SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to the Pan Am Podcast, brought to you by the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York. This podcast and our museum are dedicated to celebrating the legacy of the world's most iconic airlock, Pan American World Airways. My name is Tom Betty, and I'm the host of this program. Thank you for joining us. This program is sponsored by the generous support of Mr. Adam Aaron, the CEO of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Incorporated. The Pan Am Museum Foundation is a nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information at the Pan Ammuseum.org. Again, our website is the Panamuseum.org. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. If you are using Apple Podcasts, please consider leaving a review. It will help others discover this program. If you're not familiar with Pan Am, welcome. We are honored to have you here, and for you to learn about what we're all about. If you already know of Pan Am, worked for, or flown on the airline, or just love our history, it's good to be with you again. So with that, let's get this episode in the air, so to speak. Welcome aboard your Pan American jet clipper. Traveling as part of the entourage of the President of the United States and his aircraft, Air Force One. Then we'll be joined by three special guests. Our first guest is Dwight Chapin, who was a top aide to President Richard M. Nixon. He recently released a book called The President's Man: The Memoirs of Nixon's Trusted Aid. While at the White House, Mr. Chapin helped organize presidential travel and traveled with President Nixon on his historic trips to China and the Soviet Union. A special thank you to Jim Byron and Joe Lopez of the Richard Nixon Foundation for connecting us with Mr. Chapin. We encourage you to visit the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorbalinda, California. Our second guest is Claire Graham, who was a Pan Am Purser from 1968 to 1991 when she joined Delta Airlines. Claire was part of the White House Press Charter flight crew and flew most of the special trips. And last but not least, Captain John Marshall returns to the program to tell us his stories of flying presidential charters and flying alongside Air Force One. But first, here's some history of the important diplomatic roles Pan American World Airways played for the United States government. In 1943, when U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled to Casablanca aboard a Pan Am Boeing 314 flying boat to meet with Allied leaders, Pan Am already had a special relationship with the Department of State and the White House, and this would continue until the airline would close in December of 1991. Later, when there were official presidential planes under the United States Air Force, it became standard procedure that when the president flew on Air Force One, a second aircraft carrying reporters and cameramen would accompany him. Many airlines were interested in such a prestigious contract, but Pan Am was consistently selected because of the airline's extensive global network, vast resources, and experienced and professional crews. The flights were known as White House press charters. Crew members for these flights were screened by the United States Secret Service, and once selected, the pool of press charter crews were closed. These flight attendants came to know the reporters very well on a personal basis and would have their favorite meals and beverages waiting on board the aircraft at the end of the day. Pan Am continued doing work for the White House until the airline ceased operations in 1991. In addition to providing the White House press charters, Pan Am was often called upon to assist the U.S. State Department for special missions. It provided transportation for heads of state traveling to the United States or to other destinations if the leaders national airline did not have the aircraft needed for long-distance travel. Pope Paul VI flew Pan Am from the Vatican to Istanbul in 1966. President Sukarno of Indonesia chartered several Pan Am jets in the 1960s for his global travels, and Alfredo Strasner, President of Paraguay, chartered a Pan Am 707 for a state visit to Japan in 1972. In addition to carrying world leaders, Pan Am provided humanitarian assistance around the world. It operated relief flights carrying food and medical supplies to victims of earthquakes and disasters, and organized airlifts during political unrest, evacuating U.S. citizens and embassy personnel. U.S. State Department couriers were often seen aboard Pan Am flights moving sensitive documents around the world. And on several occasions, U.S. Embassy staff visited local Pan Am ticket offices to send wires back to Washington when the embassy's telex systems were broken. Pan American World Airways was the unofficial national carrier of the United States and served the government many times, sometimes on perilous, secret, and dangerous special missions. The Pan Am Museum, within the Cradle of Aviation, just outside of New York City, has an exhibit dedicated to Pan Am's White House press charters. We encourage you to come visit, and we would love to welcome you. Now on to our interviews. As his personal aide and then deputy assistant in the White House, Dwight was with President Nixon in his most private and most public moments. He traveled with him, assisted, advised, strategized, campaigned, and learned from one of America's most controversial presidents. As Bob Holdeman's protege, Dwight worked closely with Henry Kissinger on the logistics of opening China and preparations for President Nixon's historic 1972 visit. After leaving the White House, he worked for United Airlines and then eventually went to prison over his Watergate testimony. Dwight's book takes readers on an extraordinary historic journey, presenting an insider's view on the Nixon presidency. Dwight shares his memorable experiences in his book with the people who shaped the future: Henry Kissinger, his close friend Bob Holdeman, Joan Lai, Pat Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew, J. Edgar Hoover, Frank Sinatra, Mark Felt, also known as Deep Throat, a young and ambitious Roger Ailes, and John Dean. His book covers a wide range from Coretta Scott King to Elvis Presley, from the wonder of entering a closed Chinese society to the Oval Office, and concludes with the startling new insights and conclusions about the break-in that brought down the Nixon presidency. There is a link in the episode description to Dwight's website and to purchase his book. And you can also find his book at all major bookstores. Dwight resides in Riverside, Connecticut with his wife Terry. Welcome to the Pantheon Podcast, sir.

SPEAKER_08 8:50

Thank you. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Let's talk about the historic trip to China. Can you tell us about some of the behind the scenes that went into the planning for that trip?

SPEAKER_08 9:04

Yes, I one of the most interesting parts of it, probably for your audience, would be that when the president first talked about going to China, this was right after the announcement had been made to the nation and to the world that he that he had been invited by the leaders of China to visit. We had a meeting in the Oval Office. And the president at that time thought that he it would be a party of like eight to ten people, maybe you know, at the most. His thought being that this was a very official businesslike type meeting. He wouldn't take Air Force One, he would go in with like a jet star, which is a smaller airplane, uh, and have a small press pool on that airplane. So everything in the original discussions of about the trip was in this kind of very capsulized way. The way it turned out when we went eventually, it was a total of 391 people, a fleet of airplanes, and all of the technical gear and everything. So it it evolved over the months that we did the planning from this initial very small group to the large contingency that ended up going.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

So, can you tell us a little bit about some of the logistics? You were the president's personal aide. I'm sure there was lots of planning. Pan Am was the press charter for this historic trip. Tell us a little bit about your conversations and work with Henry Kissinger and other White House staff.

