Athos Menaboni and The Wind Ship

One of the things that fascinates me about the heritage of the Coca-Cola Company is all the unexpected stories about our Company and brand.  For years, we had an item in the Archives listed as "Airplane Wallpaper."  I knew the general story that the wallpaper was hand painted by noted Georgia artist, Athos Menaboni, but I recently ran across this article in one of our internal magazines about the award winning plane and crew. Download The Wind Ship article from Coca-Cola Refresher.

There are a few other bits of trivia from this story.  Athos Menaboni was selected to paint the wallpaper because Robert W. Woodruff was a huge fan of his work.  Woodruff used a Menaboni bird painting for his Christmas card every year for decades.  The second is that the plane's name, "The Wind Ship" was a clever play on Robert Woodruff's middle name, Winship.  Finally, we had a section of the wallpaper framed and it is on display at the Aviation Services office for the Company.