SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to the Panium Podcast, brought to you by the Panium 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 Panam Museum Foundation is a nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information at the Pan Ammuseum.org. Again, our website is thePanamuseum.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. In this episode, we are joined by Barbara Morris Wood and Karen Wallen Eustace. Barbara will be celebrating her 100th birthday on September 13, 2022. A very special early happy birthday greeting from all of us here at the Pan Am Museum. Barbara worked for Pan Am for five years between 1944 and 1949. Her time at Pan Am, while short, was nothing short of exceptional. Barbara pioneered a path for women to move up the ranks of the airline. After becoming the first woman to work the ticket counter, Barbara's can-do spirit never waned. After recognizing other inequalities, she acted on them, bringing benefits to the airline industry many still enjoy today. If you've ever worked for an airline or enjoyed flight benefits, you have Barbara to thank. While at Pan Am, Barbara thought it was unfair that only company executives and flight crews had travel benefits with the airline. She wrote a convincing letter to management and advocated that all Pan Amployees, regardless of position, including ticket counter, catering, and maintenance employees, should have all the same rights and flying benefits as everyone else. The airline quickly agreed and expanded company travel benefits to all employees. This also set the employee flight benefit expectation in the aviation industry, and other airlines followed Panam's lead. During the end of World War II, Barbara was tasked with interviewing men returning from the war for jobs within the airline. In this capacity, Barbara would meet and hire her future husband, Ernie Wood, remarking that he was not like the rest of the interviewees, and even called him weird. Nonetheless, the spark of romance and adventure was in the air, and the two started dating a little bit afterward. At their wedding in Damascus, Syria, Barbara and Ernie would be surrounded by Pan Am employees in a faraway land, truly a reflection on the rest of their life. As a young woman, starting out with Pan Am, never having left New England before, the company was the catalyst that would change her life forever. With Pan Am, she met lifelong friends and her husband, who went on to work for the company 31 years after Barbara hired him. Karen Wallen Eustace joined Pan Am as a flight attendant in 1970. She originally went to school to be a teacher, but a chance encounter with a flight attendant at a wedding intrigued her to apply to Pan Am and change direction in her career plans. Karen grew up in LaGrange, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. She graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana in 1969 with a degree in education. As a young airline employee, the world was within her reach, and Karen was able to travel to many exotic places that before she could only read and dream about. For 10 years between 1970 and 1980, Karen always felt comfortable in foreign lands with Pan Am, and the excitement of adventure from those times has never waned. And when she looks back on the fond memories of her flying days, traveling the world with co-workers and her husband, it always brings a big smile and a deep sense of pride. After Pan Am, she taught in many capacities and currently serves as a docent at the Rhode Island School of Design. Barbara and Karen both live in Rhode Island and are neighbors and have become close friends. Welcome to the Pan Am podcast, Barbara and Karen. Hi, how are you? I'm good. We're glad to be here. It's an honor to have both of you. I thought we would get started talking about your friendly neighborhood story. Why don't we start there? Karen, why don't we begin with you?

SPEAKER_03 5:59

Okay. I'll I'll just start by saying that we attend the same uh women's group that gives scholarships and other philanthropies to women, an old organization. And we went to meetings together because we lived just a few blocks from each other. So I would pick her up or she would drive and we would attend these meetings. And only after a couple of years uh did we realize that we both had a Pan Am history.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

And why don't we talk about that Pan Am history? And when did you become neighbors in the same area? Just for our listeners, around what time period?

SPEAKER_03 6:37

I moved to Providence in 2003. And I moved here in 1991.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

So, Barbara, why don't we start with your story? So you joined Pan Am in 1944 during the war. Can you tell us a little bit about what interested you in applying for Pan American Airways?

SPEAKER_05 7:00

Well, that's one thing I absolutely cannot tell you because I haven't the faintest idea why I went there.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Fair enough. Tell us a little bit about how you got started. What what was your first position at Pan American?

SPEAKER_05 7:18

Research clerk in the industrial and r and uh public relations department.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

And you put together the manual for flight attendants, correct?

SPEAKER_05 7:32

Well, that depends upon how you think about it. They were talking about switching from all male attendants at the time to women as well. I was told to check with all the other airlines and find out what they did about that because a lot of them were using just females. So I had to call them up and find out what they were doing. And it was of a logical thing to switch a little bit to the Pan Am. So I wrote up the paper saying these are what the what other airlines do, and so on and so forth, and this is what we could do also.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Interesting. And what was your role after the research job?

SPEAKER_05 8:26

I floated around within the industrial relations department and uh ended up in the hiring unit. So I became a preliminary and I was gonna say interrogator, but I'm I don't want to say the word interrogator.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

But you were kind of HR at the time, right? Yeah, they call that now HR. That's true.

SPEAKER_05 8:54

I understand.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

So you and and and another lady were in charge of hiring pilots and personnel uh out of New York, correct?