SPEAKER_08 10:53

Yes. Um my uh my title, if you want to during the trip or for the trip, was acting chief of protocol. And my responsibilities were all of the logistics. Henry Kissinger, obviously, uh, who was the president's national security advisor, was in charge of all the substance for the trip, but I was in charge of all of the other mechanics of the trip. So what we did uh was I moved from my office uh in the west wing of the White House to the conference room in the bomb shelter that is underneath the main residence of the White House. And I set up shop there with my, I took uh one of my secretaries, Neil Yates, came, went down there with me. And then we would we we started meeting daily with uh the head of our advance operation by the man by the name of Ron Walker, the military aides office, uh, the secret service, and then the press office. Uh Tim Elborne, who was in charge of all press logistics, uh worked for Ron Ziegler, the press secretary. It happened to be that Tim had been a fraternity brother of mine at the University of Southern California. We were very close personal friends, and then here we were all of a sudden down in the bombshelder together working on this incredible trip to China. It was Tim Elborne who came up with the idea for that for the media we would take and go out to Boeing and design with them a 747 that would include all of the uh necessary television studios, radio type studio booths, we called them, and and all of the equipment, everything would be self-contained on this 747 that we and we would build it in the United States, and then we would fly it over there so that it would be at the airport. And and as the news people needed to file their stories and so forth, they they would go out to the airport, do so, and it would be transmitted back to the United States. It was Henry Kissinger that said, Well, don't don't get too wrapped up in your plan because I'm not sure the Chinese would agree to that. So uh I went over to China in in October of 1971 with Dr. Kissinger, and we we presented this plan. And indeed, the Chinese did not accept it. They were not about ready to let us come over with a 747 with all the self-contained studios. But what they did was they took our our diagram and they built a building uh that was long and narrow, like an airplane, had all of the studios and everything exactly kind of in proportion to what was on the 747 uh architectural drawings that we had, and they built it there, and it was it was a face-saving device for them. And then we we brought in all of the technical uh equipment that was necessary to fill out the studios and so forth. The Chinese wanted to buy all that equipment from us. Our State Department, because of uh uh copyright laws and so forth, would not let us leave it there. We we we took it all back. But the press contingency that went, that went over there on the Pan Am plane, the charters that that we had leased, uh uh all worked out of these this press facility that was built at the airport. So that that was part of our planning. Now the the press contingency that went, which relates directly to Pan Am, uh started off very very small. So we were originally Nixon said, well, we're gonna have six, eight, men, nine people, and we'll take three or four press people on the Jet Star, that expanded itself to over a hundred members of the press corps that wanted to go on this trip to China. It's not uh inconsequential that a lot of the broadcast and press entities, uh the management of the of those news operations started bouncing their own reporters off the trip because the trip was so hyped in terms of people wanting to go that the management decided they wanted to go. So let's just use as an example the Chicago Tribune, who maybe could have sent two reporters. Uh the the the the the head, the bureau chief went and one reporter, and they got rid of two reporters. I mean, it was it happened with CBS, it happened with NBC, it happened with ABC. It was kind of a funny situation. Uh, and and needless to say, the reporters themselves were not that happy. But in any case, we chartered a Pan Am plane. And that the Pan Am plane followed Air Force One from uh Andrews Air Force Base out to uh Hope Honolulu, where we overnighted, and then we went from there on to Guam. And all of this was in for the president to let his body kind of get his body clock get acclimated to ending up in Beijing. So the Pan Am plane carrying all of the press corps went from Guam uh to Shanghai, where they where we put up on Air Force One a Chinese pilot and radio uh officer uh for the trip from Shanghai on into Beijing. And the same thing happened on the Pan Am charter. Uh the Chinese would not let the Pan Am pilots and radio operators fly their plane without having equivalent Chinese people on there for, I guess, national security reasons or whatever. We went into Beijing, and when we got to Beijing, the press unloaded from the Pan Am charter. And at that time, then they they uh went into their hotels in Beijing. They had their own motorcade and so forth, and the Pan Am plane flew back to Guang. So it was it was in Guang waiting, and it stayed there until uh the party moved from Beijing to Hangzhou, which was uh where Chairman Mao had his summer home. It was uh uh a beautiful part of China, but the the Pan Amplane goes back, shuttles the media from Beijing down to Hangzhou, and then goes back to Guam, and a day and a half later comes back to Hangzhou and shuttles the media from at that point to Shanghai, China, leaves again, goes back to Guam, and then I believe it was a two-day separation there before they came back, picked up the media again and brought them back to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. But they they they would not allow the Pan Man Pan Am plane to remain in China. It always had to move out, wait, and then come back.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

It sounds like a logistical nightmare. How did you organize and orchestrate all of this?

SPEAKER_08 19:23

Well, because uh how like anything else, a project of this size calls for incredible teamwork. Uh, in my book, The President's Man, I I give all kinds of credit to uh the Secret Service, the uh people at the in the press office of the uh White House, uh, the uh WACA, the White House Communications Agency. This was a team effort. Have in mind that uh we we we had traveled with President Nixon all around the world uh and made several foreign trips. We we knew what we were doing in terms of arrangements. It was just the size and the scope of this was a little bit bigger. Uh well, actually, not a little bit, a lot bigger. And and we just applied, you know, everybody did their job and they did it well. And it was it was uh an event of such consequence that everybody was performing, you know, at the at their top level. It was uh uh it was remarkable. We had we it was all it was I we we we would have to deal with little things now and then, but for the most part, everything worked the way that we planned it.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Nixon's trip to China is probably in the top five most important historical events of the 20th century. Can you give us some insight on what was going through your mind and the feelings behind the scenes with President Nixon and his staff?

SPEAKER_08 21:08

Well, uh all of us were incredibly uh excited and uh and it was it was like uh a continual high. Our adrenaline is flowing. Uh we're as I just got through saying, we're we're performing at the best we can. So yeah, I don't even remember stopping to reflect and say, you know, as to the uh historicness of it, as much as being uh uh uh uh use using the discipline that had had been taught to me uh and the the procedures that I had learned, you know, working for President Nixon and Bob Haldeman and so forth. I I just we it it it wasn't like we were on automatic pilot but we were at the top of our game and so uh we we knew it was special you you i i i write in my book and i i i don't know when i when i came to the conclusion or whatever but it was almost like there was this kind of this subtle evolutionary transformation of of rich nixon the man uh i knew as president and so forth who was very brilliant and a great strategist and so forth but it was a transition to statesman i mean it the whole thing lifted everybody uh it it changed his the way he was viewed keep in mind he came back after that trip to china and then the subsequent trip to russia uh and he is uh very high in the popularity polls uh which which I think proves itself through the election that came up a few months later in 1970 the November 1972 election he he won every state except for Massachusetts and then the District of Columbia he carried he carried 49 states now granted he was running against a a rather weak democratic candidate George McGovern but Nixon's popularity and his the perception of him coming off of both the China and the Russia summits uh took him to a whole new level it's it's it's I don't mean to get way off uh track here but it's part of the reason that he that the Democrats were so determined to try to bring him down. I mean he he was riding so high and then they had this uh thing called Watergate that was able to take and and Nixon made his own mistakes there too and and and admitted it and talked about it on David's frost the David Frost interview so he he apologized to the nation but but he was leveled if you will by the Watergate situation and it's only now as history continues to review things and and take new looks that that we're able to get into get into proportion uh the legacy of Richard Nixon in your time with President Nixon in the White House I count 24 countries you visited with President Nixon uh and in all of those Pan Am was there with the press charters can you tell us a little bit about what it's like to travel with the President of the United States well uh it's a uh traveling with the President of the United States is a uh logistical circus uh it it uh the press side of it the the the charter side of it uh the White House had a division called the White House travel office uh both Tim Elborne who was in charge of working with the White House travel office and Bruce Wheelahan one of the uh the men that worked with Tim Elborne would coordinate and the and the the White House travel office is the one that would contractually make the arrangements with Pan Am to be the charter uh there were favorite uh people that that uh became that were part of the Pan Am uh family if you will uh certain pilots uh that uh were known to the travel office and they would request those pilots they would request stewards and stewardesses that uh had had served on previous journeys so it it it became kind of part of the the White House travel office family if you will so so when a trip would come along uh just as it was important for us that were doing the arrangements for the president uh to be knowledgeable and to know how it all worked and so forth it became equally important to a company like Pan Am that the people that they put on these assignments knew how we worked. So so the the uh the logistics that Pan Am brought to the thing and by logistics I should include all the personnel were people that that had experience dealing with the White House people. And this goes back in history I believe to to President Johnson who did uh foreign travel and President Kennedy who did a little bit of foreign travel before so so so you know it it's a knowledge buildup and that knowledge is uh one of the things that led to the continuum of using Pan Am.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Fortunately today uh the public can see both of the Boeing 707 Air Force ones one is in Dayton Ohio at the United States Air Force Museum and the second one is at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. So people can go right on board and see these wonderful aircraft but my question for you is what is it like to fly on Air Force One with the president of the United States?

