In 1970, when I lived in Boston, I knew an air traffic controller who lived in a basement apartment on Beacon Hill. 

Stephen (not his real name) was an impish, Irish guy with a slight mustache — he looked very much like the young Edgar Allan Poe. Fast on his feet and quick-witted, his electric personality lit up any room. He was also a big drinker. In fact, he had a reputation for drinking to excess when his work schedule allowed it. At parties he’d become scandalously drunk yet he was also known for leaving parties early if he had to go back to work within 24 hours. 

His steely self-discipline when it came to this sort of thing impressed everyone he knew, but he really didn’t have a choice: His job at Boston Logan International Airport controlled every aspect of his life. 

“The reason Stephen drinks like a fish is because of his job. His job is extremely stressful,” his friends said of him. This meant if you found Stephen suddenly asleep in a corner of the room or in the party host’s guest bedroom, you knew to leave him alone. It also signaled that in less than 24 hours, Stephen would be back at work in the tower. 

I think of Stephen nearly every time I fly. I also thought of him after the Washington, D.C. air disaster when a Black Hawk helicopter collided with a passenger jet on January 29 near Reagan National Airport. Being an air traffic controller (ATC) was stressful in 1970, and it is stressful in 2025. 

In 1991, The Los Angeles Times ran a feature on the lives of ATC’s:

“It is said to be one of the most stressful jobs in the world, requiring steely concentration and the IQ of a genius… Working under pressure, moving planes like chess pieces, the lives of thousands of passengers weighing on your shoulders.

“Life as an air traffic controller can be grueling. The training is intense, the hours long and the shift patterns unpredictable.”

I knew nothing about Stephen’s qualifications for the ATC job back in 1970 but no doubt they were similar to what they are today: the passing of written aptitude test with a score of 70 or above, and any one of the following: civilian or military facility rating in air traffic control; FAA air-carrier dispatcher certificate; instrument flight rating; FAA certificate as a navigator or armed forces navigator/bombardier; pilot rating with 350 hours of flight time; rating as an Aerospace Defense Command intercept director. 

Applicants must be U.S. citizens and be no older than 30 when entering duty and must retire at age 56. 

Stephen was a very old-looking 28.

I didn’t know Stephen well because his work schedule kept him away from most social events on the Hill, but when he was finally free to join the crowd that’s when he made up for lost time by taking pleasure to extremes. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, as they say.

Stephen’s basement apartment was on Garden Street near Mass General Hospital, just a few steps away from Sporter’s, a popular gay bar at the time.

Among my friends then were lawyers, insurance executive-wannabes, hippie-drifters, BU and Harvard students, a few South End artists and sculptors, and one medical student. Yet not a single one of them seemed as controlled by their profession as Stephen seemed to be. I had been in his basement apartment maybe once or twice. I recall some models of passenger jets on his shelves but the thing that really stuck out — and the item that he was famous for throughout the Hill — was his framed collection — a massive collage, really — of hair samples from the men and women he befriended throughout the city.

Stephen was more or less a legend on the Hill for his hair-snip collection, so I willingly obliged when he asked me to contribute some strands. The process was sort of like a tonsure: he would clip a small section of hair with a special pair of scissors, label and date it, then mount it to the enormous collage. His hobby seemed bizarre to me but compared to other things happening in Boston at that time — like men on bad LSD trips jumping out of apartment windows — it seemed like a relatively harmless pastime. 

At times I tried to make associations between his hair-collecting habit and his horrendous job in the air traffic control tower. Was there a psychological link? Did collecting hair strands have anything to do with the work stress everybody said he was going through? 

