SPEAKER_00 2:57

Today from that one is still a force to be recognized. At 1982 yards, the difficult day from that one is finding nine volts of gold, an hour of tennis, kayaking, and then walking two miles. All in one day. Thank you very much for joining us on the program, Madeline and Valerie. Truly a Pan Am family story.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Well, it's a delight to be here. Yeah, Dido. Yes, uh, I'm Valerie, and it's very nice of you to be doing this for us, Tom.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Thank you very much. So, Madeline, let's start with your story. So you joined Pan Am in 1946, right after the war. Um why did you decide that you wanted to be a stewardess?

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Well, I went to um a Catholic school, Catholic boarding school in Seattle. And at that time I was always drawing pictures of airplanes when I did my art. And I said to myself, I really would like to fly someday. But I had no idea at the time that I was gonna enroll in a uh of uh airline, and I at that time there was only three major airlines. There was TWA, American, and Pan Am. So I wrote to all three of them when I was nineteen, and they all told me I should wait until I was twenty one. So I told my dad that I'd like to go back to the school, and I went I was in college in my second year in Seattle, it was called Seattle College, and I got a call from Pan Am asking me to come in for an interview. Um I had no idea they were gonna do that. I went in for my interview and they told me to come back for a physical. This was in January of 46, and then I got another call to come in and they said you are accepted and we'd like you to go to ground school. I went for a whole month of ground school where we learned how to uh handle passengers' problems with the uh we were flying Seattle to Fairbanks Gnome and we were handling a lot of men that were construction men, fishermen, little rough uh t type of uh men that we had to be aware of, and we did have a few that were drunk on the bo on the ship. A lot of them were uh passed out and we would have to get the captain to go back and revive them. So it was interesting to go through ground school and learn all this when I was only n uh twenty twenty one, going on twenty two. But it was interesting in that we were able to learn how to prepare food. We were uh we were so excited one night we had to stay up all night in the commissary and learn how to prepare the food for the airplane, and most of it was in um in the uh uh preserved can canisters. We didn't have an uh oven on the DC three, which was what I flew, and uh so we had everything prepared ahead of time either in cold uh food or it if it was hot food, they were in these canisters. And once in a while when you'd open one up for breakfast, the scrambled eggs would turn green when you're up in ten thousand feet. But it was lovely. It was so much fun to fly in a uh cold weathered atmosphere up in Alaska, and I flew there only two uh uh just barely two years, and then I flew uh transferred with three other gals to San Francisco, and I flew again another three and a half years to the Orient. I'm gonna stop right there because I think I'm talking too much.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Oh no, you're you're not talking too much at all. So your first aircraft was a DC-3?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