SPEAKER_08 28:13

Yes well it it's uh uh luxury at its best I guess uh it's beyond what most people ever uh ever experience when I flew on air force one uh in in the the there's the president the presidential compartment I'm talking about uh 2600 uh 2600 that was our tail number uh when the president's on the plane it's air force one but it was a design the plane number was 26000 as I as I recall and as you went from the cockpit back you had uh the cockpit then you had the president's suite which had a a bedroom uh a bath and then a meeting room and then right behind the president's meeting room was a the staff compartment and that's where uh there were two tables uh one on either side of the plane and then two at each table two chairs uh on one side two on the other facing it these are very luxurious uh wide leather uh airline types you would see it in a first class compartment of an airplane uh so one table uh one table on the right hand side as you're going back in the plane would be uh three people Bob Haldeman the chief of staff next to him Bob's assistant Larry Higby and across from Bob myself so we we we occupied one table and then on the table on the other side would be uh Henry Kissinger if it was a foreign trip or John Ehrlichman if it was a domestic trip. John Ehrlichman was uh President Nixon's domestic affairs advisor Henry Kissinger being national security advisor so depending upon the nature of the trip uh it would be either one of those men occasionally it would be both of them uh if if if Nixon were traveling domestically but there was a foreign policy um implication to it for example if he was going out to California and part of the thing was to meet with Lyndon Johnson uh which happened uh uh Kissinger might go along because there might be national security questions at that table would be either a Kissinger aide or an Ehrlichman aide and usually Ron Ziegler. So that would be the the four people that would be occupying that table. In that cabin we also had a new thing called a fax machine and the thing that was fun about the fax machine that's kind of interesting I mean keep in mind we have no internet we have no cellular cellular phones or anything we have the fax machine but the fax machine only works when the plane is level so if we're taking off or we're landing the way that the fax machine would it couldn't be used. So we had to wait till we were level before we could use the machine uh and then there were two secretarial desks in that part of the cabin and that would be occupied by uh one of the secretaries that we might that either Haldeman would bring along or I in my case uh Nell Yates was on on board uh fairly often and for Dr. Kissinger we use Muriel Hartley was there um and and then then so now behind that compartment there were uh two rows of two seats so two for eight seats uh and they were again the luxury like uh first first class seats and they were for VIP guests so if the Secretary of State were flying with us or the attorneys general and their wives or whatever so we we had eight VIP seats and then behind them uh we had uh I believe it was 16 seats for the press pool and that would include uh a photographer uh a cameraman a sound man and and then uh the pool would be made up of an AP reporter a UPI reporter uh and then whoever had the current rotation assignment it might be ABC C B S NBC and of course all with cable now available uh that mix probably has changed but that would that would be the contingency on Air Force One what was the food like on Air Force the food uh was very good uh you could have uh a a steak if you wanted a steak uh on certain flights uh coming back from California for from the Western White House uh we usually had a Mexican lunch or a Mexican dinner uh that was uh prepared but the food was you know uh airline food but first class airline food two more questions for you in episode six of this program we covered the 1970 hijackings in the Nixon administration's landmark program of airport security and air marshals on airplanes do you have any memories of that event my memory is of the hijacking and the uh national focus if you will and as a I was I can remember going from my office in the West Wing uh down into the uh bowels of the of the White House where the situation room that we had at that time and the current situation room I I it's been updated and everything but it's generally in the same location but we had a feed uh we had an audio feed and then there were pictures that came in i and as I recall it's all it was video it wasn't excellent video like like we would have now but my memory is of a uh of the passengers being released by the hijackers coming down the steps i mean that's that's the image of i that i have and the relief that these people were getting off of that plane i but i uh i i think later the plane blew up or was blown up or blew up or however that happened but but the passengers did escape but it was uh it was high drama and um i remember going i just remember going down there and and uh absorbing this i i i did not communicate uh any of that or any anything with the president i would say this it is not the kind of thing that we we've had presidents like uh president johnson uh in particular i'm thinking of but that we've had presidents that would go down there and want to watch it and so forth uh president nixon was the kind of person that would rather uh uh remain separate from it and deal with being told about it uh so that the emotional the emotional connection to the decision making was separated somewhat so that it didn't he he didn't get caught up in the emotion of things. I may not be saying that exactly right but but but uh it's an important concept because a leader has to make the right decisions and they can't be uh if you're sitting watching something like that unfold and so forth your the emotional aspects of it could overtake the logic of how you have to be thinking about it.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Last question for you so you knew President Nixon personally you knew Bob Holdman personally what kind of people were they and also looking back on your fantastic career uh what stands out and what are you most proud of?

