'40S OPTIMIST STILL THINKS GOOD GUYS WIN.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Spend some time with Mary Howard, and it's pretty tough not to come away smiling and shaking your head in appreciation.

She's one of those precious, rare people - ``a cockeyed optimist,'' she calls herself - who can always find a little sun peeking through the darkest clouds.

``I still think that the good guys will win and that good deeds should be acknowledged,'' she said. ``I've never written a letter of complaint to anyone because that's a waste of time and stamps.

``I only write letters of praise,'' she said. ``Helps save on stamps.''

She laughs, but you get her gist. Listen to the talk shows, read the letters-to-the-editor column in any newspaper, or just keep your ears open, and you know what's going on.

The complainers have been routing the praisers. It's not even close. The pessimists have the optimists on the run.

Being a cockeyed optimist goes all the way back to the days before World War II, when Mary was growing up dirt-poor in the back woods of Kentucky. Her parents taught Mary that complaining was a waste of time and breath, so get over it and move on.

That's what she did. At 16, she caught a train to Los Angeles, and she got her first job at the E.L. Payne Heating Co., then located in Beverly Hills. Today, the company's headquarters are in Canoga Park.

``They had converted from heating equipment to war work at their plant, and I became a Rosie the Riveter, working on airplane wings there,'' she said.

``It was a wonderful, exciting time, and in the few years I worked there I liked the company and Elroy Payne, the owner, who was a good, fair man.

``So I've been using them for all my heating and air-conditioning needs since then,'' Mary said.

That would be going on 60 years.

Mary told that story to a young Payne technician as he performed the regular maintenance on her central heating and air-conditioning unit last year, and he related it to his bosses.

A week later, Mary Howard, the cockeyed optimist, got a nice letter from the Payne Co., thanking her for her loyalty and saying the next year of maintenance service was on them.

It was a gesture worthy of one of her letters of praise.

``Someday when you are writing about nice people doing nice things, especially companies, perhaps you would consider relaying my little story,'' Mary wrote me earlier this month.

Someday's today.

``I knew we had longtime, loyal customers going back to the '50s and '60s, but I've never met one from the '40s who actually worked for my grandfather,'' said Gordon Payne, now president of the company founded in 1914.

I tracked him down Wednesday at a local restaurant where he was having lunch with his father, Gordon Sr., who turned this family owned company over to his son in 1985.

``I have to tell you stories like this are what brought me into the family business,'' the current company president said. ``I worked for my dad while going to college and became so appreciative of this kind of customer loyalty.''

So, after lunch, the president of the E.L. Payne Heating Co. went to his office and took down a framed picture he had hanging over his desk.

Then he drove over to Mary Howard's North Hollywood home to personally show it to his company's longest-loyal customer.

It was a picture of nine of Mary's Rosie the Riveters co-workers back in the early 1940s, when E.L. Payne stopped making home heaters and started making airplane wings for the war effort.

Back when the optimists had the pessimists on the run.

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Photo:

Mary Howard looks for familiar faces in a photo shown to her by Gordon L. Payne, grandson of her World War II employer at E.L. Payne Heating Co.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer