Lauraine Mulally always knew her son had lofty goals.

But it was the fifth-grader’s drawing of a flying fortress — cutting through a Crayola blue sky on the back of a Kansas University campus map — that put Alan Mulally’s high-flying aspirations on paper, well before his dreams could become reality.

“That was about the time I knew — he was in fifth grade, at East Heights (School),” Lauraine Mulally said Monday, recalling the moment her only son had set his career sights on the sky. “Then he wanted to be an astronaut, but he couldn’t be an astronaut because he was part color blind, in the blues and grays.”

The discovery left Alan heartbroken until his father, Dick Mulally, could offer a viable alternative.

“His dad talked him into designing planes,” Lauraine Mulally said. “He owes a lot to his dad. He had the right idea.”

Today, Alan Mulally — president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes — is on the short list of candidates to become top executive at Boeing Co., the global aviation and aerospace-manufacturing powerhouse. It is the company he joined as an engineer back in 1969, having taken his father’s advice and just finished his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering at KU.

Boeing is looking for a successor for Harry Stonecipher, the Boeing CEO who resigned Sunday at the request of Boeing’s board. Boeing announced Monday that Stonecipher, who is married, had violated the company’s code of conduct in connection with a consensual affair with a female Boeing executive.

Mulally had been considered a leading contender for the top CEO job following the resignation of Phil Condit in December 2003 — also in the wake of an ethics scandal — but Boeing opted to bring Stonecipher out of retirement.

This time, some analysts say, Mulally’s candidacy comes with a stronger resume. He heads a division with $22.4 billion in annual sales, despite the struggles of airlines following the 9-11 terror attacks and Boeing’s rising competition from abroad, specifically Europe’s Airbus SAS.

Lauraine Mulally, of Lawrence, holds a photograph of her son, Alan Mulally, a Lawrence High School and Kansas University graduate, on Monday. In the picture, Alan Mulally is holding a model of the Boeing 777, an airline project he led for Boeing. Mulally is among those being mentioned as a top contender after the resignation of Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher.

Mulally is a member of the Lawrence High School Hall of Fame and has received two of KU’s top honors: the Distinguished Service Citation and the Distinguished Engineering Service Award.

In her Lawrence apartment, Lauraine Mulally tracks her son’s accomplishments through a seemingly endless collection of mementos: old newspaper clippings, airplane models and photos with dignitaries — from President Bush to John Travolta.

Each time he writes home, he adds to his signature by scribbling a caricature of an airplane with a smiling face inside.

“That’s his trademark,” she says, with a smile of her own. “He always puts that on there for me.”

Lauraine Mulally figures the job of Boeing CEO would be more pressure-filled than her son’s current post, but she remains confident that he could handle it.

If Alan Mulally calls home to ask for advice — he’s in Hong Kong this week on business — mom says he could expect the same steady guidance previously offered for years by herself and her husband, who died three years ago.

“Do your best,” she plans to tell him, “God will work it out. If this is what God wants, you can do it.”

A picture of an airplane drawn by Alan Mulally, then a fifth-grader at East Heights School.