SPEAKER_08 36:58

Oh wow that's a that's that's a complicated uh question the the last part uh I I guess I'll answer it first I think I I'm most proud of the uh salutes I got from the work uh of going to China I mean I I I I worked hard at it Dr. Kissinger was a phenomenal mentor and uh Bob Haldeman my other mentor uh gave me license to work with uh Dr. Kissinger and uh I I was rewarded with becoming one of the 10 outstanding young men in the country by for my work. So I I I have to say that that's kind of the the crowning achievement uh the president himself uh thanked me uh uh and uh that that was like uh the stamp of gold as far as I was concerned uh as for what the two men that you mentioned were like uh President Nixon was an incredibly brilliant man he was a strategist a statesman a man uh a good man a man vastly misunderstood by uh by so many because uh the the history that has been written is so slanted from the Watergate happening uh that the other dimensions of him are just have been lost to date to history and and as I said earlier I I believe this is that we're into a a re-look at him uh and kind of a renewal of uh he was incredibly successful he had a democratic house a democratic senate but he got all kinds of legislation through how did that happen and it happened because he was a consummate uh politician he he he didn't rebel against democrats he brought them in under the tent and worked with them uh he accepted he was very pragmatic and and he his he knew that his responsibility to the country was to get things done and and there were big things that needed to get done particularly ending a war in Vietnam so uh he gave of his all he did it for the people and he he was a good man Bob Haldeman equally good Bob Haldeman completely misunderstood because he had a crew cut and made it look and and the pictures of him that were always seemed to seem to always be used by the media had this element of sternness. Now he was a tough boss you read my book you you you see that he his his demand level was unbelievably high uh hurdles that I I personally had trouble jumping many times and he would bang me for not performing at the level that he expected that those people who worked for the president of the United States have to reach. If you're going to work for the president then you damn well better perform and you better perform at a high enough level and and Bob never let up from that. In his mind he had one constituent not not he wasn't the kind of a chief of staff that went out and went on television and tried to uh expound upon the president's policies or uh talk about you know uh what what the country should be doing he had one client and his client was the president of the United States Richard Nixon and he did everything to make sure that Richard Nixon was successful and and and Bob was uh fair he was honest but he was tough.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Well thank you very much for your time the president's man the memoirs of Nixon's trusted aide Dwight Chapin you can find it in any bookstore.

SPEAKER_08 41:31

Anything else you'd like to add well I I appreciate the uh opportunity to talk with you Tom and uh I uh trust that uh you got some stuff uh from this uh discussion that will be interesting to your audience well we really appreciate your time and uh thank you very much I read this book and I couldn't put it down and I recommend it to all our listeners.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Thank you before our second interview with Claire Graham we're going to take a quick break with an actual ATC recording of Air Force One on approach to Reno, Nevada on August 31st 2016. When the president travels there is a large restricted no-fly zone that surrounds him and his aircraft and airports essentially shut down until the restrictions are lifted. The clip is about three minutes long. Let's take a listen

SPEAKER_07 45:54

Air Force 1 can write your discussion. Thank you to party crossing a Q5.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

Welcome back. Claire Rump Graham grew up in Northern Ireland. She moved to the United States in 1964 when she worked at the British Embassy for the Royal Navy. She then joined Pan Am in September 1967 as a stewardess. Six months later, she was promoted to Purser, a position she would hold the rest of her flying career at Pan Am and later Delta Airlines. Claire was a senior member of the White House Press Charter Pool and worked many presidential trips. She resides in Washington, DC. Thank you for joining us on the Pan Am podcast, Claire.

SPEAKER_01 46:46

Thank you, Tom. I'm happy to give you some memories of my amazing honor of being on the White House Pan Am press charters.

SPEAKER_00 47:01

Well, I am excited to learn about it. We've we had uh Dwight Chapin on the program earlier, and he worked for Richard Nixon until March of 1973. I understand that you did three trips with the Nixon White House starting in 1974, and then you went on to do White House charters for President Ford, President Carter, President Reagan, and President Bush. Why don't you take us back to the first White House press charter with the Nixon administration and then share your stories of these White House press charters with Pan Am?

SPEAKER_01 47:41

I'll just tell you how how it went, Tom. We reported to Andrews Air Force Base. Four o'clock in the morning. I drove to Andrews Air Force Base. In those days, you just had to show your ID at the gate and take your luggage. You could walk straight across to the Pan Am plane that would have been there overnight, probably with the pilots. So at those days, the crew were based mainly in Washington. We would climb on board our flight, of course, and get ready for the press. But we had time left over after we had checked everything, all the food and got all of everything ready on the plane. We'd have some extra time. So sometimes we could go across and go on to Air Force One. Can you imagine? We walked up the stairs and there'd be somebody there to say hi. Often the uh, you know, the captain, the crew of Air Force One would be on board too. And so we got to know the pilots on Air Force One by name, and then we got to know the crew, and we'd often go on a little tour of Air Force One, which was pretty amazing. Um they had um the same crew, of course, as they did on most of my White House press charters, and we could go through Air Force One and chat to everybody. I'll always remember there were the latest photographs of whatever president it was then all over the plane, and I just can't tell you how interesting it was to see the inside of Air Force One. It was pretty amazing, and looking back on it, that actually we could go on board and talk to people and see the inside of Air Force One. Then we would be there waiting probably until like 7 a.m. for the for the press to arrive, the whole of the White House staff who were traveling on that trip with the president. However, some of the press came on our plane, which they were very happy about. So if they were assigned to the Pan Am press plane, they didn't have to be part of the pool of White House press on board Air Force One. So everybody was very happy if they were going to be on the Pan Am plane for that flight for that trip, it changed backwards and forwards. And our plane was affectionately called the zoo plane because truly it was a zoo. And you know, I don't even know if I can say this to you because all the regulations went out of the window. People were standing up on takeoff landing, there was equipment piled against the doors, people had a bloody Mary in their hands. Not us, obviously, but it was just it was not like any flight I've ever known. The nice thing is that we got to know each other. I think they liked that too. We became friends. That was an important part of the White House press office chartering a Pan Am plane. They turned first to Pan Am, and we had a wonderful man called John McSweeney, and he was the go-between Pan Am and the White House press office. And they would between John McSweeney and the press office would set up the Pan Am charter. And that was a huge job for them. And the commissary and everything that a Pan Am White House charter involved was incredibly challenging. And I just can't all we had to do was get on sworn on board and you know and work. And that was so easy and fun, and they were wonderful, fabulous days and memories.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

So uh did you meet any presidents on some of these trips before?

SPEAKER_01 52:28

Yes. Oh yes. I never actually met President Nixon. You know, he was really under the gun of those last three trips. The first trip was to Pompadoo's funeral, the second one was uh a huge trip. It was a 10-day trip to Salzburg, Cairo, Jidda, Damascus, Tel Aviv, Amman, the Azores, and back to Anvers. And the final trip was to Moscow to meet Leonard Brezhnev.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

And this was all President Nixon's trip, correct?