SPEAKER_05 9:05

Well what we had was a unit that was, of course by a man. And there were myself and another interviewer, two girls. We had a preliminary interviewer that sat out in the waiting room who would say, Well, we I'll give you a m uh a card to tell them inside whether or not there they have anything for you, or we have nothing for you. Just we can't do anything for you because we have too many people here. It was amazing how many applicants we had. It was just incredible.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

And was this uh at the conclusion of World War II?

SPEAKER_05 9:58

No, it was in while we were in World War II, surprisingly.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

So so then after the war ended, you probably had double the applicants, correct?

SPEAKER_05 10:10

Well, as the war was ending, it was surprising how many people apparently were getting out of the army or navy or whatever. The the uh large group of people were coming well before the actual end of the war.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

So tell us a little bit about what it was like to work for Pan Am in the war years, 1944-45. You have a a window into that time period firsthand. Can you tell us a little bit about how it was like to work for this airline during that time?

SPEAKER_05 10:48

Well, I was a babe in the woods. I knew nothing about airlines. I just walked. I didn't walk actually, I took a bus to Pan Am uh and asked for a job, which is what you could do in those days. I don't know whether what they do nowadays, but anyway, you could walk into any company and say, Have you got a job for me? And that's what I did. And they put me through a series of tests that were lasted all day. I had to take the usual typing, stenography, IQ, administrative ability, etc. like that. At the end of the day, they said, Well, we'd really love to hire you, but there's one portion you didn't pass. You didn't pass the typing test.

SPEAKER_03 11:40

Oh dear.

SPEAKER_05 11:42

Well, I wasn't a typist. So I said, Well, I'll go home and practice for a while and I'll come back and you can give me a job. And they said, Okay. And I did. I stayed home for two weeks typing, and I went back and I passed the typing test. And uh they hired me into the industrial relations department.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Was there a lot of women employed at that time?

SPEAKER_05 12:08

Well, there was the usual clerical jobs, yes. And of course, we didn't have stewardesses at the time. There were a fair amount of women working there, but I wouldn't say that it was all females.

SPEAKER_03 12:24

They weren't managers, probably.

SPEAKER_05 12:26

No, they wouldn't they were they were secretaries. They were secretaries and clerks. I was a clerk.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

And in that time period, February 1944 to October 1946, when you worked for the industrial relations department, uh, you hired a number of people. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the people you hired, specifically a gentleman that would become a very important person in your life later?

SPEAKER_05 13:01

Well, I specialized in men. And Isabel, the other interviewer, specialized in women as a result. I love that. She would hire prospective stewardesses. I would hire traffic agents, and I I hired a lot of uh mechanics and pilots and people like that because that's what what were coming and that's what were we needed, what we needed.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

And there was a gentleman that applied for a job that you interviewed. Tell us about There were lots of gentlemen that applied for jobs that I but there's a specific gentleman that you interviewed that you later said was quote unquote kind of weird. Can you tell us that story? Uh his name was Ernie Wood.

SPEAKER_05 13:57

Yeah, I've interviewed him. He uh had been brought up in Germany and consequently had a completely different idea of American education. And I didn't realize that at that time because I wasn't that familiar with the German hiring system or school system. It was the school system that was so confusing because our applications, you know, had you graduated from elementary school, from high school, and how many years of college and so on. He answered no to every question. Did I I would say, well, you could where did you graduate from elementary school? Well, I didn't go to elementary school. How about high school? Oh, I didn't go to high school. Wasn't he tutored or something? He he had Well, he was tutored when he was a kid. And then he went to uh well it's a completely different system. And frankly, at the time it was a much better system. That's why he was weird. But an interesting guy, evidently, right? Well, I didn't think he was anything special. Really? Okay. Go on. So he wanted to well, he wanted to passenger service. And I said, Well, I'm very sorry, but we don't hire men at the tech print this time for passenger service. And uh he said, Well, that's what I want. And I said, Well, you we don't hire those kind of people. I said, We hire men for traffic positions and so on, and therefore I cannot suggest that they hire you for passenger service. It was all the same thing, basically, but I didn't know that, and neither did he. Anyway, he went upstairs because he was other other than that, he had l a number of languages. He had the German, of course, which was fluent, and he had French and some Russian and fluent English, so that was the kind of person that you would want working for an international airline. So I sent him up and they hired him into reservations. And then he worked at the ticket counter at LaGuardia Airport.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

And then what happened with Ernie Wood?

SPEAKER_05 16:30

Did you start to see each other? No, the situation we had there at the counter. We had four or five units uh based on timing. And he was in a he was in a Thursday unit. And when I went over when I joined that organization, I was in a Saturday unit. And I had to go to traffic school and learn what traffic was all about, which I did. And then I joined the unit and I was the only girl because that's what they wanted to hire me for.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

And some of our listeners may not know what traffic is. It's the work at the counters, correct?

SPEAKER_05 17:19

Traffic is the handling of the incoming and the outgoing passengers.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

And the terminal?

SPEAKER_05 17:25

In the terminal. In the middle of the terminal, there was a round table and there were young ladies in the air dressed in light blue uniforms. Where the ticket counter people were dressed in navy blue. And when I joined the the traffic department, I got l navy blue, everything. A suit and an overcoat and one of those little hats and so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

And this is the marine air terminal where the flying boats were at LaGuardia, correct?