We had a DC we were fine. DC three is just one stewardess on the airplane, and after uh uh six months of probation, you had to have a test to see how you were doing, and uh and of course I passed. And then about uh three months later I got in touch with another two gals that were in a class ahead of me, and they wanted to go a transfer. Well, wait a minute, I'm getting ahead of myself. We also got DC four six months after I started, so now we had two girls on the airplane instead of twenty one seats, it was forty-four seats on the DC four, and we flew those two Fairbanks and to uh Nome. Uh you could bid a week in uh Fairbanks uh every so often and you would be based there and fly every other night, one trip to Ro uh Gnome, another trip to Bethel, and another one to Kotzebue. And then you'd uh do you could do that as often as you wanted. I did it only twice. But I did have an uncle by marriage. It was my aunt's brother, so he really wasn't related to me. But his name was Father Frank Menager, very um a Jesuit priest who had a mission in uh Bukatsubieu. So I sent him a Western Union and I met him there at uh by at Katsabu at night. It was uh at least one in the morning, 'cause we only flew at midnight and it was only an hour from Fairbanks to Kotzebue. He would meet me there with a dog sled to get the mail, and we would stand by the potbelly stove in this little shack and visit, and then I would finally uh uh say goodbye to him. I met him twice that way, but uh the last time I met him he was being transferred to uh China because of uh orders from the um institute anyhow. So I didn't see him again until f a year later I met him again in Shanghai. Which was very, very iffy. At that time it was getting to the point where the communists were just about ready to take over uh Shanghai and uh we had to stay at a staff house instead of the uh hotel. And I met him there again and he was telling me he had to transfer to India because of the communists. They didn't, of course, uh allow or didn't uh feel safe as a uh Catholic uh priest, so he was going to India, and that's the last time I I ever saw him. Um in the meantime I w I after a year and a half uh flying up there in Alaska, four of us m transferred to San Francisco because by that time we were pursers and uh we was I I ended up being the only one that lasted three and a half years again. I met my husband on the last year of my flying, and of course in those days you could not fly if you got married. So I turned in my uh wings in uh June of 51. Yeah. So that was how much and I had some wonderful experiences, of course, flying out to the Orient.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Well, I have some questions about that, but let's rewind for a moment. Valerie, if you you probably noticed, she said that she met her husband and then she had to leave uh flying. But you but your mom totally left out the part of uh her future husband being a pan pilot. Let's go to that story.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Okay. You want me to talk about I met my husband in San Francisco in operations. I um got a call at six in the morning to um report to duty because one of the gals that was supposed to take the flight couldn't make it, and so I got to the airport and um we were delayed because of fog and I kept going back and forth in operations to the passenger terminal to explain to the passengers that we weren't able to leave yet because of the fog. This went on until noon. We were there from eight o'clock until noon, waiting to take off, and we had to cancel because we were uh up too late to uh take the flight. They had to get another crew. In the meantime, I kept talking to my husband the bee in operations, and um after we uh got the word to cancel the flight, he asked me for uh uh um if I had any plans. Would I like to have breakfast with him? So I said, Well, I'm going straight home. I was living in Burlingame and he was living in a uh town before that. I can't think of the name of it. Melbrae. Millbrae, Milbrae. And uh Milbray was closer to the airport than uh Burlingame. So anyway, I s he said, Why don't you follow me? Do you have a car? I said, Yes. He said, Follow me. So I followed him to his place and he said, Uh, I'll uh just have you sit in the kitchen with me while I fix breakfast. So we sat there talking and all of a sudden here comes not one but three guys that were living in the same house and they heard they smelt the bacon and they all came in, my husband to be introduced me to them. They all sat around and talked for about ten, fifteen minutes, and then they all went back to bed and my husband fixed me by breakfast and uh when uh all was sitting down he gets a call from Pan M that he's leaving on a flight to Tokyo. So he said to me, Can I call you when I get back? And I said to myself, he'll never do that. He'll meet another stewardess and probably do the same routine. So anyhow we said goodbye and that night I got a call but I was going to Honolulu and Sydney So I uh left the next day for uh Honolulu and uh we had a a twenty-four hour layover. So when I went down to check out, there he was, and I said, What in the world are you doing here? He said, Your navigate your pilot navigator canceled because he got sick. I'm taking his place. And so that's that was the beginning. We went all the way to Sydney on a nineteen day trip. So we got to know each other quite well. We stayed in Wake Island and in Gu Guam and uh Manila and all the way to S no, I'm I'm getting mixed up. We stopped at Numea, we stayed in Auckland for three, four days. Uh he um and then we went to Sydney and of course the rest is history. We we he did everything he could to entertain me. Took me to the uh wonderful play in uh Auckland with uh Jeanette McDonald and Elsinetti, uh called Sweethearts. It was the the uh thing at in those days to go see a lovely uh concert. And uh and then of course he took me out to dinner in Sydney and so forth. So I knew then that I was falling in love with him. So when we got back, I had to explain this to another friend of mine, and it took days and days to get the whole thing settled. But that's how I met my husband.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

That's a great story.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

He was a pilot nav he was a pilot navigator at that time.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Was the original navigator really sick? Or is that just the the mystery of the Smith family?

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Well, there's no mystery to it, really. Um there are a lot of details I've left out, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

