Spend any amount of time with Marine Discovery Center volunteer Gayle Hitchingslane and you will learn that she’s not only a gifted and gregarious “people person,” but she has a mountain of interests and life experiences.
For starters, she is a trained and paid hula dancer, a pilot, is certified in SCUBA and has scrubbed the shark tank in a Tampa nature center, is an accomplished seamstress, avid kayaker, and worked professionally in airline operations and as an insurance property adjuster. And at 70, it’s possible this Southern California native is just getting started.
Get to know Gayle in her conversation with MDC’s staff writer Lisa D. Mickey:
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: I was born in a town named Fontana, located about 60 miles east of Los Angeles — a former steel town. I lived there until I was 24 and then I moved to Alaska
Q: Did you go to college?
A: I went to Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., and studied aviation. I started flying in a Cessna 150. About a year after that, my dad bought an Aero – it was a four-seater. I got my pilot’s license at 19. I wanted to become a control tower operator, but when I took my FAA test, I didn’t pass the physical test because I have a heart murmur. I later learned that a lot of guys had heart murmurs and it was really about the FAA not wanting women working in the towers at that time.
Q: So, what came next?
A: I worked as an agent at American Airlines, handling operations, ticket lifts, as well as dispatching aircraft, weight and balance on aircraft. I was with American Airlines for three years. They didn’t fly in Alaska back then, so I had to quit when I moved up there.
Q: What were you doing in Alaska?
A: I was doing everything I couldn’t do in California. I was the SoCal girl living in the cold with a brand-new husband and learning how to fish, fly float planes and downhill and cross-country ski. I also learned how to ice fish and camp out in a lot of fabulous places. It was beautiful country and I was there for five years, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.
Q: Alaska must have been a wild and wonderful place for you.
A: It was called the “days before law” because the bars were open for 23 hours a day. This was during the oil boom with the oil pipeline stuff going on. There were men all over the place walking around with rolls of cash that could choke a horse. There was a lot of alcohol-based crime. It was beautiful, but lawless!
Q: Is that why you left Alaska?
A: At that time, it was very, very cold and for five years, I wore shorts three times in Seward Inlet, Alaska. But the climate has changed a lot since our departure in 1986. There used to be a portage glacier where you could walk and play on the glacier and now, because of climate change, that glacier is way up on the mountain. All you can do is see a portion of it and where the water is coming down. There has been a huge change there since the early 1980s.
Q: What were you doing up there?
A: The first year, I worked for the police department as a dispatcher, but I missed my airline privileges. Alaska is far away and I missed family and friends, so I hired back on with Northwest Airlines in Anchorage and moved to Montana.
Q: Was moving to Montana a big change?
A: I left California because of the smog. You couldn’t see the mountains for half of the year. Alaska had beautiful air and vistas and the same was true in Montana. I was there for about three years, not realizing how cold it was going to be and that I would be working outdoors for a portion of my job with the airlines.
Q: Working outdoors in Montana must have been challenging.
A: Great Falls, Montana was a small station, with three flights or less a day and all of the agents who were working the gates did everything, including the ramp work [loading planes]. It was quite an awakening for me and I had to start lifting weights. We drove belt loaders and back then, there wasn’t always a mechanic on duty in the evening and we had to do things like add oil and hydraulic fluid to the 727 and DC10 jets. We had to do that to get the planes out on time, but it was so cold in the winter, if you weren’t wearing gloves, your fingers would stick to the sides of an aircraft. My last year there, it reached an actual temperature of 40 below. After we came back from a Hawaiian vacation, I told my husband, “I’m out of here, with or without you. I can’t do this anymore.”
Q: Where did you go this time?
A: We left Montana in 1986 for Austin, Texas. With Northwest Airlines, I worked at the ticket counter, luggage and worked the gate, as well as operations weight and balance, but not loading planes. I was only there for a year before I was transferred to Little Rock, Ark., but in Arkansas, I was back to working the ramp again. Little Rock was very challenging because we were lifting and loading about 30,000 pounds a day per person. We had a lot of air freight and a lot of U.S. Mail, as well as the luggage. Everything was loaded by hand. I was there for almost 10 years. In the meantime, I separated from my first husband and divorced. I bid on a position in Honolulu and went to Hawaii in 1997, still with Northwest Airlines, but no longer loading planes!
Q: Arkansas to Hawaii is quite a change!
A: Hawaii was an interesting mix of people from all over the world. We had Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipinos, Samoans, all of us people from the mainland, and the native Hawaiians. The native Hawaiians didn’t always like us “haoles” – non-native mainlanders. With the airlines, we had the “potato flights,” which were “haole flights” to the mainland that served potatoes onboard, and the “rice flights” that went to Asia, and they served rice. It was an interesting job because I had a lot of international ticketing.
Q: Did you stay in ticketing in Hawaii?
A: I had been there in Hawaii for three years when they offered me the job to take over the ticket office in downtown Honolulu. Northwest Airlines wanted someone who was good at ticketing, so I took over that two-person office. It was fun because I really got a chance to talk to and get to know the people I was working with. I had regular customers who would come by the office with photos from their trips and talk about it. Things changed after the Sept. 11th attacks. They shut down all of the airports for several days, laid off my staff, but the ticket offices were open. I was the only person in the Honolulu office trying to assist international travelers. I am indebted to the two ticket agents who spoke Japanese who came and helped!
Q: What happened when the airports reopened and air traffic resumed?