SPEAKER_05 18:02

The only thing we had was flying boats.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

In the 40s.

SPEAKER_05 18:06

Oh, in the forties, of course.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Did you ever fly on one of the flying boats?

SPEAKER_05 18:11

Yes. They they gave us uh all the possibility at no cost of flying on one of the flying boats before they took them out of service. Which I thought was a nice gesture. We all did that. We all took that opportunity and I was a nervous wreck. I had never been in an airplane and neither had any of the any of the counteragents. And when I got in this thing, which was sitting out there in the water, I got into a seat that was actually half underwater, if you were to open the sides of the airplane. And then as it took off, it's it started by going down. You know, the the engines made the energy suddenly start and it and it sort of dragged it down under the water a little bit. Well, for a person who had never been on an airplane, it was horrible. Of course, it then just took off and flew, and we had a good time, sort of. I was a wreck, and so were most of the other girls. Because none of us had been on an airplane. And where did you go? Shadyac in Canada. He went to Shadyac. That was a regular stop. Okay. All airplanes going to Europe stopped at Shadyak.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

I had no idea.

SPEAKER_05 19:50

Well, they had to take on extra gas, I suppose, and whatever they were doing, but or maybe they they gave them a a checkup to see they were in shape to go over the water. But that's what happens.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

So uh you went to Canada and everyone got off the airplane and had dinner and and then you came back? What what happened when you got to Canada?

SPEAKER_05 20:14

Well, that we we went into the airport, of course, as you said, and had something to eat. And uh we came back by train. The person that I was with, that was another was in the same department with me, and we decided we didn't want to horse around up there. So we decided to just get on a train and not realizing that the place was full of soldiers. So we had to stand up most of the way because the place was mobbed. However, once we decided to go on the train, uh, we didn't have the choice anymore of going on the plane because we were no longer at an airport.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

So let's get back to the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia.

SPEAKER_05 20:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Uh you've been transferred to the traffic division, and they wanted to start having females as employees.

SPEAKER_05 21:07

They had asked me, I I had been an interviewer in the personnel department, and the traffic manager had previously said, How about joining our department? You know, um and I said, No, I like where I am, and I'm and uh I said again, he asked me several times and I said that no. And then I decided I would try it. First of all, because I didn't like what was going on in that department that I was in at the time. It had changed somewhat of the I didn't like the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

How so?

SPEAKER_05 21:52

What was different about the atmosphere? Well, they hired two men. Previously it had been women. Who were doing the interviewing. Although the manager of the unit was a man. And I didn't like the men. So why work with them? So I went to the traffic department and I said, You have been asking me to join you, and I think if you still want me, I'll you can have me. And they took me. They sent me to traffic school and I came out on the top. Then I started at the the counter, which was anathema to the person who came in to be the supervisor. He said, What's she doing there? And I said I said that that's they uh transferred me. He said, Well, we don't have women at the counter. I said, Well, here I am. Here I am and I'm making more money than all the rest of them. So you're wasting your money on me if you don't let me work there. Which was a stupid thing to say when you come right down to it. I mean when you tell a per the person that they're paying you too much money is is a ridiculous thought. However, that's with what I told them.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Were you annoyed that um your gender was an issue for someone?

SPEAKER_05 23:21

No, not at all. I couldn't care less.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

And he ended up leaving you know before you left.

SPEAKER_05 23:29

Well, this person this person really who really had a fit when he saw me there had transferred from Miami in and then he transferred back out again. So uh I stayed and left.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Let's get back to Mr. Wood.

SPEAKER_05 23:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

And our listeners are probably wondering, you know, why does he keep bringing up this gentleman, um Ernie Wood? So you had hired him a couple years before. He worked at LaGuardia, but on different days than you did.

SPEAKER_05 24:05

No, that's not exactly the way it was. I was in a completely different department. I worked regular ordinary days, he worked shifts, and it was all of the men at the counter, and they only had men, worked shifts.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

And in 1947, you uh went on a road trip to Washington, D.C. with a group of Panam folks, one of whom wanted to interview at the State Department. So 1947, and this gentleman, Ernie Wood, was among them. Can you tell us what happened next?

SPEAKER_05 24:42

Well, when I entered the str the traffic department, I was wondering how they would take it to see me there, you know, because first of all they had had no women, and secondly, they knew that I had hired half of them. So I showed up for my first day at the counter with my uniform on, and they all welcomed me well. Wonderful. They thought this was marvelous. And it was really very pleasant because I there were a lot of people that I had known, so to speak, uh person that I knew well. I mean, he hi I hired him over my dead body. But I thought, well, all right, this man really had a lot of push. So maybe he's he would be excellent. So we I hired him. And uh we became friends when I moved into the department and he was going to apply for at the State Department for a job. He had a Greek background. In order to do that he had to go to Washington, and of course nobody had any money in those days. I had more money, more m I had a higher salary than probably any of those guys at the counter. And then none of them resented it either. It was r they welcomed me with open arms. It was wonderful. So he was in the Thursday night group. Or the Thursday group, I should say, because they were not a they worked three to three uh shifts each unit. And they were the Thursday group. And in the Thursday group was this guy and and his wife was going to go with him. And I was the only one who had a car. So he invited me to go to Washington with him.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

So how many were in the car? Five people. Five. You were driving five, including yourself, five people.