So in your period of flying before you you met Captain Smith, yeah. Tell us a little bit about some of your favorite places traveling as a Pan Am flight attendant.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Oh my, well, you know, I uh I have to tell you when I flew up in Alaska, we occasionally had a weather uh problem on the way to Fairbanks. We would have to overnight in Whitehorse, Canada. And I remember um uh staying at this lodge and I had never had moose steak for dinner. And I I couldn't believe when we had been served, it tasted just like a beautiful sirline steak. It was delicious. Uh must have been a prime anyway, uh because I had been told later that most of that moose meat is a lot tougher than the cow, but it was delightful. And I remember meeting a family there. She uh one of our stewardesses had been hired from Whitehorse. Her family lived there, and they were all very musically minded. They invited us to dinner one night while we were in Whitehorse, and we had a beautiful evening of singing. Well, one of the uh um the uh mother was a pianist and she would play the piano and all of us would turn out stand around and sing all of the songs that we knew of that day, that period, and it was so much fun, and it was cold outside. It was like forty degrees or uh forty I mean twenty forty, twenty below zero at that time. And of course, whenever we got to uh Fairbanks, there some days were so cold that the minute you stopped out of the stepped out of the airplane, you we always had to take a cab from the airplane to the hotel. But uh that was Alaska. And another thing about the pilots up there, whenever we flew, we never flew over twelve thousand feet. And if it was a beautiful sunny day in the summertime, they would fly as low as they could so we could see the back the uh beautiful forest of uh British Columbia and you could almost see a moose or a deer running uh uh uh in the uh woods. It was so fascinating to fly up there. I really enjoyed it. But uh and flying out in the Orient, um, it was so different. I enjoyed going to Calcutta. Uh I went to do Delhi, of course, the CDA Taj Mahal, and uh I've got other stories to tell about Calcutta. I was the only girl on the flight. I had a male steward, and we were a crew of seven. We had a uh two pilots, we had a engineer, radio operator, uh, and I forget the uh we had two engineers on the flight. Anyhow, uh and with the radio operator and a uh male steward, and when we got to the uh grand hotel, which was the hotel, it was absolutely packed and they didn't have a lot of room. They gave me one room that was clear f um for a good two sec uh minutes from the lobby to the end of this annex, and it was a huge room with a four-poster bed on the ground floor, but the windows were open and people were passing by looking in, so I qu quickly shuttered the windows, but then I found out that I had to go out of the room to go to the bathroom and take a shower. It was just not very private. So I came out and I met two of the men, two men that were on my airplane that were connected with the U the UN, and they were in the the room next door to me, and they said that when they walked in there were two Indians sleeping in their bed. And I said, That doesn't. I'm not sleeping down here at all. So I went back and waited for the captain because we were gonna meet for dinner, and when I told him about the situation, he said, Let me go take a look. He took a look and he said, You're not sleeping here all by yourself, no wait. So we went back to the reservation desk and they said, sorry, they didn't have another room for me. So the captain said, In that case, you must have a cot in your rev in your uh uh room. He said, Bring the cot up to our room. There they were up above the lobby in a big dorm, six men, and they put my cot right in the center of the room, and so that night I slept with six men. And uh of course the word went out to the base in San Francisco by Western Union, so quite a few people knew that I had slept with six men at that time. That's a crazy So that was one of my experiences.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

That's funny. So tell us about the romance between your husband. You went on this long trip to the Orient, and then you decided you you admitted to yourself that you were falling in love and and then what happened?

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Well, I I I informed when uh when my husband asked me to marry him, I said I wasn't ready to get married. And then he said, Well, we'll wait. So we waited six months, and I finally said, Okay, I thought I was ready. Um, because we were seeing each other between trips constantly, and um I said to myself, I think it's time for me to quit. I had just gotten ready to um transfer to New York. I wanted to try flying out of New York to the to Europe, but um I said, Okay, I think we'll uh I will say yes. So we uh made plans for June of 51, and um of course I turned in my resignation and was told that I could not fly after I was married. Um it was a company rule because we didn't have a union yet, and uh so um I I turned in my resignation and um we got married in June of fifty one. Um I personally thought that uh we were gonna have a tough time because I was I was making more money at that point than he was because he had just been hired that year in September before I met him. And uh pil uh pilot navigators were making only three fifty a month at at to start with, but by the end of six months his his salary started going going up and up and up, and it ended up very satisfactory. We we bought a house uh in Paloelto, in the Mountain View near Palo Alto, and then a year and a half later we got transferred to New York, lived in Long Island for 12 years, and then moved to Connecticut, and I've been here ever since.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

And when did Valerie come along?

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Valerie uh was born in P in uh the Palo Alto Hospital in Palo Alto, and uh and uh I got pregnant within I she was born a year after I got married, and then I had my second a son a year and a day later. So we had two children, babies, and transferred to New York, and then my third a smother son was me uh was born three years later. So I had three children, yeah. And they were uh two born in California and one in Long Island.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

So, Valerie, what do you think about your mother and father's romance?

