They came bearing wide smiles and huge platters of tasty morsels yesterday at the old Aloha Airlines reservation office at Stadium Mall, back behind the Pizza Hut in the shadow of Aloha Stadium as cars buzzed by on H-1 Freeway.

The former Aloha Airlines employees came and went all day, and at noon there were about 200 people on hand, grinning, hugging, reliving old times and chowing down — as kids played tag, people gabbed and occasionally wiped away a tear.

They had pitched in $5 apiece to rent the vacant office and brought their own food.

It was an amazingly upbeat crowd considering that they had gathered to commemorate the one-year anniversary of losing their jobs.

It was March 31, 2008, that Aloha shut down passenger operations and laid off 1,900 people in Hawai'i's largest mass layoff. About 20 percent of them remain jobless.

But Aloha employees are a family, they said, and it was great to see one another again.

Wendy Len — still looking for a job — worked at the company for 18 years handling employee benefits. She said it had been grand while it lasted.

"Nice people, the job, the company, what's not to miss?" she said standing amid the piles of food.

Part of Len's job was getting tickets for employees who could fly at discounted rates on Aloha and other airlines.

"It was like you had wings," she said, daintily stretching out her arms, "You could go anywhere you wanted."

She misses it: the job, the routine, the people.

"We're happy today," she said. "We're with familiar people."

Mel Ah Yo, who worked for the company for 24 years in the old reservations office and as an Aloha airport manager at Maui, agreed that it was a happy day.

"It's the energy all these people have," he said. "They're family. When we get together, there's always more smiles than sadness. Good spirits."

Gail Ishimoto, Karen Goto, Sue Ann Lau, Robyn Mishima and Darlene Tao — who collectively worked more than 100 years at Aloha — sat at a table, caught up with each other and talked story.

In a way, the timing of Aloha's demise was beneficial, they said. What was soon going to happen to many more people all over the country happened to them first.

"It's been a year already and we've moved on," said Ishimoto, who has found a temporary job with Kapolei Hale City and County Department of Facility Maintenance. "A big mahalo to the public for being so supportive of us."

Mishima, who still has a job in Aloha's cargo operation, agreed.

"We were fortunate that we were first," she said. "Now it's harder to get help because there's so many people."

She feels very lucky to have the job in cargo — but, "you feel guilty," she said, "bad for the others."

All of them said Aloha had been a great place to work.

Tao, who has a part-time job at Target, said, "I miss my Aloha family. We needed to get together. This," she said looking around the old reservations office, "is a perfect place to get together for closure."

Ishimoto nodded, "It was such an abrupt ending, we didn't have time to say goodbye. It's good to see everybody, how they're doing, what kind of jobs they have," she said.

"We never would have left if they hadn't closed down," said Goto, who has a job with a hair products company.

Lau, who is still unemployed, said, "It was a great place to work, excellent, most of all it was the people."

Ishimoto gazed about her and said, "I've never seen it this empty before. But it's nice to be here with everybody."

Tao wiped her eye. "You're going to make me cry," she said.

And she did, just a little.