A: They ended up shutting down that office after 9-11. At that point, I had been with Northwest Airlines for 25 years. They gave me options to work in Seattle, Norfolk, Va., Minnesota or Tampa. I chose Tampa because my new husband, Bill Lane, had a couple of daughters in Orlando, but I didn’t care for the management in Tampa and decided I was done after 27 years with Northwest and three years with American Airlines for a total of 30 years with the airlines. I was looking for new challenges and ended up with USAA.
Above: Gail not only has a ton of interesting life experience, but she’s also a talented seamstress! Gayle made this green sea turtle costume as part of her Florida Master Naturalist Program class.
Q: How did that transition happen with USAA?
A: I became a property adjuster, which means we were storm chasing and taking care of people’s homes. One of the best feelings I’ve ever had in any job, was to be able to take care of people. When I first started, I was handling people with questions about insurance and then I joined a sales team for about a year, but
I became a property adjuster. Still based in Tampa, I worked only with property. I was in the catastrophe group for a while and it was very hard work out in the field with 15-hour days. When a storm was coming, you know you are going to be dealing with wind, water damage and possibly flooding. I ran a team twice, in Mississippi and New Orleans (Hurricane Irma). Then I transferred out of catastrophe into regular home owners’ insurance.
Q: That must have been tough seeing people lose their homes.
A: There is the shock of it. You have to be very clear and you have to make sure they are aware of what their coverage limits are. When things happen, many times people don’t have any of their policy information, so you have to be able to print it for them and go over everything.
Q: How long were you with USAA?
A: I was with USAA from 2007 to 2019, mostly as a homeowner’s residential property adjustor. I retired in 2019. Bill had retired for the second time in 2015.
Q: How did you end up in New Smyrna Beach?
A: We were looking for a place with beautiful air quality. In Tampa, we lived on a golf course in the proverbial big house. A friend who had worked for USAA had bought a condo in New Smyrna Beach and told me about it. I was volunteering for the Tampa Aquarium as a diver at that time. I started diving in 1992 in the cold lakes of Arkansas, so I wanted to keep diving and cleaned the big tanks with sharks, green sea turtles and rays at the Tampa Aquarium.
Q: How did you get connected with MDC?
A: I was looking for places to volunteer that involved water and people who were interested in ecology and taking care of the environment. The only thing that I found was Marine Discovery Center in New Smyrna Beach. I started volunteering at MDC in 2019, but then COVID hit in 2020. MDC closed and was not allowing volunteers inside the center. I wanted to work at the Welcome Desk and serve as a kayak sweep with MDC’s kayak eco-tours, but I can’t do all the lifting anymore. We started coming back into MDC in 2021, so now I’m working Thursdays at the Welcome Desk and sometimes other days during the week.
Q: What do you enjoy about volunteering at the Welcome Desk?
A: People. I like talking to people. Everybody who works here and volunteers here are very enthusiastic about the environment. That just feeds my soul.
Q: Do you volunteer in other places?
A: I volunteer through our church, First Presbyterian, for a group called Colors of Hunger. Once a month, we feed hungry people with a hot meal. There are four churches that rotate, serving on one Monday during the month.
Q: You and Bill do a lot of international travel, don’t you?
A: Yes, we usually take two or three trips a year. This year, we took a 35-day South Pacific cruise out of San Diego and we went around the Hawaiian islands, down to Tahiti, the Society Island and the Marquesas Islands [French Polynesia]. It was absolutely stunning and beautiful.
Q: What excites you about our mission here at MDC?
A: The education offered here for kids and adults alike. I’m just so excited about the future here. I see the kids’ faces and hear their excitement all year long. Some of the kids who come here can name every species of animals we have. I find what we’re doing in education and for the environment at MDC is extremely exciting.
Q: What has been the highlight for you here as a volunteer at MDC?
A: Taking classes with the Florida Master Naturalist Program has been great. I took the Coastal Systems class and the Wildlife Monitoring class. It opened my eyes to what is going on in our environment and gave me a new awareness.
Q: Why is volunteering important to you?
A: I think it’s keeping a finger on the pulse of the community that is really helpful to me and inspires me each day to look for things I can do and how I can help other people – whether it’s educational or things that I do or say.
Q: It seems that you have been able to take your skill set and your helping nature to benefit guests at MDC.
A: As you go through life, it also gives you an awareness of what’s going on with people when they walk through the front door. It’s about being tuned in to people. I’ve also learned to be flexible about doing different things around here. I’ve learned to adjust myself to MDC’s needs and being open to all of it.
Q: You are a really talented seamstress. What’s up with the new Okie the Oyster costume?
A: I remade the Okie the Oyster costume for Marine Discovery Center to use in the New Smyrna Beach Christmas Parade. My mom taught me to sew when I was 11 years old. I used the sewing machine she gave me back in 1985 to cut through the thickness of the material for the costume. I also made a green sea turtle costume for a Florida Master Naturalist Program class. I make clothes, comforters, drapes and pillows but I never wanted to go into sewing as a profession because it would take the fun out of it.
Q: Has MDC changed you in any way?
A: As I have gotten older, I have become so much more patient with people and with things going on. I didn’t used to be patient. I had red hair and my nickname was “Flame.” I was a hothead for years. In the businesses I was in, I had to learn patience.
Q: What do you look forward to when you come here?
A: I look forward to working with other volunteers, staff and seeing everybody at the office and the people walking in the doors. And I really look forward to talking to the animals.
Q: One last thing: You have an interesting story with your name?
A: Yes, so when Bill Lane and I were getting married in 2003, we were older. His kids were grown and I had no children. This was in Hawaii and sometimes they cut their sentences short over there. We go to register for our marriage certificate and the registrar took Bill’s information. I told her I planned to keep my last name as Hitchings. Long story short, that lady put Lane on the end and that’s how my name became Hitchingslane.
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