SPEAKER_02 25:08

I I find it, you know, I I find little stories along the way. Some of them are a little bit more interesting. And she's when she talks to me privately, it's it's it leaves out a lot of juicy details. So they got married June 4th, 1951, and I was born 10 months later, not a year later. I was born April 29th. And my little brother was April 30th a year later, and Robbie was four years later. And uh I I go around now, and when I say I have a mother who's 98 and she's still playing tennis and golf, I say, wow, you must have good genes. And I say, you know, my dad died at 69 uh in 1989. And I've had pilots come up to me when I was working with Pan Am for the 15 years I was with Pan Am as a flight attendant, twice I had pilots come up to me and say, just by chance, is your father a pilot? And because I look so much like my dad, and I had some of the same habits, not so complimentary. So when I came upon his age at 69, I was doing my best to be good. Because I know the date that he died. And when when when November of, you know, when I turned 69 went by to fly on another day, you know. But I got to fly with my father as a working crew member um at least six or seven times because I transferred, I was based in Los Angeles. I was first based out of London in 77. And I found a place, came back to Connecticut to put my motorcycle away, and I got hit by a car. And it put me out for seven months. I at least I was driving a BMW with had a drive shaft and it it almost cut my foot off. If I'd had a Jap bike like uh my previous bike, which was a 350 Honda, which is a chain, I wouldn't have a foot today and my whole life would have changed. You know, I wouldn't be married to the person I'm married to. I wouldn't I would never have been a flight attempter. But uh but I transferred to New York the last six months of my dad's flying career, which was in 1980. He retired in September of 1980 after flying for 34 years with Pan Am. And uh mom and I were both on his retirement flight, which we did JFK to Narita. Um we stayed downtown at the hotel. But at that time, the layover was for 48 hours. And interestingly enough, we had a mechanical which had us there an extra two days. So we spent four days in in Tokyo on his retirement flight.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

So how was it growing up? Uh your mom was a former stewardess and your dad is a pan ambilot.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

Oh man, it was great. You know why? Because dad would sometimes be gone for 10 days on long trips and I could do whatever I wanted. Well, mom knows. I don't have this is nothing new, but when she'd always she'd always be watching Johnny Carton late at night, you know, 11:30, whatever, and their bedroom door, she always had it shut. And I we lived on 50 acres in the middle of nowhere, you know, where she is now in Connecticut. It's a real small town, Washington Depot. And I'd pick up my friends. We had a pickup truck and we had a barn, 50 acres, horses. I grew up with my horses, and I'd go and pick up my friends with my dad's pickup truck, and we had a long driveway, and it kind of goes up right to the garage. So it goes down when you're going. It's like coasted down the driveway. It was at least a hundred-yard driveway. And I'd go pick up my friends, we'd go down to Steep Rock, this big national reserve, drinking by the river and stay out all night. And I would rev it up at the bot at the beginning of the driveway, rev it up, go real fast, cut off the engine, and park it. The funny thing is, it was always pointed downhill. When I left, I purposely knew I was gonna take the truck out. And in the morning it was pointing the opposite direction. Nobody caught on. Well, anyway, she she she caught on after I told her.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

So, Madeline, uh, when when your daughter told you that she was thinking about applying for a PANAM to become a flight attendant, what did you think?

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Well, when she was in high school, she never did have any compliments to make about my flying days. She said, I'll never be a stewardess, every I would never fly. And then all of a sudden, when she left home and went to college and then started dating, she says, I think you'll want to be a flight attendant. You know, it was that strange attitude towards uh her likes and dislikes. But anyway, she uh finally did apply. The first time she applied, she got turned down with another girlfriend. Um, I don't really know the reason, but then the second time, uh the other gal did get accepted, but she did. Uh yeah, six months later. So anyway, that's how it started and uh she was very uh good at her job. She did uh she had been uh working with horses for s four or five years and uh she knew how to handle uh uh people and uh how to take care of things. So she was very handy and uh she did well. She did very well. Yeah. She enjoyed her job as time went on. And uh lasted, like she said, fifteen years.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Did you go on a lot of family trips together?

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Um yes, we went to Germany a couple uh well, we went one time for two weeks to Germany as a family. Uh Valley, I think, was about eight or nine. Uh and we drove all through Bavaria and that southern part of Germany. We had a beautiful really a lovely time. Um another time did we go? Uh we went to Canada um twice, I think it was, and uh my mother came out and we took her up there to uh Canada and did the tour of Quebec City and Montreal. We've been parts of New York uh coming home. We stayed at a uh resort. Yeah, we had uh family outings and we drove a lot to Ohio because my f my uh husband's parents lived there in Columbus. So we went back there a few times.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Hmm. Did Valerie tell you that I'm from Columbus, Ohio? That's where I live.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Oh no, she said Cleveland.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

I'm originally from Cleveland, but I live in Columbus now.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

I see. Well that's where my husband grew up.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

Yeah, he was born born and raised there and uh went to uh Ohio State for two years and then became a cadet during the war. Air cadet. Yeah, he was transferred to Texas. There's an air uh Air Force base there. And then uh he applied with Pan Am after the war in September of 46, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

So you have seen, Madeline, prop planes, DC threes, DC fours, and then you saw jets, uh 707s, 747s, and your husband started off flying prop planes, and then he advanced to jets and then the jumbos. What would looking back now, what do you think of that?

