored in Aeronautical Engineering but quickly discovered sitting at a drawing board all day designing airplanes wasn’t for me so I switched to a College Preparatory Course.

My classes at Tech ended at 3pm and I was able to get a job at Whelan’s Drug Store (which was a Pharmacy with a lunch counter)) making sandwiches and malteds. It was a decent job, and every Sunday at 4PM, Ed Sullivan would come into the store before he did his TV Program and requested a Strawberry Malted. My early claim to fame.

After graduating from High School, I went to Brooklyn College, which was easy to get to by bus from my home. But, after one semester, I didn’t feel I was learning anything, which really was my fault, so I decided to leave and enroll at City College-Downtown on 23rd Street in Manhattan, majoring in Advertising. Why Advertising? It sounded like something that was more interesting than Aeronautical Engineering.

I decided to take Night Classes at City College, and got a job at a belt factory in the daytime. I knew I needed to get experience in Advertising and finally, after 6 months at Ruby Buckle, an Employment Agency got me a job as a copy-boy in an Ad agency—Kieswetter, Wetterau, Hagedorn, Baker & Smith.

So, in 1951, I was attending City College-Downtown at night, which is now Baruch College, and working at Kieswetter during the day, learning a lot at the Agency by just working there and seeing how accounts were sold and handled. I was able to gain a great deal of knowledge from a great boss, Horace Hagedorn, who is gone now, but, would you believe, I had lunch with his wife, Amy, just a few months ago.

At the same time, I was also attending Evening Classes twice a week at the Advertising Club of New York on 36th Street and Park Avenue in order to get as much of an education in Advertising as I could. Our final Assignment before Graduation was to write a paper on WHAT I GOT OUT OF THE ADVERTISING AND SELLING COURSE! I wrote it, turned it in and never expected where it would lead.

A week before Graduation from the Advertising Club, I was playing basketball at City College at night. I was 6'2" then (just a little joke!), caught my left leg in the ladder on the wall on a driving lay-up, and tore up my knee pretty badly. My Mother took me by subway to Montefiore Hospital in Brooklyn the following morning and I was told I had a torn Meniscus. I didn’t even know what a Meniscus was!! The Doctor at the Hospital gave me a shot in the knee, which was more painful than the knee itself, but he said, it was too soon to operate.

The following week was the Advertising Club Graduation so I asked my friend, Orin, to drive me to the Graduation as my parents did not have a car. The Graduation was very nice, but I was very uncomfortable, and couldn’t wait to go home. As Orin and I were preparing to leave, they announced the winners of their Annual Awards. To my total surprise, I won First Place! My Essay on What I Got Out Of The Advertising and Selling Course was the winner, and I had to climb up on the stage on crutches. I was given a beautiful Gold Medal that my wife still wears as a necklace. It was a moment I will never forget.

As part of my Award, I would represent the United States at the World Advertising Convention in London. Wow! What a shocker that was!

One month later, I was on my way to London on the Queen Mary, along with a young woman, Ditty May, who had won 2nd Place. It was the first time both of us had ever been out of the country.

It was a lovely trip and when I got there, I stayed at a home in Sidcup Kent with the Narbrough family, which was arranged by the Advertising Club. I had to take a train to London every day to the Convention, but it was a great experience and I enjoyed being their House Guest.

When the Convention ended, I was invited to go to Copenhagen by a young woman named Aase Corlin, and some of the attendees to the Convention from Denmark. How could I resist? I spent a few weeks staying with Aase and her family, enjoying the sights of their great city. I even had a meeting with Executives of the largest Advertising Agency in Denmark, but recognized this wasn’t where I wanted to spend the rest of my life. So I took a train back to England and sailed on the Queen Elizabeth back home to my family.

My first evening back at City College, my Professor, Jules Mirel, asked me to stay for a few minutes after class as he wanted to talk to me. To my complete surprise, he asked if I was the same Larry Austin who had won the NY Advertising Club’s First Place Award and represented the U.S. at the London Convention. Obviously, I replied Yes. He then asked if I would be interested in running his Advertising Agency, as he had been offered a job at I.Miller Shoes, heading their Advertising Department. Wow! Of course, I said Yes! Believe it or not, I was only 21 at the time.

I ran the Jules Mirel Advertising Agency for the next four years at 25 E. 26th Street in New York City. Most of our accounts were on Long Island—Newmark and Lewis, Tommasini, Plesser’s and others whose names I can’t remember plus County Hardware in Mount Vernon, NY, where I went every Tuesday to do their ads. It was a wonderful learning experience and I had a great Art Director, Frim Sklar, who helped me keep it running. I sometimes wonder where she is today?

In 1955, Jules returned to the Agency and we decided to move the business to Long Island, as Jules lived in Roslyn and most of our accounts, except County Hardware, were on Long Island. So we shopped around Long Island looking for an office and finally found a nice building in Hicksville at 7 West Marie Street. The landlord asked us, out of curiosity, what business were we in? We told him we ran an Advertising Agency. He suggested we open a Travel Agency as there were only three presently on Long Island and there was a lot of potential travel business. I found out many years later, to my complete surprise, the landlord was the uncle of Dr. Noah Finkle, who is my Orthopedic Doctor in Huntington, who handled my torn Meniscus many years ago. Small world.

That’s exactly how we started our Travel Agency, calling it the Travel Service Mart Of Hicksville.

We hired a young lady named Joan Britt, who worked at Idlewild Airport. It wasn’t Kennedy Airport in those days, and she became the first employee of our Travel Agency. Jules and I continued to run the Advertising Agency at the same time, having no idea what the future had for us!

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Larry Austin and Jack Narbrough in London, 1951.

WHO KNEW WE NEEDED AN AIRLINE APPOINTMENT?

We didn’t know when we started the Travel Agency that we had to be officially appointed by the Airlines, and wouldn’t even have ticket stock. Every Airline Rep that we met, told us we had to build our volume first, before we could have our own tickets. That meant every ticket we obtained for a client, included no commission for us. How did we get tickets then? We had to go to the airport and buy the ticket. Then, we sold it to the customer, who paid us what we paid for the ticket.

So, for close to 3 years, that’s what we did! Every time we booked a trip, one of us had to go to the airport and buy the ticket directly from that particular airline. I would go every 3 or 4 nights, depending on how many tickets