SPEAKER_05 27:01

I was not driving at all. I said to Brian to Brian that I would be delighted to go down there with him and take him in my car, since I was the only one who had a car. But uh I would not drive it because I didn't want to drive from New York to Washington at night, because it would have been after they got off work. And uh Ernie drove because he was in the Thursday night group.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

So on this trip, did you did you like Ernie or were you like this is the guy that was this weird guy that I hired a couple years before? What was your opinion of Ernie at this time?

SPEAKER_05 27:45

Well, he was nice. I got to know him. You know, I didn't have to find out what schools he was in or anything. So I uh when I showed up there, he came over to me and said, My name's Ernie. What's yours? I don't know that he even remembered that I had hired him.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

And then what happened?

SPEAKER_05 28:12

Well, he was driving and we stayed down there for the weekend. We stayed at the Willard Hotel, not knowing that it was such an expensive place. Brian did not get a job at the State Department. So on Sunday we came home after we looked around down there. I had been there a number of times, but they had not. So it was all new to them.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

And when did you and Ernie started having feelings for each other?

SPEAKER_05 28:44

Well, I'll tell you, when I got home, this is not a happy thought, uh, my father died that night. He had been uh sick for about two years. And uh he had uh well my father had ALS and he died that night. And I called up the s the uh Pan Am the next day and said, I'm sorry I'm not gonna come into this week because my father just died, and I, you know, we'll have to take care of that. Ernie sent flowers coming from the Thursday night unit to my mother, of course, which was very nice. And on Friday, this was Sunday when he died, on Friday uh he called me up and asked me to go out. So I said, sure, why not? I didn't say that to him. Do you remember where you went? Uh there was a restaurant in town in Jackson Heights where the airport basically had a a post office box. So we went there and we both ordered steak and I ate mine and he didn't eat his. So I said, You would you mind if I ate ate you a steak? I uh I said, I can't see steak going to waste like that. That's ridiculous. So that was the first time I went with went out with him.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

And then you started dating?

SPEAKER_05 30:38

Then we started de dating, yes. We dated uh all summer. I was going to say that my daughter Jennifer, of course, recently said, yeah, I can't imagine anybody going over to uh uh Damascus, Syria to get married. And a a person you hardly even knew. And I said, Well, I knew him. A few months, six months, a few months. I said, We dated for three months. Three months. Then he was sent to Karachi.

SPEAKER_03 31:14

So you must have written letters, did you?

SPEAKER_05 31:18

I uh I wrote telegrams actually. Oh, you wrote telegrams?

unknown 31:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 31:23

I would stand there in the terminal with my quarters in my hand and send telegrams if I felt saying anything to him.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

So you got married in Damascus, Syria. How did that come about?

SPEAKER_05 31:39

Well, that's br Brian. Brian was an organizer, you know. Brian uh must have said to Ernie, why don't you go to come to Damascus to get married? And Ernie said, Well, he was very reluctant, but he said, All right, I can see Brian twisting his arm. I finally found out re fairly recently why we well, I shouldn't say fairly recently, because it was a long time ago, but why he was so happy to get married in in uh Damascus. He was in Munich, wasn't he? Wasn't Ernie in the He was he was he had been taken out of Karachi and he was floating around in London for a while and then he went to Munich. They were waiting for Munich to open. So he and Dean Rogers, who was the station manager, and he was the sales manager, they opened Munich together.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

Brian was in Syria. Oh, Brian was in Syria. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 32:49

Brian was in Brian was a a doer. He was floating people around all the time. But he was the station manager in Damascus then? No, he would have been the traffic or the sales manager.

SPEAKER_03 33:01

The sales manager in Damascus.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

And Brian is a friend of you and your future husband at this point?

SPEAKER_03 33:08

At this point, yes. He's the one that you hired along before, right? I hired Brian. Right. Oh, he was also the one that organized the trip to Washington, correct. Brian was a people organizer.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

We're going to take a quick break with a Pan Am commercial from 1982.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

I was nine years old when I took my first play with Pan Am. My father took me with him too. I'll never forget the thrill of the China clipper. Lifting off the water. They brought fresh food on board on the loop. And I still have to turn the light off above my head. Just the first flight, 747. We get plenty of room to spread out the workforce and stretch out the light. In fact, no way I want to give you more space, more privacy. That's a luxury these days. Come on, George. Go to sleep.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Welcome back to our interview with Barbara Morris Wood and Karen Wallen Eustace. So, Barbara, can you tell us a little bit about your wedding in Syria?

SPEAKER_05 34:40

Well, it was completely managed by men, so it was different from what it would have been like in the United States. The most horrible thing about the whole business is that the entire shift that was working. Not to know that I was going to get married to this guy before I did, because he sent me a telegram inside the air the company saying, we can get hitched. Ernie said, sent you that. Ernie sent me a thing saying, we can get hitched. Brian will arrange it. And when I came in, they all looked at me and sort of smiled and laughed. And then I finally saw my telegram. So I said, sure, why not? Sure, why not?