SPEAKER_01 53:05

Yes. So I didn't meet him. Um, I don't think he was that keen to meet anybody at that point. I did meet President Ford, Jimmy Carter. President Reagan, I was invited along with our crew to the White House to a reception and lunch to meet President Reagan, and that was wonderful. That was he was, we all met him, shook hands with him, and that was a very special that he wanted to meet us. And then I did meet uh President Bush on uh on a flight. I mean, after flight, I think it was Saudi Arabia, but I did meet all uh four presidents, but not President Nixon. I'll just tell you what we did for fun on a lot of these trips. For example, we flew into Cairo and uh we uh when the press we we bought uh calf dams. And so we took off our uniform and wore calf dams for that leg of the flight, and probably for the next leg because they was it was so comfortable. Um so we tried to wear the dress of the countries. This is the whole crew, the Panam crew, tried to wear the dress of the countries we were flying to, and the press liked that a lot. And of course, we loved it because we could, you know, get comfortable because they were very long days and nights. And one time we flew into Jidda and we went to the souk and we bought burkers, and we dressed up in burkers, and when the press came back to the plane, there we were in these black burkers. They were dying to get on board, they were so happy they had such a long day, they were exhausted. And the first thing they wanted was a drink, and we said, Oh, I'm so sorry, we're not allowed to serve any alcohol because we're in Saudi Arabia. We were joking, of course, and their faces fell, oh my god, we can't have a drink, we need a drink, it's been a really, really long day. So we that was a huge joke we played on them, and of course, we soon gave in and gave them cocktails. I mean, they they had had a terrible, it was a long, long trip. So we had it, we had a lot of loves changing into if we could find the costume of the country. Uh, we went actually went to Tokyo. I forgot. We went did go to Tokyo and we wore kimonos. And that was fun too. It was just fun not to wear our uniform.

SPEAKER_00 56:05

And were there secret service on on your plane?

SPEAKER_01 56:09

Um, not that I recall. They were always on Air Force One. So um, Tom, we had amongst the journalists who one would remember or who I remember, we had Helen Thomas, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Walter Cronkite, Mike Wallace, Tom Brookwell, Barbara Walters. So really uh Barbara Walters and Helen Thomas were the first women reporters that we had in those days. Uh later on, of course, you know, there were more, there were more women reporters, but in those days, they were mainly the men that that you know that we uh that we had on board. And we got to know them and they got to know us and they knew our names, and we were sort of one big, happy, tired, usually family. We had really long duty days, probably highly illegal. We served fabulous food. They loved our plane for that reason, too, apart from being uh on the zoo plane where they could sleep and drink and laugh and do anything they wanted. We had wonderful food, like first-class food, and we usually had the favorite drinks of certain uh people that requested them. So uh Pan Am really did make a huge effort to sometimes please uh the wants of certain passengers.

SPEAKER_00 57:52

What planes were you flying? Were these 747s?

SPEAKER_01 57:55

Yes, yes, the first, yes, the first plane was a 707, then it was a 747. And that was when, of course, much larger plane and the crews got bigger and bigger, and they would change the configuration. So it was still very comfortable for the press. It was more of a challenge in every way for the seats and the food, the catering and the pilots, double pilots. But um, it it still was a fabulous thing to see a Pan Am plane land in some uh foreign destination. So that must have just been quite a sight to see uh uh two or three uh uh uh 747s on the aircraft in some of these countries like uh Saudi Arabia or Jeddah, we went to or other countries to see these uh huge planes landing with the press and uh to be particularly proud of the Pan Am logo.

SPEAKER_00 59:08

So you worked for Pan Am for over 24 years. Yes, and you were on these prestigious uh uh press charters for presidential trips. Looking back on your career, what makes you proud?

SPEAKER_01 59:30

Oh my gosh. Well that that those press charters were uh the highlight of my career. I was so proud to be invited to fly on uh many, many of those trips, and also domestically sometimes on the campaign trips with uh whatever president was uh was campaigning. But so proud of Pan Am. So very proud of Pan Am and that they carried off these amazing trips seemingly without a hit, were always there when they should be. I don't know, some places how they manage the catering, goodness knows. And um just to see, as I said, the pan and plane and our well, our uniforms, we had our uniforms in and the crew, it was a team effort, it really was. And uh we as I say, we all got to know each other and loved happy, happy, amazing memories and proud that I uh was part of the White House press charters.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

Anything you'd like to add about presidential press charters and also in general about uh Pan Am?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:59

Of course, I was uh terribly sad when Pan Am uh went under. That was for all of us with Pan Am. That was those were terri that was a terrible day, terrible days when we found out that we uh didn't uh represent Pan Am anymore. But uh they were uh incredibly happy days too. I mean, I flew several, of course, many other trips that I loved and I I I loved my job. I can really say I loved it. There were difficult days, but I personally loved my job. I'm so glad I did it. At that age, uh one did not, as a woman, you didn't really have much of a choice of a career. You could be a secretary or a teacher or a nurse or a stewardess. So I was fortunate enough to be chosen for Pan Am and fly for Pan Am. And I've never regretted that wonderful opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

Well, Claire, thank you very much for your time. This was very interesting. I mean, you've flown with five presidents, you were able to meet four of them. I mean, what an incredible career that you've had. And uh thank you very much for coming on the program and sharing your stories about presidential flight charters.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:26

Thank you, Tom. Thank you for volunteering to do these podcasts. It was very nice talking to you. I so enjoyed my White House press charters and all the crews I flew with, and all the people I met meeting, various presidents, just the entire experience made Pan Am stand out for that because that was the first Pan Am was the only airline they really wanted first to charter for a White House uh trip. They would sometimes have TWA in those days, but it was the first airline that the White House requested. So thank you, Tom. Thank you for doing this.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:20

Well, thanks again for coming on the program.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:22

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:43

In the spirit of this episode, First Lady Pat Nixon christened the very first Pan Am Boeing 747 in Washington, D.C. on January 15th, 1970.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:57

1970. Having led the world into the jet age, Pan Amps itself. Working closely with Boeing, PM develops a huge new aircraft. Far exceeding in size and capabilities, anything that anyone has ever dreamed of the new seven forty-seven. From San Francisco to New Zealand, from Australia to San Francisco. On May 1st, 1976. It shows the world what it can do. 747 takes off from New York. It is back in New York 46 hours later. The first story is all about yet to come.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:25

Captain John Marshall is featured in episode two, The First Presidential Flight and the Last Pan Am Flight, and also in Episode 15, Pan Am International Flight Academy and Stories from the Flight Deck. He joined Pan Am in 1964 and would go on to fly many White House charters in his career and was able to handpick his crews. Captain Marshall was with the airline until the very end in late 1991. Afterward, he continued flying 747s for Korean Airlines until 1996 due to mandatory retirement. Since 1996, he's worked for the Federal Aviation Administration in St. Louis, Missouri. It's a great pleasure to welcome you back. This is your third time coming on the program. Captain Marshall, welcome back to the Pan Am podcast. Thank you very much, uh Tom. Very happy to be back. So we had earlier in the program, we had Dwight Chapin, who was President Nixon's trusted aide. And then we had Claire Graham, who was the Pan Am flight attendant, which I believe you know, who worked the uh White House press charters. And you also worked the White House press charters. So let's start with a typical trip with the White House. Can you walk us through your day?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:47