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Well, I think I I I did travel a lot on the uh jets. Um I forgot to mention that back in '66 we went to Hong Kong for two years. We ended up staying on a year and a half. But um at that time my husband was just starting as a captain on the DC six. And uh so we went out to Hong Kong and he flew uh sixes the the entire time we were there, of course. And they were flying R and R to Taiwan, to Bangkok, um where else? And um I think he did one trip to Honolulu. But anyhow, they had these R and Rs for all the uh uh Patriots from uh Vietnam. And uh we had a very, very good life in Hong Kong. We women had a lot of uh shopping to do and uh we did take advantage of it, and also we had uh family, I mean not family, but Pan Am get togethers. Uh we had a big banquet one yeah, to uh two years in a row where we went ran at a uh hall in the Hong Kong Hotel and had a big banquet for all the Pan Am people living there. We were I think thirty families all together, engineers, pilots, and uh it was it was just a wonderful lifetime. And Marie um and my sons went to a uh international school there where they had just finished building it and it was sponsored by uh Barry, can you re help me? Dow Chemical was one.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

No, well no Luther the Lutheran Church from Michigan.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

Well the Lutheran Church was the one that sent the teachers out. Yeah, the educators. But I was thinking of the three companies that sponsored the school to have it built. It was Dow Chemical, Pan M and a Bank. Oh, Bank of America. Yeah. And they were the sponsors of the new school. I understand today it is now all Chinese schools. They built another another international school out there. Yeah. But we were living on the island. We're not in Calloon, but on the island of Victoria in Repalts Bay, which was a beautiful area. We had a lot of uh uh we had a lot of uh ocean uh beaches for the kids. The kids went beaching a lot and uh we had a uh country club called Shekko, which uh they gave us a wonderful uh opportunity to use for golf for uh parties and stuff like that. We hated to leave. When Pan Am decided to close the base, we were so disappointed because they they closed it a half a year earlier than we were originally planning to stay there. And so we uh we had to stop we had to drop everything and come back. Which uh happy memory sail. We kept in touch with quite a few of the uh pilots and their families after we got back. A lot of them lived right here in Connecticut.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Valerie, is there anything you want to share uh growing up uh in a Pan Am family?

SPEAKER_02 37:38

Um I I can say that uh the reason I didn't get married till I was 38 was because I mean I I the man I'm married to now asked me when I was 21 at college. And we've now been married for five years, but I didn't want to be married and have children because I knew the world out there, there was so much to see because of my parents allowing me to travel. And the uh the the the situation in Hong Kong was it it changed my life forever. Going to the international school, meeting people of all all different backgrounds, it was just it it I wanted to travel the world, and that's when I knew that you know I was into horses. I I I worked with a famous director for five years running his breeding program. I've always had horses and border colleagues, and my my life as a flight attendant uh afforded that. But I used to I used to hitchhike all over the world on my dad's passes when I was a you know, I was single. I lived in England three different times. I I hung out in San Juan living there for a year, crewing on sailboats. I I afforded myself every opportunity. I worked on a hot farm in Kent, England, south of London. And my mom's dad, my grandparents at one time owned the largest hot farm in the United States up in Macama, Washington, where her brother still lives. Um mom is 98 and Maurice just turned 87.

SPEAKER_03 39:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

She's the eldest, he's the youngest. But it afforded travel and I took advantage of it. And uh, you know, when the horse thing panned out, you can't make money unless you're politically uh connected in anything, I feel. And that was true with the horse breeding business. And uh I I the flight attendant thing, I did 17 years with Pan Am and I mean 15 with Pan Am and 17 with Delta. And Delta was a totally different uh venue for flying. It took them a long time to get to a point, in my mind's eye, of uh of being an international carrier. They were, you know, Georgia-based. And I was committed to being in New York for two years. They wanted us, I was a French speaker, and they wanted all the speakers that got hired to stay in on the East Coast to they were getting all the new gates in in Europe. They they they got Pan Am's gates in Europe when Pan Am uh you know, they they sold the gates to Delta and then, you know, they they had told everybody that didn't get hired to Delta that they would open be opening up another base, a satellite base out of Miami, going to South America. And then less than a month after that, they they canceled that plan. A couple of my friends that were not uh speakers were traveling cross-country to go to Miami to work for Delta, going South, South America, Central America, and then they pulled the plug on that, and these people were all out of jobs. Uh and then, you know, Pan Am bought national airlines uh while I was flying uh so that they could get a domestic route set up. And it was, you know, the National Airlines was based out of Miami or Florida anyway. And the girls that came over got one year of seniority more than anybody that was data higher. So when we went to United, when Pan Am sold the Pacifics to United, I believe that was 85 or 87, uh those girls that were hired that got taken by United, they didn't give them language tests. They took the top uh 1202, I believe it was. And they wanted basically uh Asian speakers because they were buying the Pacific. And uh, you know, it's it was a wonderful experience. So I had a chance to go with the United and I said, nah, Pan Am will never go under. And you know, they got they went under in '91. And uh it was uh you know, everyone thought PWA would go first. You know, yours Pan Am goes first, and TW TWA stayed in they stayed in business for years afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 42:08

So Madeline and Valerie, what was that like when you know this has been part of your your lives for many, many years? Madeline, you worked for the airline. Uh, if it wasn't for the airline, you would never have met your husband. Your husband retired from the airline. Valerie, you worked for the airline, you were a Pan Am family. What was it like when Pan Am was no longer in business?