SPEAKER_01 35:32

And while you were in Syria getting married, what what happened?

SPEAKER_05 35:36

We got married before the uh before they took over. But they did it was a peaceful thing. It was not the it was not the uh one that happened a couple of weeks afterwards. It was a coup? There was some a coup? Well, it's hard to describe because we were all the Panam people were out eating together in restaurants. The table next to ours was a group of people who were soldiers. And they kept coming over to me and cutting off a piece of a banana with their knives and handing it to me, expecting me to take it into my mouth from their mouth, knife. It was very peculiar and funny. I mean, we were all laughing, and I would tell them to put in the in the bowl that was on the table. And this bowl was getting fuller and fuller and fuller, because every time another guy came in, they gave me a slice of banana. Not we didn't realize it, but these were the guys were doing they were doing their planning. The day after the oh my banana arrived was the day they had their first peaceful, it was very peaceful, they didn't have any nastiness about it. But the next morning, Ernie said, Well, we were certainly not going anywhere today. And I said, Why not? And he said, Well, there's a tank across the street over there pointing at the hotel. So I said, There is. Oh, I have to go out. We we need our passports. And he said, Well, I'm not certain, I'm not going out in front of a tank that is parked in front of a hotel, pointing at the hotel. And I said, Well, okay, you can stay here, I'm leaving. So I went, it wasn't too far, it was maybe eight blocks, ten blocks to the British embassy, and I walked right out of the hotel, and I knew perfectly well they weren't going to do anything to me because I had blonde hair. And they the Syrians love blonde hair. So they wouldn't I knew they wouldn't hurt me. And I walked to the British embassy and said, I want my passport, and they they had done, they had finished with our passports, in other words, and they would be okay for Karachi. So you picked up the passports? I picked up my passport, and then I said, Well, I might as well get his passport too. So I did, and then I walked back. Nobody was on the street until I met uh the Pan American station manager walking out also, and the two of us went back to the hotel. And then we were we stayed there that day, and we went out. There was a big mob scene, people trying to get passes to get out of the city. Because the government had changed. Not yet. There was this was a square, one of these big squares, and they were looking out of a window, which they had open. And this mob scene was around. I said, You mean it? To Ernie once, and they moved uh and let us go through. And uh I said, gee, that must mean something, so I'll keep on saying it. So I kept saying, You mean it? And we were uh ushered up to the window to get our document to get out of town for the day.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

And when did you have to quit your job at Pan American because you were married?

SPEAKER_05 40:03

Well, I didn't have to quit my job at all. They didn't uh I had nothing to keep because if I was leaving the country there was no place to go with Pan Am. For me. I couldn't get a job with Pan American, in other words, overseas. So when you went over there you planned to stay with Ernie. When I went there to get married, he was going back to Munich, where he was stationed. And obviously if I was married to him, I was going with him. So we went directly to Munich and I didn't come back until uh nine months later.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

Did you ever think that you wanted to stay in your job and wish that you could find another job within Pan American?

SPEAKER_05 41:03

Oh, I would have loved to say I like I like my job. I like both of my jobs, but I couldn't stay because uh I c they wouldn't transfer me.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

So you lived in Munich uh with your husband for how how many years after?

SPEAKER_05 41:24

Well let's see, that was in 1949. We came home in 1953 from Hamburg, because we had been transferred to Hamburg, which I wo wouldn't recommend for anybody. It's a nice city, but it rains every day. We had three days without rain in one year. Can you imagine?

SPEAKER_01 41:50

So you came back to the States in 1953 and during that time your husband Ernie uh worked for Pan Am. So he was transferred back to New York, and then what was his job? What was his new job in New York? And why did you why did you and him wanted to want to return to New York?

SPEAKER_05 42:13

Well neither of us would like to stay in Hamburg, aside from anything else, but that's beside the point. Uh I made I made a point of not saying I wanted to go home. And I had two two little boys, and I still didn't want to say anything about it. But Ernie decided himself, without even talking to me, uh, that he wanted to go home because he said he did not want his sons to uh have the difficult time getting back getting back into the states when they grew up. He worked for Pan Ham uh for 36 years. Was it with uh in the cargo business, but his his major job in the last ten years was airmail working with the post office. He loved work, he loved the post office.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

And then and then he he retired in 1981 from Pan Am?

SPEAKER_05 43:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

So Barbara, you started with Pan Am in 1944. Yes. When there were flying boats during World War II.

SPEAKER_04 43:28

Oh yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

And your husband worked for Pan Am up until the 1980s, so you really saw this airline evolve. You started with the flying boats, and then you saw the jet, the DC eight and the seven oh seven, and then you saw the the giant jumbo jet. Can you tell us a little bit about what Panium means to you looking back at your h own history?