One trip that comes to mind was it was a long Far East trip. Uh this was president with President Carter, and it was in uh two parts, two segments really. Uh the first segment was from Andrews, which was the Air Force base serving Washington, DC, which is where Air Force One was based. From Washington to um Anchorage, where there was a crew change and a um uh fuel stop. And then from there they went on to Tokyo for it, it was a G7 economic summit, as I as I recall. In those days, the Air Force One and the press charters were flown by 707s. This was in the late 70s, as I recall. The departure was uh mid-morning, as I remember, and uh we flew down, ferried the airplane down uh from Kennedy uh that morning, met the flight service crew. The flight attendants that operated the press charters were all pretty much hand-picked, and they were uh by the White House, and they were all based in Washington. And uh as far as the pilots were concerned, there were two captains that flew them in those days. There was myself and the gentleman named Bill Hurley, who had done it uh who preceded me, and he and I did most of the ones during the time when I was flying. The White House liked the continuity of the crews because it made it easier for them to uh to vet them. And by having the you know the same group of flight attendants uh all the time, there was a continuity to the press corps as well. And over time, the flight attendants all got used to what the various members of the press corps ate and drank and what their preferred beverage of choice was. And at the end of the day, when they all traipsed back onto the airplane to go back to Washington or wherever, uh the girls would always meet the press at the top of the stairs with whatever their favorite drink was. It was uh and the press really enjoyed that. But uh we landed at uh Andrews and we parked uh very close to the um to Air Force One. And of course, nothing happened until the president arrived, and he typically arrived in a helicopter. And as soon as the president's right foot hit the bottom step of the ramp up to the airplane, they started the engines, and as soon as he was aboard, the door was closed, the ramp was pushed back, and they taxied out. Uh, once he was aboard, they didn't wait for anything. And the press, for the most part, Ed Andrews was already aboard our airplane, and so we took off um shortly after Air Force One, and we both flew in tandem to Anchorage, and we did an interchange along the way. The interchange was a process that we used almost all the time, and it involved uh Air Force One departing prior to the press, and then en route, uh, we would pass Air Force One so that the press could land and cover the arrival. Also, there was a protocol that uh required uh at least a photo pool and a journalistic pool, it was just a few people that was required to cover live every presidential departure. In the case of disaster, that there would be a contemporary record of of what happened. Thank God we never had to use that, but that was the way the uh the system worked. And when we were at an out station, uh it was always a scramble to get all the rest of the press back on the airplane after Air Force One left so that we could take off and and uh do an interchange, particularly on a short leg. We was kind of a kind of a hustle. Uh the way it worked was we coordinated with the Air Force One pilots beforehand, and they took off and they cruised at a very leisurely Mach number, and sometimes, depending on the situation, they would even sort of kind of make big S turns around while we caught up and passed them. Uh, we would run it up to the barber pole and fly at about Mach 86 until we passed Air Force One and had a comfortable cushion uh when we landed at the other end so the press could get out and cover the arrival. And we coordinated uh in-route frequencies and and so on, and it got to be you know a pretty routine operation once uh we got to know uh the Air Force One guys and they got to know us. And on this particular trip, as I remember, my crew and I were getting off an Anchorage, and another and Bill Hurley and um his crew were getting on to take the uh flight on to Tokyo, and it was uh a beautiful, beautiful midwinter day uh going into Anchorage, and the visibility up there was about a hundred miles. You could see just forever, and the view was absolutely spectacular. And we made a visual turn in over the uh turned again inlet there to land on a runway uh 104 at Anchorage, and uh as we as we turned final, I realized that there was a kind of a commotion going on in the cockpit behind me, and I looked over my shoulder, and there were about eight people crammed into that 707 cockpit. All all the press press guys, every one of them had a drink in their hand, and the guy sitting behind me on the jump seat had a martini in one hand and a camera in the other. And I just leaped back and said, hang on, guys. I said, I'll try and make it smooth. But we flew with the cockpit door open, and we usually had a steady procession of people in and out of the cockpit just you know, just to chat, unless it got it was uh unless it was at night and it got to be too distracting, then we'd push the door uh closed. But uh it was always it was always the cockpit was always available to anyone who wanted to come up there. So we um it it was such a rush of being around that uh that kind of power. And uh the um the crews were always the Air Force One crews and and the Secret Service people that we traveled with were an absolute delight. And uh, like I said, we had kind of a hand-picked group of flight attendants who were equally dynamite, and Claire Graham, whom you mentioned that you interviewed earlier. Claire was a purser, uh, a senior purser, British girl, who was absolutely wonderful, and I flew a number of trips with her. I'll tell you another uh another story about uh Claire company. We were on a campaign trip there again in the Carter days, where we took off from uh Washington and we made several stops during the day. It was a domestic trip, and uh the last uh stop was at some place up in New Hampshire, Manchester, sticks in my mind. And Carter was notorious for never keeping to his schedule, and uh he was late getting back to the airport as usual. It was the last stop of the day, and it was a long day, an exhausting day for everybody, the press included, and us, and the press got on uh board, and and uh the girls, as as usual, they had the guys would hit the top step, and the girls would have their favorite drink, whoever it was, whether it's a martini or a beer or a glass of wine or whatever, handed to these guys as they stepped on the airplane. And uh we took off, and since it was the last fight of the day, there was no interchange involved, and Air Force One took off, and they hightailed it for Andrews, and we took off uh not too long after them, and air traffic control uh treated us as sort of an entry, and they called us not long after takeoff, and um I said uh we can give you direct Andrews if you like, Clipper. And so I said, Yeah, okay, we'll take that. And I called Claire up to the cockpit. I told her we'd had about an hour and a half, uh, because she had a full dinner uh to get served to everybody. And I said, Claire, we've just been given direct Andrews, so instead of an hour and a half, we're gonna it's gonna be about 50 minutes. And her face. She said, I've got a full four-course steak dinner out there with drinks and everything, and you expect me to do this in 50 minutes? And I said, Claire, what's more important? A quick trip to Andrews or or your dinner. She didn't miss a beat, she said, my dinner. So I called air traffic control and I said, Can you send us out over the Atlantic and put us in a holding pattern for about 45 minutes or an hour until we finished dinner? And we heard these guys laughing in ATC. That was a that was a request I don't think they got very often. So we went out there and we made great big lazy circles until uh I got the high side from Claire that dinner was over and we could go back in and land. And so all's well and ends well. Everybody was at it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:03

So Air Force One call sign is obviously Air Force One. On these trips, these White House press charters, uh, were you still called Clipper and then the flight number? Yes, we were assigned a specific flight number.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:16

Air Force One uh is any airplane that the president happens to be riding in. And as an interesting aside, when Nixon resigned and Ford offered him the use of the airplane to fly uh back to California, Nixon's resignation uh was not effective until noon on that particular day. And he went out to Anders and they took off at about 10 a.m. And of course he was still president, so it was still Air Force One. At noon, they were somewhere over the middle of the country, somewhere over Kansas. And at the stroke of noon, the call sign of the airplane changed from Air Force One to whatever the tail number of the airplane was.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:04