SPEAKER_01 42:34

I think we all cried. We were so that we were so upset. I mean, I did I I have to say, I just couldn't believe that uh the most wonderful airline in the world had no longer existed. It was it was a shock. It was terrible. But uh I also want to tell you that when uh I was in my 60s uh and the kids were all gone. They were I think my youngest son was still in college. I'm not re I don't remember, but it was 1970 when Nixon was in uh was our president. He went to China, made a deal for uh uh tourism to start in China, and so Pan Am called Pan Am World Tours, sent me a letter and asked me if I'd be interested in being a tour leader to China and to come in to call them, and I did, and they uh asked me to come in for an interview. I went in and they hired 35 of us retired stewardesses, and we we all started. working at at we took about only w a week and a half of ground school. We had to learn how to behave in China at that time because it was still communistic. And still is, but we were told what to say, what not to say, and to uh pick up just a few words of Chinese because we it was Mandarin is in in Cantonese, you have to take a university course to learn it. But they told us to just learn a few phrases, which we did. And uh so I I flew um I think it was three, four years and my husband had just retired in eighty and he was not happy with my being gone. He was so upset. So after three or four years I quit. Then after he passed away I got hired again but it was no longer Pan Am. It was uh owned by Chinese uh couple so I only flew a couple of trips with them and then I decided enough was enough and I quit. But I got to see all of China all the way to Kunming, Chengqing and places close to Tibet. I really enjoyed it. Yeah that was fun.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Valerie anything you'd like to add?

SPEAKER_02 45:30

No I just uh I uh when they went under I just I couldn't believe it you know I just it it kind of came out of out of but there were there were some instances that led to the the eventuality of it happening there was a graft at the top it it trickled down that you know it was a lot of golden parachutes were being paid off at the top. Uh a girlfriend just as an example was on the we had an IUFA inter international union of flight attendants it was run by flight attendants that was our union for a while and they were having a meeting at the Pan Am building in New York and in one of the meeting rooms with all the executives and the union leaders uh a gal opened the wrong door either to a bathroom or somewhere and found a whole room filled with uh cartons and boxes of uh the best chardon I mean the best champagne that we used to serve you know on the airplane uh the top notch you know French champagne boxes and boxes and boxes and there was a lot of theft uh and there was a lot of mishandled in the corporate you know levels that it was a gradual decline. In fact you know what my dad said my father didn't he retired in 80 and he hoped that Pan An would still be in business when he retired. Because it was it was a everybody kind of knew in the background that there was stuff going on in the back in the executive branches that wasn't propelling us forward but taking us down. And this was years before he retired he was hoping that they'd still be in business so he'd get his retirement and but you know that was 80 and they didn't they didn't go under until 91. But it was it was you know there's a lot of people I know that I'm 70 now and people that my age that I'm hanging out with they know Pan Am.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

There's young kids they never even heard of Pan Am they didn't I went to Woodstock my husband went to Woodstock we met we met two years after Woodstock people they don't even know what Woodstock is and I'm saying God am I that old it's like shit getting old stuff is for the birds but you know what I've got a lot of good memories that I'm gonna take with me well Madeline let's talk about some of your memories over the years flying on Pan Am did you ever meet any uh famous people um I met a few I had uh when I was flying the Pacific at one trip to Tokyo I had um Joe DiMaggio with his um uh handler what what was the name of the uh Yankees uh coach um Walter O'Malley does that sound familiar anyhow it was Walter O'Malley and Joe DiMaggio then a trip to uh Sydney I had uh Maureen O'Hara and uh her agent was with her and I can't remember his name and I had Joan Fontaine on another trip.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Um we always tried to curtain off where they sat so that nobody would see them and give them a little privacy. Um merino hair I was not feeling well when she got on board and uh when uh we got Sydney she went in to put on her makeup and oh my god did she look gorgeous. She was so beautiful and you know she had red hair and she was very pale skin and when she put on the makeup she just shown there were just dozens and dozens of photographers waiting for her when we landed and uh I remember things like that. Yeah. What else oh I've ha I had college kids football players rather from ha from LA to Honolulu. What a noisy bunch all the way none of them would sit down or no they just went on and on talk talking to each other and you jumping over the seats and just just a fun fun group yeah I do remember that.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Had a lot of fun yeah Valerie any memorable trips uh that you were on for Pan Am? Any famous people you've met?