SPEAKER_05 44:00

I enjoyed working there in both jobs, I mean both departments. I have no idea why I went there in the first place and applied, and uh I really enjoyed the whole f everything about it. And and your five kids did as well. Well, all of us did. We took every opportunity. Anytime he had a vacation, we went somewhere. So my kids went all over the world.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

Barbara, you were the first woman in the traffic department at the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia. You developed the first flight attendant manual. And you also have a very important uh part in Pan Am history because you were responsible for flight benefits for all employees. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_05 44:56

Well, it was a sm sort of a primitive deal back in 1944. I mean, you had a job and uh you worked at the job and you enjoyed it, presumably I did. And if you worked at the ticket counter, you realized that people who were flying were some of the uh secretaries to the to the management people. They were flying and and you weren't. Well, nobody else was. Right. And uh I wrote a letter, uh I don't really even remember what it was who it was addressed to, but it was addressed to somebody upstairs saying that this just wasn't fair. Everybody should have the possibility of doing this. I put it in the the airmail uh in the mailboxes of all the pilots thing, because they had the management listened to the pilots. Well, more than that, I mean the pilots were looked upon as the special people, which they were. I mean, what would an airline be without the pilots figuring that they would see, oh, look at this. Maybe we are missing something. I guess that's what happened because they changed the policy.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Barbara, how would you like people to remember Pan American World Airways? Why was it special to you?

SPEAKER_05 46:23

I don't know. It was just a nice place to work. The people were nice, and uh it was exciting to be working with the with an airline, I suppose. Aviation was in its babyhood, you have to remember that, and it's sort of you were sort of an ad living an adventure in a way. You were a pioneer. Well, uh that's what I say, we were aviation pioneers.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

And and looking back, uh now that commercial aviation is so important and it made the the world a much smaller place and accessible to millions and millions of people. Looking back, how does that make you feel that you were in the infancy of commercial aviation? And you're you were a part of it and you lived it.

SPEAKER_05 47:21

I loved it. I loved my job, I was delighted to be there, and I it it it was a good idea to be married to it too, for that matter. Which I was. We went everywhere, we took every opportunity that they gave us, and they gave us lots of opportunities. We'd met a lot of people, of course, and we enjoyed we and also had them come and visit us. We had an awful lot of visitors. They sent lots of children to visit us. Teenagers. So it was the people. While you're doing these things, you know, you don't really think of them as being special, but they are special.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Do you have any advice for a younger person that might be listening about traveling and family and friends?

SPEAKER_05 48:19

Oh, I recommend that people always travel and uh visit their friends and their families. That's why it's so horrible just sitting here doing nothing. With the pandemic. With the pandemic, but also with the age. After all. There's nobody left. That's one bad thing about being old.

SPEAKER_01 48:53

Well, thank you very much for sharing your story. We're going to pivot to Karen.

SPEAKER_05 48:59

Well, she's has a really exciting time.

SPEAKER_01 49:02

But if you want to add anything as we're talking to Karen, you know, feel free to you know contribute. Karen, when did you join Pan Am?

SPEAKER_03 49:13

I joined in 1970, February of 1970.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

And tell us about how you decided to become a flight attendant.

SPEAKER_03 49:23

I had uh never considered such a job or anything remotely like that, but at a wedding I was uh in conversation with one of the bridesmaids who was currently a flight attendant for Pan Am. And I had just uh graduated, I was headed for a teaching job, and it just sounded so much more interesting than than uh than that. I don't mean to disparage that uh occupation. I've been in education off and on through through these years, but I thought, well, that's something to kind of think about. And almost on a lark, um, I saw there were they were interviewing in Chicago. This was in 69, and they were getting ready for the hiring uh of a large number of people because the jumbos had just arrived or were arriving, the 747s. So on a lark, I went downtown Chicago and had my interview and was hired.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

Tell us a little bit about your flying career.

SPEAKER_03 50:33

Well, a little of everything. I mean, it was great being uh based in different places because there was certainly a different vibe in each place. But just from what Barbara said about the people, you know, the bottom line was yes, the travel, the benefits, the exotic places, and the interesting folks, uh, famous and not so famous. That that paled to what uh we all learned in the job that the people we worked with were really intelligent, uh diverse, fabulous people with their own stories. And it made it made a little Midwestern girl kind of wake up and think there's lots of ways to to do things. So it's really very mind-opening.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

What was some of your favorite aircrafts that you flew on?

SPEAKER_03 51:29

I love the 707. It was intimate, it was great. We went, you know, it was it was the workhorse of the early 70s, in spite of the jumbos coming out. Um and uh the jumbo was fun. Uh, you just had to manage it uh because it was all so new and so many people, so many omelets, so many of everything. But it uh as in Pan Am Fashion, they managed it well. The commissary was great, the food was exquisite, you know, from from everything. Even in even in coach, you had really decent food. Yeah, and they had food, they always had food. Well, of course, and it was it was not bad at all. And in first class, it was very, very lovely. So, and I enjoyed working the first class galley a lot, and um I still love to cook.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

And you were part of the uh RR flights in and out of Saigon in 1972?

