Donor Stories

Longtime Volunteer Grateful for Opportunities

Unforeseen yet tailor-made opportunities have come along at just the right moments in Tom Hamman's career with The Boeing Company and as a volunteer and educator at The Museum of Flight. Tom and his wife, Susan, are grateful for each door that opened for him and believe in giving back to show their gratitude for their good fortune.

Tom's tenure with Boeing began in 1979 during a company-wide expansion. Even though he earned a liberal arts degree as an undergraduate, he would get his start at Boeing as a methods analyst with the industrial engineering department. "Back then, they were looking for people who had the ability to learn the job 'the Boeing way,'" says Tom. His adaptability and openness to new challenges served him well wherever he was placed during his 22 years with the company. Susan also worked at Boeing for a number of years.

After Tom's time at Boeing, he turned his energies into a new opportunity volunteering as a docent with The Museum of Flight. "I have always been impressed by the Museum," shares Tom. "It's not just the collection but how it is presented. It is all top-notch — the docents, facilities, everything about it."

Tom's favorite aircraft in the Museum's collection is the M-21 Blackbird. As a docent, he became very familiar with the plane while leading "Tip to Tail" tours, though it was an inauspicious beginning. "On my first tour of the plane, we started with 20 people and by the end, we still had the same number of guests…but I'm not sure they were the original 20!" Tom jokes.

During his service as a Museum volunteer, Tom was offered the opportunity to join the staff as a part-time educator at the John Fluke, Jr. Challenger Learning Center (CLC) leading young students on virtual missions to Mars. Tom would spend seven years in that role, guiding more than 700 missions and teaching valuable teamwork skills to emerging explorers.

"The kids who experience the CLC have to go through a fairly rigorous mission, and it never failed to impress me how they stepped up to the challenges, dealt with crises and pulled together to achieve their goal of reaching Mars," recalls Tom. "They were so consumed with the process, they never realized how much they were learning!"

Even though Tom and Susan no longer live in the Seattle area, they continue to support The Museum of Flight — in recent years through the purchase of several charitable gift annuities (CGAs). "We continue to be grateful for the opportunities the Museum provided, and CGAs are an ideal way for us to show our support," he stresses. "They may appear confusing, though they are really quite straightforward, and the Museum has made them easy to set up," Tom continues. "There are current-year tax advantages, and CGAs also provide long-term benefits for Susan and me, as well as for the Museum."

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