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:05

Yeah. Air Force One itself, the airplane itself was a in those days, it was a 707. I did fly a couple of uh charters when they after they had changed to the uh 747. And you cannot imagine the facilities and the equipment and the security measures and everything that are involved in that flight, to say nothing of the luxurious quarters for the president and his staff. It's uh it's really something to see. Of course, the girls always love to fly those charters because the press corps was a bunch of fun people and they they enjoyed our people as much as we enjoyed them. But as I said earlier, it's a it's a heady thing to be, you know, around that kind of power.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:53

With these press charters, uh in any presidential trip, there is heavy orchestration and precise planning. Can you talk a little bit about the planning that went on between the two crews, the Air Force crew that was flying Air Force One and your Pantheon crew?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:13

Uh well, we were um involved primarily with the uh with the interchanges. And of course, the for obvious reasons, it was uh uh they certainly wanted the wanted to have the press as close by as possible because the the press is what politicians live on. And uh so it uh they they were very, very careful to be to make sure that we were all on the same page and and everything. I remember once we were flying out of Kennedy, I think um whoever the president it was, it might have been Reagan, had been in New York for a lunch meeting or something, and they were going on to some other destination. And so our uh our airplane, the Air Force One and our airplane was parked at Kennedy. And um when they got back from the whatever the function was, the the press was in several different buses. There's always a press pool that travels on Air Force One, and then the rest of them uh are on our our airplane. Uh the president showed up and they were on board and out of there, just lickety split. We were still rounding up people, and uh our people at uh the Pan Am Hangar at JFK weren't used to turning an airplane or that kind of pace, and but and we ended up uh with a real scramble to get the press pool, uh the departure pool on the airplane, and then we uh we had a hot start on one of the engines, and uh so we ended up considerably um a little bit further behind the power curve than I would have liked. And I remember that trip, uh the guides in the Air Force One were kind of pulling my leg a little bit about the reliability of our airplane, and uh they ended up, I think they almost had to make a 360 so we could catch up to wherever the next leg was. I I can't remember. And uh but one of the um parks of flying uh overseas press charters and going back into Andrews, there's you know, there's no customs and the planet's love that um coming back from the far east on that trip that I mentioned earlier when we started out going to Alaska, uh uh my crew and I uh deadheaded to Tokyo about a week or to uh Honolulu about a week later to pick up the trip on the way back. They they were coming uh nonstop from Seoul, and when they landed in Honolulu and we were doing a the crew change and uh and the uh fuel uplift and catering uplift and everything, and the I got to chatting with some of the girls, and they were telling me what they'd bought over there in in uh Korea. And they one girl had bought three TV sets, and uh it went on from there, and and because the lure, of course, being the fact that there was no customs back at Andrews. So when we left, I said to the flight engineer, I said, you better make the figure it for maximum gross weight. I don't know uh what the numbers are gonna say, but just figure it for max gross weight based on what I'd heard the girls talk about, what they had brought with them. So we took off and we were going nonstop to Andrews from Honolulu. It's about a nine and a half, 10-hour flight. And we taxed out uh to the reef runway there in Honolulu, the eight right, the long runway that takes off out over the lagoon. Air Force One had long gone. We started the takeoff roll, and we rolled and we rolled and we rolled, and we didn't seem to be accelerating very fast. And I um I had the vice president of flight off sitting behind me on the jump seat, who was a good friend of mine. And finally I had almost had to pull the airplane off the runway at the end. And as soon as the wheels left the ground, the stick shaker went off. And I was afraid to raise the gear because I didn't want to put the those big gear doors out there in the slipstream. And we went whistling across that lagoon at about 200 feet, uh, with a stick shake shaker going on and off. And we finally got it clean up, and it took us over 45 minutes just to get up to 29,000 feet, which is an excessively long time. And when we finally let our breaths out, I turned to Jim sitting on the jump seat behind me, and I said, What do you think this thing really weighs? And he said, Boy, I don't think we want to know, but thank God for Brad and Whitney. And when we got to Andrews and I saw what came out of the belly of that airplane, I was absolutely astounded at the the TV sets and the electronics and the brass tables and this and that. Good lord. Uh to this day I'll never know, but I sure would like to know what that airplane, what that airplane wins.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:44

That's the that's a great story. Yeah. So looking back, you've had a very distinguished uh Pan Am career, Korean Airlines career, FAA career, but looking back at these White House press charters, what memories really stand out to you?

SPEAKER_03 1:27:03

Uh well, I'm not sure that you could say that there was any really one, Tom. They were just um it was it was just um a real privilege to be invited to uh to be one of the few guys that that flew those. I would the captains um were permitted to pick their own crews. My pilot, the co-pilot and flight engineer. We didn't have any say in who the girls were, but I picked my own first officers and own engineers, which was a nice perk. And it was just it, it it was a perk, and it was just um it was just a really fun thing to do. I flew uh one of the trips that was under the auspices of the uh White House travel office was when uh Deng Xiaoping was here, and that was in 1978. As I remember, it was the first time the Chinese leader had ever come to the United States. And uh a couple of years earlier, uh Nixon had made a trip to China earlier than that and set some of the wheels in motion. But uh the Chinese government had bought uh several 707 airplanes, and Deng Chao Peng and his entourage showed up in one of the Chinese uh 707s. And we flew the the the uh the charter for the press that started in uh Atlanta when the Chinese uh went to the uh Lockheed plant there at uh Marietta in Georgia. From there we went to Houston and they did we were there for two or three days while they did a big tour of the um space center down there in Houston. And uh while they were there, they were uh hosted at a rodeo, a country rodeo way out oh 40 or 50 miles from Houston. We all went out there in a bus to go to the rodeo, which was great fun because these the the Chinese delegation showed up and they put all these little Chinese guys in stagecoaches and buckboards and put these huge 10-gallon hats on them, and which they looked absolutely ridiculous. But we flew a parallel charter with TWA. Uh, they had a 707, and we kind of flew side by side. They flew half the press corps and we had the other half. And then from uh Houston, we went up to Seattle, where the Chinese toured the Boeing facilities. And I remember when we were in um Houston, we had the airplanes parked at Ellington, which was a a uh not the big commercial airport, it was an Air Force facility there in Houston. And uh, we were parked uh right behind the Chinese 707, and we got out there the morning we were gonna leave. We got out there fairly early. So we thought, let's go over there and see if we can get on board the Chinese airplane. So we walked over there and there was a boarding ramp up to the to the front door, and there was a couple of guys on the airplane, so we motioned was it okay to come up? So they yeah, motioned us up into the uh out of the airplane. They wouldn't let us go back in the back. They kept saying special airplane, special airplane. But they did let us take a look in the cockpit, and it was a the standard Boeing 707 cockpit, except they had a great big nav table back in the back with a telegraph key that looked like an old Wild West telegraph key you'd see in the railroad office in about 1880, somewhere. And that's that's what they used to communicate with with home base. We flew up to Houston or up to Seattle the following day, and um we had a Chinese uh television crew that was on the airplane with us, and they wanted to do a film interview on on the airplane, so we invited them up to the cockpit. Very, very interesting. I um I guess we were on the Chinese evening news at some point, but it was so much fun flying with the TWA guys, too, because interestingly enough, we were in Seattle for about three days, and the White House press office just pulled out all the stops for us, and they arranged tours and made restaurant reservations for us and so on. And and we went together with the TWA people years later, after I had retired and and quit active flying, and I was uh uh working with the FAA, and I was flying uh as an FA inspector on a TWA flight to uh LaGuardia. When we got to LaGuardia, I got to chatting with the captain, uh, and he wanted to know about my career with Pan Am. Well, one thing led to another, and it turned out that he was the cap the TWA captain on this Chinese charter. Wow, yeah, yeah. And by God, I as soon as he mentioned that, I I recognized him and rem remembered his name. And uh about two weeks later, I got an uh envelope in the mail from him, and he had a photo that was taken in Seattle of he and I and our cockpit crews and a couple of our flight attendants uh along with us there in Seattle getting ready to go out to dinner. And uh so wow, that's great. You talk about this small world, it you know, it really is.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:58