SPEAKER_02 50:29

Yeah I I had quite a few and uh I had Bob Dylan on one time and he uh you know his last name is really Zimmerman Bob Zimmerman and he comes on with a hoodie with his handler or bodyguard uh he sits in 1A which is a window seat in the 7-4 uh reading a book pretending to read a book looking out the window and drinking coffee the whole time it was LA to New York and he he waited till everybody dis disembarked before and then he says uh I need a bathroom I said we have beautiful first class menus you know in with Pan Am you know Chateaubriand you know it's a slice to order at your seat and so I said you sign here and I'll show you where the bathroom is but and he did and he signed he signed Zimmerman but I had you know I had um I I had uh what's his name Clark Gable on before he died I had his daughter on I think his his his his wife at the time they were divorced is I think Valerie Perine Perine and she she was on a popcorn diet she had a big brown bag that she brought on board and she was only eating popcorn and she was up in first class what a mess she made but they they had a daughter I think it's the only child that Clark Gable had and she looked identical to him she was like 18 at the time but I don't I don't think mom knows this story about about dad dad came home from a trip one time and he says he he did a London New York trip and he says you heard of some band called lead something and I'm saying God you had lead Zeppelin on he says yeah they were all passed out in the upper deck the whole flight and I'm saying they make more money in one day than you make in a year dad and they they either were really tired or really you know passed out yeah I've had a lot of uh baseball charters I had Tommy Lassorda on who was so he was so proud of his first little granddaughter showing pictures of her uh a lot of baseball I have a lot of baseballs that are autographed from charter fights uh yeah some oh I had Lucille Ball oh Tom glad mom was um by the way I forgot to tell you that back in forty eight nineteen forty eight Pan Am got its first stratacruiser in San Francisco and um I was fortunate enough to be chosen to uh go from San Fran to Washington DC to have it um what do you call it?

SPEAKER_01 53:33

Um yeah by um Mark Truman. Anyhow we um I remember the name of the captain it was m Dent Terr Terrell Dan Terrell was our captain. I remember flying all the way to Washington DC we arrived there at sunset and he drew he flew the entire circle around Washington DC and it was all lit up. It was gorgeous what a beautiful view anyway we were there for three days we were at least ten stewardesses or yeah we were called stewardesses then and we uh stayed at the Mayflower Hotel and every morning we had to get up early have breakfast and be at the airport it was only one airport the national airport and we had to be there by nine o'clock and we all had our stations one would stand at the bottom of the ramp two would be up at the top of the ramp two or three more inside the airplane I can't remember all our positions and then for the three days they had pe pet people coming tourists coming to look at the airplane they could walk inside of it and we had to give them all the d details of the airplane how much fuel it used how big was the uh wing wing span how big of a airplane it was we had been told ahead of time of course all the specifics of the airplane and uh we did that and we was we would be there all day till six o'clock and then we go back to the hotel and do the same thing again second and third day. Well on the third day the last day Margaret Truman showed up and she she had a uh bottle of champagne against the airplane the nose and um we had about three or four speakers and I I remember it with I think one trip was there. I'm not positive but I I still have one photo of the whole crew taken there and uh and then we flew back to um San Francis and we developed an engine problem near Vegas and so we spent the night in Las Vegas so they could uh repair the uh engine and we stayed at the Frontier Hotel the only the only hotel there in Vegas at that time and they gave us chance chance to uh gamble and they gave us a dinner in the front of the stage we got to see a beautiful floor show I remember that and then uh we went back to San Francisco the next day.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

I remember that I was in 48 yeah now we haven't talked about food on Pan Am aircraft can you tell tell me a little bit about um what the food was like especially in the 1940s and 50s well in the 40s when I flew up in Alaska it wasn't always the best but we always have very good cold plates you know like shrimp cocktail I can't remember actually what the menu was I can't re I do know that the food was good except the hot food.

