On January 27th, 1980, I boarded an airplane for the very first time.
I was 15 years old, a 10th grader, and the plane was a brand new Lockheed L-1011 TriStar. We left Plant 42 in Palmdale, California in freezing weather — snow on the ground, coats zipped up. Fifteen hours later, we landed at Piarco International Airport in Trinidad.
It was late at night. It was hot. My mom, my dad, and I walked down the stairs onto the tarmac still wearing our winter coats.
We didn't make that mistake for long.
The Man Who Built It
My father, James Ronald Beam, was a Flight Line Supervisor and L-1011 Technical Representative at Lockheed. The TriStar was his plane — not in the sense of ownership, but in the sense that a craftsman owns his work. He knew every system, every specification, every quirk of that aircraft.
BWIA — British West Indies Airways, the national carrier of Trinidad and Tobago — had purchased their first L-1011, and Lockheed sent my father to deliver it. Not just to fly it over and hand over the keys, but to stay. To be there. To make sure the plane kept flying.
We went with him.
Eighteen Months in Trinidad
What started as a delivery flight became a chapter of our lives none of us expected.
My father took up his post as Lockheed's Tech Rep for BWIA, keeping the L-1011 airworthy and supporting the airline's operations. My mother and I settled into island life. Without a school visa, I couldn't attend school in Trinidad — so I did my coursework by correspondence, studying on my own while the Caribbean happened just outside the window. It was an unconventional education, to say the least.
Not long after we arrived, Carnival came to Port of Spain.
My dad wasn't one for crowds — we watched from a distance, safely removed from the surge of the city. But I couldn't take my eyes off it. The costumes were extraordinary. Elaborate, feathered, sequined, architectural — entire communities had spent months designing and building them. Each one was a work of art. I was 15, fresh off a plane from snowy Palmdale, and I had never seen anything like it. I don't think I've ever forgotten it.
And every Sunday, we went to Maracas Bay.
If you've never been, Maracas is the kind of place that recalibrates you. Tucked between green mountains on Trinidad's north coast, it's a crescent of sand and warm water where the world slows down and decides to stay. We went every week. It became our rhythm, our ritual, our Sunday.
I can still feel it.
From Trinidad to Canada
After eighteen months, Lockheed's next assignment came. We packed up and moved again — this time to Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. I finished high school at Bayview Secondary School and graduated in 1982, on time, despite having done two years of coursework by correspondence on a Caribbean island.
My father's career had taken our family from California to Trinidad to Canada. We followed the work. We always did.
What the Plane Meant
There's something I've thought about often since then — the strangeness and the beauty of it. My father spent his career building and maintaining aircraft that most people would only ever see from the ground. The L-1011 was the one he could talk about. The one he brought home in conversation.
And then one January morning, he put his family on it and flew us to the Caribbean.
That plane didn't just carry passengers. It carried us — to a new country, a new life, eighteen months of Sunday mornings at Maracas Bay, Carnival costumes that stopped me cold, and memories I've never stopped carrying.
The Archive
My father's career archive — his badges, pins, certifications, and photographs from 32 years at Lockheed — is now available as a complete lot. It includes materials from the L-1011 program and from the classified programs he worked on at the Skunk Works: the SR-71, the Atlas Missile, and more.
It's a collection that deserves to go to someone who understands what it represents.
View the Lockheed Skunk Works Career Archive →
James Ronald Beam. Lockheed L-1011 Technical Representative, BWIA. 1980–1981. He built the plane. Then he flew his family home on it.
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