SPEAKER_03 52:38

Right, when I was based in LA and then later San Francisco, we were doing um I didn't do a great many, I think I I did several of the R and R flights taking the soldiers out of Saigon into the ports, into Bangkok or Taiwan or uh Hong Kong, um and and Manila. And those were wonderful, outbound and very, very sad bringing bringing the soldiers back to their posts in uh in Vietnam. It was it was uh a a strange time anyway for everybody because the country was split uh uh along very uh sharp lines about the war and it it just permeated everything you did. And here were these um young guys that were just sent uh uh to do uh to do this. It was we tried to have a lot of fun and we did. We painted things on we we I won't go into the details. We just have a lot of fun. No alcohol was served, but it did that it was not necessary. We had so much fun. Great people.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

Tell us a little bit about your travels to faraway lands.

SPEAKER_03 54:08

Well, it it uh it goes without saying that the vacations were great, and my husband was in graduate school at Stanford at the time, and we were zipping around and doing these wonderful trips. Even Hawaii, it was kind of like just a minor little jump over there to yeah uh to relax. So we had wonderful trips. Africa was probably one of the highlights we today. If you go on a safari, uh even the the cost of and not even getting there, just the cost while you are in uh in at this point, it was East Africa. Uh it it was very they gave breaks to airline people. We had uh wonderful accommodations, made friends. It just it that was a very exciting one. All the all the trips were were good in different ways. You know, obviously the Tahiti and the you know hopping over to Morea there was was fun and the thatched roofs, and we thought we were living a movie. We weren't, we were just enjoying ourselves. We were in our twenties, what we know. And and and just London and the and the museums. I've I'm a museum junkie anyway, so everywhere uh we would go, we would find that. Didn't do a whole lot of shopping, but the bazaars and the uh and the experiences there were really wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 55:45

Barbara, do you have any favorite places you've traveled to?

SPEAKER_03 55:49

Probably all of them. All of them, yeah. Yeah. Each place had its own attractive part of it, right?

SPEAKER_05 55:59

My youngest daughter, for example, uh can say that she learned how to swim in Tahiti. Not everybody can not everybody can say that. And my and my sons were diving to the bottom of the Mediterranean off Greek, uh off the Greek island of Aegina when we stayed there, and finding all sorts of little goodies. So there's there was a lot of things good about it, and there were some b things that were bad about it because now my eldest son lives in Guam, and my second son lives in Maui, and my third son lives on the big island of Hawaii, on the Mauna Kea.

SPEAKER_01 56:54

Karen, do you have any memories you want to share on your flying days?

SPEAKER_03 57:01

Well, one one time, and uh my husband brought this to mind actually the other day, but I was not yet transferred to JFK. I was still flying out of San Francisco. But we were moving because he got a job uh in New Jersey, and so we were crossing the country in a little MG packed with my uniform because I was on call that month. I could not get, they wouldn't give me the time off for the move. So being on call, as everyone knows, is is a little hairy. You just have to be within, what was it, um 45 minutes, I think, of a of a of your flight time, of your flight report, I'm sorry. So you had to be uh no long, no more than 45 minutes. In fact, when we lived in New Jersey, we were just like 44 and a half minutes away. So the point is that we were crossing the country in this car packed with camping things because we were stopping in Yellowstone and another place, had that stuff, and then uh my uniform and and then other things because we were stopping at a class reunion, a high school class reunion back in Chicago. And all along we're stopping at phone booths, uh checking with Pan Am. You don't need me, right? You know, we're not telling, not not exactly uh divulging where I was uh where I was making the call, but we got it, we got across, it was fine, no problem. And things just had a way of working out. And when you were in that was just a personal frivolous thing, but if you were in a in a serious um situation, you knew that not only did you have the company uh at your back, you had every person. You know, it it wasn't it was a very personal thing. People cared, they they knew it represented um the United States. It was it was this iconic um thing that you were a part of and you didn't want to let it down, and you didn't let want to let your co-workers down. So there was a real commodity that was uh evident everywhere you went.

SPEAKER_01 59:33

What was your favorite job on the airplane?

SPEAKER_03 59:36

It was definitely first class galley, because it I learned all kinds of things, uh, as everybody has to. I mean, everyone learns it, but some people just don't enjoy it. And I thought it was a real challenge. Uh, you know, I remember preheating the plates and then having some delay or something, and then putting them back in and heating them again after just little things like that. You wanted things to be just right. And when we would have the dining room set up in the uh upper deck of the jumbos, that was so much fun. Then you really were with the people, with the passengers for hours and having a delightful time, just as if you were entertaining your own home. I think we probably sat down with them a few times. It was just it was very delightful.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

Any uh famous people on any of your flights?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:30