SPEAKER_01 57:21

They're fast they always had beautiful salads prepared and and beautiful sandwiches for lunch. And I don't remember of course we didn't have to serve dinners. Because we had all day flights. So most of it was breakfast and lunch. But of course flying uh out of uh San Francisco to the area we served not just w a three course meal, we had a seven course meal. We took a wine course and we had wine for dessert for uh appetizer a dessert uh wine for the main menu and a wine for dessert. And um we had filet mignons, we had beautiful food. I mean it was all first class especially on the uh straticruisers and uh we had tables with napkins on them. Um it was it was gorgeous.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

It was just beautiful lots of food yeah we had a galley at that time by that time yeah and the straticruiser has the lower lounge. Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 58:44

We had a beautiful lounge down below spiraled staircase to go down to it and it was a uh uh a mirrored it was completely mirrored and you it would hold maybe ten to twelve people at a time.

SPEAKER_02 59:01

People would go down there to have cocktails but then when it was time for lunch I would have to make the announcement that everybody had to go back upstairs and I would rope the stairs so though nobody could go back down and then we would serve our lunch or whatever and uh it was um a beautiful uh airplane because they had in the back of the airplane they had the men and women's uh lavatories and they were all mirrored they were rounded lounges where you could sit and do your makeup if you wanted and again it was all mirrors beautiful beautiful yep and we had about uh I don't know how many passengers it carried but it must have been close to 60 80 it was quite a big airplane and Valerie what was the food like in in the 70s and 80s back in the 70s when I started flying they they allowed smoking on the airplanes when I got hired the worst place to to uh to work was L5 L5 and R5 the five door you know the number five doors in the back uh but first class flight attendants they'd come down they'd come in the back they do their smoke half off and then they go back up into first class to work. So the best place to work was first class. But you did a lot of work because you you had personalized serving you know we had carts we had you know carts hors d'oeuvre carts uh main uh we we serve by hand each each first class passenger got served individually and they would tell you we if they wanted a chateau brun wanted the gras uh you know that was a very it was a first class uh restaurant up there and the fun part was we as for flight attendants to to eat that food too you know if there was any left you know first class you know ice cream and ice cream cut and uh uh you know cobblers it was just the the best food and you're going to the best place in the world and most of the time the passengers were wonderful uh you know you rarely had disgruntled uh passengers in first class you had a a couple divas you know old complainer was most of the time they they really appreciated everything that we did and I think in the 15 years of Pan Am I got I got no credits I've got tons of commendations and it's it's not so much me as much as it was the whole crew working together and we were happy you know people that aren't happy at what they do it shows on their face and as hard as the work is if you enjoy what you're doing and you're getting appreciated I think nothing is better than being appreciated for what you're doing for somebody and uh Delta Delta was pretty good too.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

Madeline we have many young people that listen to our program what is your message to them on why they should care about Pan Am history.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:29

Well I think it's because it was so first class to start with it was dedicated to to improve the the lifestyle of people there was it was classy. It was a classy airline people dressed beautifully in those days you never saw anybody without a suit on hat gloves uh men dress beautifully t in suits um it's it's not that way today. Just not that way today. Today people come on with I hate to say this, but uh fifty percent of the people I see on the airplane, including women, wear nothing but jeans. And down south when we used to go to Antigua and to uh uh St. Thomas people got on the airplane barefooted. I I was shocked about that. But anyway it's changed and I think that would be my most pr impression of Pan Am is it was so classy. I just loved my work. I loved it the entire time I was with them. I felt proud to wear the uniform and be there and there were so many uh people that would come up to me and ask me if I enjoyed my work and I would say I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:12

And it was just one of those uh things yeah as we're we're closing this program what is your favorite Pan Am memory?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:24

And closing my favorite memory oh my goodness I think the fact that I was able to see so much of the world to see so much of our globe and to appreciate where I am now to appreciate the fact that I got to seal that I have seen and have met so many people would love to do it over again. But that that is my impression of being with Pan Am.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:03

Valerie what is your favorite Pan Am family memory in 1966 Pan Am hired a lot of new stewardesses and new first officers dad got to be in the left seat because by going to Hong Kong he became a captain earlier than if he had not taken that uh uh transfer but the new the new pilots were called the bachelors and there was a bunch of first officers that had a bachelor pad and family was down the road from Ripolds Bay my my favorite memory from that is dad jumping off a balcony into their swimming pool and breaking his nose and they were they were in their 20s the new stewardesses had just been hired and they were in their 20s and my dad was in his 40s going 66 he was born in 20 so he was 46 oh man oh that's a great we live right on the beach in Reaps Bay so anyway Pan Am did us you know our life is Pan Am well Madeline and Valerie I'd like to thank you for your time today.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:16

It has been a great conversation thank you and our pleasure. Again Madeline and Valerie thank you very much for your time uh I very much appreciate it and uh thank you for sharing your family Pan Am story. Thank you Tom have a wonderful rest of your evening okay thank you bye bye okay take care 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 panmuseum dot org as flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world thank you for flying Pan Am