TAMPA, Fla. -- It was rainy and cold -- not a typical Tampa day.

	Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette On cool Florida mornings, Sam Wood still wears his US Airways jacket even though he is no longer employed by the airline. Click photo for larger image.

That seemed somehow appropriate to Sam Wood because he wasn't feeling typical himself. The usually upbeat, take-things-as-they-come kind of guy was on his hands and knees, scrubbing grime from the white "curb-along" -- a thin cement barrier that separates shrubbery from lawns, a landscaping mainstay in this city. But there was more, a feeling of humbleness he had never experienced, something he would later describe as "a slap of reality in the face."

It hit him as he dipped the scrub brush into the bucket of cold water-and-Clorox solution and looked at his 39-year-old hands. They were the hands of a licensed airline mechanic, so skilled that he had been entrusted with the safety of thousands of US Airways passengers for nearly 17 years. But no longer.

He was furloughed in early January 2003, a result of the carrier closing its aircraft maintenance hangar at Tampa International Airport and transferring the work to Pittsburgh and Charlotte, N.C. Six months later, a man who always paid his bills on time was embarrassed by having to file bankruptcy, blaming himself for a lack of savings. Since then, with a wife and three children to support and his savings evaporated, it has been catch-as-catch-can.

So on this day, he was doing what he's been doing for months -- cutting grass, spreading mulch, clearing brush and even getting down on his hands and knees and scrubbing someone's curb-along in the dampness. Whatever he can to earn money.

Once on his way to earning $100,000 a year, he now makes about $7 an hour -- when he can find work. But it wasn't just the loss of steady income, benefits, a pension, a future that brought him to his knees that day.

"I miss having some purpose, having people say, 'There's the airplanes. Make them fly in the morning.' There was purpose in making five or six planes ready to make some money [for the company], to fly people around the country.

"Where's the purpose now? Where's the purpose when someone says, 'There's the grass. Go cut it.' "

A few days later, out of Wood's earshot, his wife, Victoria, said, "Sam lost so much more than what you could see with your eyes when he lost his job. I have watched my happy, hardworking husband turn into a man that has lost his future, his pride and a lot of his love of life."

Wood is one of tens of thousands of furloughed airline industry workers -- mechanics, pilots, flight attendants, ticket agents, ramp agents and others -- who have found themselves adrift since a recession and 9/11 brought a screeching halt to the boom times of the '90s.

In an effort to survive, US Airways and other major carriers have slashed routes and workers, leaving behind once valuable employees such as Wood with their lives turned upside down, dreams shattered, futures in doubt.

'Life was good'

A native of Darlington, Beaver County, Wood was a student at Blackhawk High School when the mother of a girl he was dating predicted -- actually, ordered -- his future.

The girl's father was a mechanic for the USAir, as the airline called itself then, and they lived in a beautiful home in Chippewa. The mother wanted the same comfortable lifestyle for her daughter.

"She said, 'If you marry my daughter, you're going to be a mechanic for USAir,' " he recalled.

Wood really didn't need the push. At the time, he said, "USAir was the place to be," and he figured he would end up there like so many in his area.

And he did, after a three-year stint in the Marines where he learned aviation mechanics working on C-130s. Three weeks after his discharge from the service, he was hired, in April 1987, as a USAir mechanic at LAX in Los Angeles, doing "C-checks," or routine maintenance, on the airline's Boeing 727s.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette At his home in Spring Hill, Fla., Wood, a 39-year-old graduate of Blackhawk High School, can look out over a lake just beyond his back yard. Click photo for larger image.

He married his first wife that same year (they eventually divorced) and worked in a variety of mechanic positions. He found that what he liked the most was line maintenance -- working on the planes at the gate overnight, making sure they were safe to fly in the morning.

"I enjoy the responsibility. When a plane pulls up, it's your airplane, your responsibility. ... And you get to see the end result [with passengers boarding them]," he said.

He worked in Norfolk, Va., and Philadelphia and eventually "through seniority and luck" became a lead mechanic with a dozen mechanics working under him. Then it was off to Charlotte and Pittsburgh and eventually Tampa, where the heavy maintenance hangar opened in 1992.

Tampa seemed a secure station, as airline work sites are known, because it was scheduled to do maintenance on 120 Airbus planes that the carrier had ordered. And besides, he loved living in Florida, more than happy to be rid of snow and cold.

