by Jon Marmor
He played a critical role in the development of three generations of commercial jet aircraft, helped create the nation's transportation system and is often referred to as "the father of the 747." He invented the concept of the "wide body" aircraft. His contributions to safe air and space travel (he served on the presidential commission that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion) are the stuff of legends.
Yet when Joseph Sutter first started working at Boeing as a just-out-of-the-Navy 24-year-old at the end of World War II, he wasn't considered anything special.
Not that he wasn't primed for the career he was about to embark on. A whiz at math and physics as a kid growing up on Beacon Hill, Sutter, the son of a Slovenian immigrant turned Seattle meat cutter, was an airplane nut. He always stopped to watch the planes flying out of Boeing Field as he did his afternoon Georgetown paper route and knew that one day, he would design airplanes.
But the lanky Seattle native came from very humble beginnings. Money was always tight for Sutter, his parents and three brothers. The first in his family to go to college, Sutter, a graduate of Cleveland High School, scraped together what little money he could to enroll at the University of Washington in 1939 to pursue aeronautical engineering. His dreams might have been in the clouds, but his reality meant living at home, carpooling to campus and working summers.