Profiles of former Moog Aircraft Group employees

Dean Birt turned "The Boot" into "The Book."

The book, titled "The Boot," was Birt's ambitious and heart-felt effort to assemble a yearbook of sorts for about 60 people in his department who were being directly affected by Moog Aircraft Group's latest layoffs.

"I was trying to turn a negative into a positive," Birt said of the project that started with plans to produce 80 books. He later made a CD version at the behest of co-workers.

He said some people tried to be positive after the layoffs were announced, but the mood gradually turned darker, so he has gained personal satisfaction from knowing he made things a little bit better.

"It was well-received by everyone that I'm aware of. I've never heard any negative comments," he said. "For the most part, everyone saw it for what it was. Those with the company longer seemed to appreciate it the most."

Birt, a 61-year-old engineer who snagged a new job at the local operations of defense contractor L3 Communications, said the idea for the yearbook was spawned because of other employment situations he'd left before, although none had been triggered by layoffs. He'd retired from one job and had left another to join Moog. There was also the time when he walked away after a six-year stint with the Army Reserve. "I won't always say I liked the work," Birt said, "but I liked the people I worked with."

Fortunately, Moog offered a lot of advance notice for the layoffs. He received the go-ahead from a departmental manager to proceed, including using the photos of employees that had been taken for security badges. He got everyone's permission who appears in the book, although some were unavailable. He said it was easy once word started getting around, and he did almost all of the work himself from home.

Birt originally planned on bankrolling the project, but a department manager who was also being laid off "fell in love with the idea" and footed the bill with company funds. "He was as supportive as anyone in the group," Birt recalls, estimating the total cost for the books and CDs was between $2,500 and $3,000.

While layoffs are never easy for employees or the company, Birt believes the genesis for much current cost-cutting is greed.

"We're sending more manufacturing overseas, and the quality is going south," he warns. "The quality is nowhere near what it was when we were doing the work in the United States.