There, he met his second wife, Victoria, who had three children. They married three years ago. Wood had an instant family, he loved his job and he was happy. He worked a lot of overtime -- sometimes two or three double shifts a week.

"It was great. I loved it. Life was good."

And then, Sept. 11, 2001, and its devastating shock waves.

Because of the immediate and long-lasting plunge in air travel flight, schedules were slashed and overtime became a thing of the past. Wood's salary and bonus pay dropped from about $3,000 a week to $1,000 -- still good money but only a third of what the family had been used to making.

"The problem was, we were living like those wages would last forever. It was spend, spend, spend," Wood recalled. "When it went from $3,000 a week to $1,000 week, it was a hell of a drop."

They couldn't keep up payments on a 2002 Mitsubishi Galant and a 2000 Chevy S-10. On a Friday, a repossession man came to pick up the Galant. On Monday, he came back for the truck.

"I guess until the repo man knocks on the door you don't realize how bad it can get." And then it got worse.

Barely getting by

US Airways asked its unions for concessions. Despite his worsening financial difficulties, Wood voted to go along.

"The company came to us and said they needed help," he said. "I didn't want to but I liked my job. I had worked my whole life there. I liked living in Florida."

And then, just before Thanksgiving 2002, the closing of the hangar eliminated the jobs of about 300 well-paid mechanics and other workers. The cuts were part of a wider furlough of some 2,500 employees the carrier said it needed to make to survive a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.

Because Wood worked on "the line" and didn't usually work in the hangar, he wasn't immediately affected. But he knew his relative lack of seniority meant someone from the hangar with more years could bump into his position. He was gone in January.

He thought of his father, a hard worker, his role model, who one day came home from his job with an industrial waste firm in Beaver County and told the family he had been furloughed. Wood's father is his namesake, and like him had three children to support.

"How did you do it?" he asked his father. "You just do what you have to do," said his father, who with his wife now lives in East Palestine, Ohio.

Six months later, Wood had no choice but to file for bankruptcy, losing everything but his house, on which he was still paying a mortgage. He has no health insurance but he buys it for his wife because of a severe migraine condition that makes it fiscally prudent to do so. The children -- Johnny, 12, Megan, 10, and Davon, 8 -- are on government-provided health insurance and now receive free lunches at school.

With his seniority, Wood could transfer to Pittsburgh but he wants to stay in Florida.

He doesn't want to transplant the family; they love Tampa. His house, a comfortable, three-bedroom ranch with Spanish touches, is on a cul-de-sac and, most impressively, on a lake, providing a spectacular view from a screened-in porch. There are scrub oaks in the spacious back yard where the children and the family's five dogs have ample room to play. And, as a throwback to simpler times, there is a tire swing hanging from a tree.

The home is in Spring Hill in Hernando County, about 40 miles north of Tampa, and given its lakeside location and structure, it cost a remarkably low $100,000. It would have sold for three times that much in Tampa itself, he said.

If he sold the house and moved the family to Pittsburgh, the bankruptcy would in all likelihood prevent him from qualifying for a mortgage to buy a home here.

"Before I could go anywhere and anyone would give me money for anything. Now, I'd be lucky if someone gave me a loaf of bread on credit."

He doesn't want to commute to Pittsburgh because that would take him away from his family too much.

And, he added, with US Airways future so tenuous, it's possible the company could go under or leave Pittsburgh and he would find himself again unemployed but now living in an apartment.

So he remains in Tampa, hoping he may get called back during the five-year recall window for furloughed employees. That's why he's hoping if the carrier asks for more concessions, the unions go along. He knows he would again.

"I have no ill feelings toward [the company]. I hope they survive so I can come back," he said. "I was making $32 an hour but $25 is better than nothing. Now I'm in the hot sun, weed-whacking, digging holes."

That's what he'll keep on doing until something better comes along -- or, he hopes, he gets recalled.

Until then, he'll be scrubbing curb-alongs, cutting grass and, as he father advised, doing what needs to be done for his family. It's not easy.

"When I go to the grocery store and spend $100 I think about what I had to do to make that $100, how many yards I had to mow, how much I had to shovel. That's the kind of things that make for pretty depressing thoughts."

He paused. "You don't miss what you have until it's gone."