A New York Times article a couple of years ago noted that the staffing shortages of air traffic controllers in recent years “has been stretched to the brink…..with staffing shortages necessitating six-day workweeks and 10-hour workdays for many controllers, conditions which have exacerbated exhaustion and in some cases led to depression…”

The piece also mentioned that air traffic controllers are prohibited from taking particular medications, “as they could cause drowsiness on the job — so some controllers have turned to alcohol and sleeping pills instead…. Some controllers have forgone medications that they needed in order to comply with the clearances. And a few controllers have even turned to drugs…”

The only drugs common in Boston in 1970 were hashish, marijuana, mescaline, amphetamines (or speed) and LSD. Heroin didn’t make an appearance on the streets until late 1972 or 1973. Street hustlers called it “smack.” 

A close friend of mine who knew Stephen well sometimes told me how worried he was about him. “He’s working multiple shifts and does not look healthy,” he’d say. 

Among those who knew Stephen it was commonly understood that he was brilliant with a near-genius IQ. 

Yet I thought it odd that he had a basement apartment rather than an apartment off the ground floor. In those days basement apartments on Beacon Hill very often had no windows facing the street; if there was a venue for light it was more of a small slat on the outer door. The bottom of a stairwell is generally not a welcoming space.

Did Stephen’s airy job in the tower supply him with too much altitude so that when it came to an apartment he needed to be thoroughly grounded?

I thought of Stephen again as the fake news spreaders were saying that President Trump was cutting the numbers of air traffic controllers. This was not true, of course. Trump mentioned that he had a lot of respect for air traffic controllers and that generally they were brilliant people. He did mention that the lowered standards of hiring for air traffic controllers in the Federal Aviation Administration during the Biden and Obama administrations may have been a factor in the January 29 D.C. disaster, which is not an unreasonable conjecture at all. 

These lowered standards included the FAA’s diversity and inclusion program prioritizing people with disabilities like impaired vision, hearing, missing extremities, epilepsy, intellectual disability and dwarfism.

Stephen was not an epileptic although he was very possibly alcoholic. In 1970 seizure medication was not very effective. I had numerous experiences of watching (usually male) epileptics falling from cafeteria tables in Harvard Square and having seizures on the floor. I would try not to stare until the seizure was over since there was nothing you could do. The seizure had to run its course. 

Why would one of the most important and visual-crucial jobs in the world go out of its way to employ people with impaired vision and epilepsy? It certainly isn’t anything ATC’s in 1971 would have understood or appreciated.

In 1970, men always wore dress shirts and ties to work. The casual look had not yet redefined the corporate work space. Stephen dressed the part. Though slight of build and in his 20s, his face showed the strain of runways, take-offs and landings. Near air accidents may have been the cause of spider web-like wrinkles that crossed his cheeks and ran the course of his forehead. Or perhaps the wrinkles were the result of alcohol combined with the air traffic near misses or outright accidents — the general wear and tear of heavy focus and concentration. 

Helping to keep Boston Logan International Airport safe had consequences. 

But the fey genius Irishman, despite his love of alcohol, never allowed liquor to destroy that professionalism. It rarely got him to call out sick and despite his overindulgence he still had the wherewithal to know when to leave a party and get enough sleep. At a New Year’s Eve party on the Hill celebrating the dawn of 1970, I recall how Stephen left well before midnight. This wasn’t easy to do with Janis Joplin’s voice in full stereo blast. 

Whenever I’d spot a low-flying plane over Cambridge or Beacon Hill I’d think of Stephen in the control tower in his white short and tie, directing, analyzing and looking at graphs and radar screens as the lines on his forehead danced and increased exponentially. The ultimate mystery of what he really did never failed to fascinate me. 

When I left Boston for Denver in the spring of 1971, that close friend of mine who knew Stephen well went with me to Logan Airport. These were the days long before TSA, when you could wait with passengers in the departure area. As I watched the big silver United Airways jet roll in for my eventual departure, my friend quipped:

 “You know, Stephen is probably in the tower now. He’ll see you off. He’ll be saying good-bye as your plane takes off. You’re in good hands.” 

Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest is “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest.” He is currently at work on “The Last Romanian Princess and Her World Legacy,” about the life of Princess Ileana of Romania.