Executive Suite: Delta chief takes unlikely flight path

ATLANTA -- In a way, Richard Anderson owes his new job as CEO of Delta Air Lines, the USA's No. 3 airline, to his 20-year-old daughter.

Had that daughter, Katy, never been conceived, Anderson might still be a prosecutor in Houston. But she was, and her expectant mother, Sue Anderson, then a civil attorney at a large Houston law firm, wanted to give up her practice to raise a family.

Now 52, Anderson leads a major international carrier with bold plans for expansion. Last week, Delta announced both its best quarterly results in years and a ground-breaking agreement with Air France that will give Delta a potentially lucrative foothold at London Heathrow airport while vastly expanding trans-Atlantic travel options for customers of both airlines.

"I was just going to be a prosecutor forever," Anderson says rather sheepishly. "I was pretty naive."

The son of hard-working parents who both died of cancer while he was in college, he never really had time as a young man to plot any career path, much less one that would put him in the top jobs at two major U.S. airlines. He focused on more immediate matters: raising his two younger sisters, working full time and finishing his education.

Anderson still takes a bit of pride in calling himself "B.O.I.," a Texas term meaning "Born On the Island." It's a designation reserved for the mostly working-class year-round inhabitants of Galveston, differentiating them from well-to-do mainlanders who spend part of the year there.

His father, Hale, was an office worker for the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. His mother, Frances, worked as a medical receptionist and typist. His Italian grandmother, Mariana Faustina Biagini, lived with the family for years to help with the cooking and child-rearing. Richard was the only boy, sandwiched between two older and two younger sisters. A fifth sister, Patty, died of brain cancer at age 7.

Early relocation

The family moved from Galveston to Dallas with the railroad when Richard was in the 5th grade. They moved to Amarillo when he was in high school.

Anderson was so close to his parents and sisters that he chose to attend Texas Tech University in Lubbock, the closest big state university to the family's home in Amarillo.

"Back then, I thought kids went to places like Yale and Harvard because those schools were close to where they lived," he says. "I really enjoyed my time there, but I missed my family a lot."