That's great.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:00

These White House press charters sounds they sound very interesting. Oh, yeah. Very interesting.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:06

Every place we would land, um, especially on the campaign from the domestic campaign trips, uh, when we would park the airplane, the first thing that would happen was some guy would become walking out from the terminal building or wherever we were parked there with a telephone on about a 200-foot-long cord. This is long before the days of cell phones or satellites or anything like that. And he brought this phone up and he set it on the seat behind me in the cockpit. And I said, What is that? The first time I ever saw that and said, What is that? He said, That connects directly to the White House switchboard. And if you pick that phone up, the White House switchboard will connect you to any phone number anywhere in the world instantly. And so I picked up the phone and I called my mother. I said, You won't you never guess where I am. And I told her I was sitting in my cockpit flying with uh with the presidential press corps and a White House charter. And she for a long time she didn't believe me.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:22

That's great. Yeah, that story made my day. That's that's a great story. Very good. Uh anything you'd like to add about White House press charters?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:36

No, we were um in those days, Pan Am threw the flew the great bulk of uh the overseas charters and and many of the domestic charters for you know the reasons I mentioned the White House uh liked the continuity of the crews. Uh so it it made their vetting of the crews easier. And plus they knew that as management pilots, we were not at the end of our contractual duty the day, we were not gonna just shut the operation down and refuse to fly, which uh apparently some airlines, domestic airlines, which will remain nameless. They had a couple of bad experiences with that, and they would put these uh press charters out for bid to the regular pilot group, and they got a couple of union guys on there who would not fly past their contractual limits unless and essentially just left the press corps stranded. Huh. So they didn't fly many more. Uh, but that's one of the reasons that they like to have Pan Am uh do them because uh we were a known quantity and because the continuity of the of the crews, especially the flight attendants. I think they had a a core of about 30 of the uh Washington base flight attendants. I think I think they were still stewardesses in those days, um that they picked from to fly, you know, to fly these trips. And they were delightful gals, and Claire Graham was a good example. Um so and we just had a we had a just a wonderful good time. It was a departure from regular line operations, and it was uh, you know, just out of so out of the ordinary. I remember flying a um oh a camp to pain trip. I think it was with Carter um going from Kansas City to Chicago. Carter was late as usual because he wanted to make a stop at a barbecue place on the way to the airport. And um we were headed for O'Hare. And we took off and we went um we we had to hustle with the interchange because we were running late. We got to Chicago, we we contacted O'Hare Approach Control, and it was about five in the afternoon. And if you've ever flown into O'Hare, you know what I'm talking about. O'Hare's you know, kind of a busy place, and they knew that we were part of the uh Air Force One press group, and so from about 50 miles out of Chicago, we got a clearance direct to O'Hare. You're clear to the land runway of your choice.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:34

And well, you don't hear that very often, unless you're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:38

Certainly no, not going into O'Hare, and I just could imagine all these airplanes that they had to park out in holding patterns somewhere to let this happen. And these guys wondering, who the hell is that? Who does Pan Am think they are? So we landed uh at O'Hare. We flew right over the center of the airport and made a visual downwind leg just like we were out at at uh local airport and landed, and and we parked over at the National Guard facility. But one thing that that uh the uh Air Force One trips did, Carter's barbecue trips notwithstanding, was they they published the schedule, a day's schedule for the for the flights of when they were going to leave and and what was gonna happen at the various stops and when they were when they would arrive and then when they would depart. And you could set your clock uh on them when Air Force One arrived somewhere, and you would you'd watch them if the scheduled arrival was 1005 at 10 oh 59, the nose wheel would make its last revolution to stop on the spot. And uh, I asked one of the Air Force One navigators how they did that. Uh, they how they were so managed to be so accurate. And he said, well, he said one thing it helps that we never have to wait for anybody. And uh he said, we time it usually from the auto marker, we know how long it's gonna take us to fly and approach. We are familiar with the airports or are familiar enough to know that after we land, how long it'll take to get to where we're gonna park, and we can speed up or slow down to a good degree to make that happen. And he said, very seldom do we miss. And in my uh in my experience, that was that was very true. They they rarely missed. So it was it was just a fun thing, and I was very privileged and honored to be selected um as one of the guys to fly them at at at the Pan Am. Uh I have no idea uh how they how they do it nowadays or how they if they have a specified carrier that they like to use for White House charters or not. I I've been out of it too long, but it was sure fine at the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:14

Excellent. Well, thank you very much for coming back on the program. John Marshall, celebrated Pan Am pilot, worked for Korean Airlines, FAA, was on the Pan Am podcast three times in counting, and also the China National Evening News. Right. Thank you again, Captain Marshall. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:40

All right, Tom. Thanks very much. Very much enjoyed it. Nice talking to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:50

Pan Am was a pioneer in air travel and still stands as one of the most iconic and innovative airlines in aviation history. That legacy lives on at the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York, where you can explore the rich history of the aircraft and individuals at the heart of the company known as the world's most experienced airline. For more information about the Pan Am Museum, check out our website at www.thepanmuseum.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. As was once a tagline in one of our commercials, we would greatly appreciate your support to help the Pan Am Museum continue making the going great. You can also support the museum by shopping on our online store for all things Pan Am accessories, apparel, jewelry, books, models, and posters. We want to hear from you. If you have a question for us or want to share your story, our email address is podcast at the Pan Ammuseum.org. We're going to close out this episode with the song Hail to the Chief, performed by the United States Marine Band. As flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world, thank you for flying, Pan Am.