She remembered him at the kitchen table marking up aircraft diagrams for younger workers who wanted to move from loading baggage to maintaining ground equipment. He had never earned a formal teaching title, but he had spent years showing colleagues how to repair a jammed conveyor or diagnose a broken luggage tractor without cutting corners. Some of the people he had trained were supervisors now. Others had retired, and a few still sent Evelyn holiday cards thanking Walter for the extra hours he had spent with them.
Imani asked the program team to examine how many ramp employees' children had applied for technical training and why so many had not completed the process. They found that tuition was one obstacle, but transportation, work schedules, and a lack of clear information mattered just as much. Some promising students assumed the airline's opportunities belonged to people who already knew somebody in management. Imani recognized that assumption from her own childhood and did not want it to become another rule nobody ever bothered to write down.
Working with the airport authority, employee representatives, and an existing training partner, Skyline approved a renovated facility near O'Hare's ground operations campus. The program would offer no-cost introductory technical training to eligible children of ramp workers, with clear applications and independent selection, and would help students connect with paid apprenticeships where places were available. It was a serious investment, not a decorative plaque mounted in a hallway. Imani asked the committee to include equipment, instructors, transport assistance, and a long-term funding plan before anyone announced a name.
The naming question came later, during a meeting of former ramp employees and the current training committee. Several people wanted the center named for a major investor, partly because those names often attracted donations and partly because corporate buildings seemed to require prestigious labels. An older baggage supervisor suggested Walter Brooks instead. He remembered Walter staying after a freezing shift to help a young worker prepare for a mechanics examination, even though he had been on his feet since midnight.
Other workers began telling their own stories. One remembered Walter giving away a spare winter jacket to a new hire whose coat had torn in a baggage conveyor. Another described how he kept a small notebook of equipment problems and passed it to the next shift so no one had to guess which machines were safe. A woman who now led an airport maintenance team said Walter was the first person who told her she could learn to work on the equipment instead of simply cleaning around it.
The committee voted to name the facility the Walter Brooks Ramp Academy. Imani learned the result through Tasha, who entered the office carrying the signed recommendation with an expression that told her something unexpected had happened. "Before you ask," Tasha said, "the workers nominated him. I didn't put the name in front of them. Neither did Margaret." Imani looked at the paper and could not speak for a moment.
"He would have been embarrassed," she said finally. Tasha laughed.