Oh, yeah, many, many. Um, I flying out of LA, you get all the Hollywood ones, and those were a variety of good and bad, and don't I won't name names. But um yeah, you you you realized how important that customer service was to keep the famous people happy as well as the people in the back. Um it was not a uh a class thing. It felt like more like uh just a an experience. I never took pictures with any of these people. I didn't there was nothing said about there was no policy about that, but I felt it was just didn't it was an infringement on their personal space and never um yeah I remember Red, I remember this gets personal, but I we were discussing whether we were gonna have children or not. And we had been married uh, you know, five, six years, and Ray Bradbrery was on, the author. And he was in first class, so you have more time to chat with people. And I I remember this this deep conversation I had with him. And I asked him his opinion. What imagine, I mean what was I thinking uh of would would you bring kids into the world at this time? I mean it was a scary time. It's not unlike the way some young people are feeling today. And uh he said, oh, absolutely. I remember it was very positive and he was uh a delight. Um yeah, Robert Redford. I mean I I hit it off really well with trivia contests when I could say I served Robert Redford, you know, a four-hour dinner, and that he was one of the ones in the upstairs uh uh 747 dining room. So we, yeah, there were a lot of people. We had dignitaries out of the East Coast more. We had we had virtually, we had crossing Africa, I remember one uh on the flight that hops across all of those stops. We were forever getting uh waiting for a dignitary to arrive because uh there is just my my good friend who is African says there's Africa time and there's uh American time. And the the the chief would sh would show up or somebody in his cabinet with a with a gallia and with all of the people around and we were just as gracious to him keeping us uh waiting for an hour as if he were on time. And it was just it was just you just rolled with it and uh uh yeah, yeah, that you you met you met people who you wrote who you wrote your impressions about, but then you wrote them maybe years later thinking, why didn't I ask that person question? So yeah, it was a real treat.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:33

Let's go back to 1979. Panam is pulling out of Tehran and you're on one of the last flights.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:41

Yeah, the round-the-world flight would always stop in Tehran, but we and we always had a layover there, which was a wonderful place to have a layover. Uh and they had stopped the layovers, they would be in Beirut, and was it the one after it was Rome, I think it went Rome, Tehran, Beirut. So they skipped the layover there. So it was a longer day, but we but nobody was uh the airline always being safe, did not want any any uh crews staying there when things were getting very, very dangerous. And we were one of the last flights out before they took the hostages. We found out later, it was about f I think four days later. And the plane was just it was so tense, you just felt the uh in a different way than the than the Vietnam experience. Just these people, mostly Westerners, were leaving this place that they had been in in at home or in business or whatever, and they were very, very nervous, and when the f wheels came up, there was a big applause uh throughout the plane. Lasted for many minutes.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:59

In your opinion, what makes Panam special to you?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:04

Well, again, like I like Barbara said, I think it's the people. And yes, it's iconic, and it was a f you know, in every kind of way uh the development of the industry, etc. But the people were what made the company. So I think it's I think it's that. I have good friends from that and and and really wonderful memories.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:31

Barbara, can you tell us a little bit about your husband? What kind of person he was? Just give us an introduction of what he was like.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:45

Uh he was a gentleman.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:47

I knew him. He was a true gentleman. He was a gentleman, which is quite different from lots of American men. I found out Fairly recent well, it wasn't fairly recently because she died a long time ago in talking to his mother. The reason we got married in Damascus, which I had not known. I knew that we could do that, of course, but the reason that he wanted to get married out of town, so to speak, is that he didn't want his mother meddling and he didn't want her meeting me. You didn't meet him until after you were married. I didn't meet her until afterwards because she had wanted him to marry some kind of a German countess. And the thought of marrying an American was a little bit much. Whereas he said that he the only thing he wanted to do was to marry an ordinary American girl. So I repeated that to him a number of times, and he always said, Well, you're certainly not ordinary.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:02

That's a great story. Thank you for sharing. Karen, anything you'd like to add about your story or Barbara's story?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:11

Oh, well, we could talk all day, but I think I just want to commend you for uh sort of presenting all of these many stories in these podcasts. And I hope they are um telling of of the variety and the uh the impact that the this company had on the hist on American history and and and and and the industry itself. So I it's it's it's um it's a great thing you're doing. It's a wonderful opportunity. And I hope a lot of people can uh share that. Yeah, listen to it and share it.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:53

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:55

And I hope I'm still alive.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:58

I'm I hope I'm still alive so that I can see that museum one of these days. So we'll see what happens. I t I tell everybody I have to live to be 106 because the mother of uh Senator John McCain, the mother of John McCain lived to be 106, and they wrote that down in my medical file. I was joking.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:32

Well, thank you both for coming on the Pan Am podcast. It's been very enlightening, and I really appreciate both of you sharing your personal stories.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:42

Thank you. It's my pleasure. I have another personal story.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:46

Please.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:47

And that is I was on my I was on my way alone to spend a weekend in Germany and was in the sitting in the first class when they invited my seatmate, who was a man I didn't know, but we had been talking as a seatmate. When it came time for serving the food, they invited him to go upstairs where they had the dining room. And he said, Well, I won't go unless she goes. The stewardess said, Well, I'm sorry she's a company employee and she's not allowed to go there. And he said, Well, I won't go without her. So I ate upstairs. Love that. Love that.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:30

That's a great story, yeah. Great story. Well, again, thank you all for your time. If I don't talk to you, Barbara, before your hundredth birthday, um, it's I it's it's going to be fantastic.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:44

My son, my third son, said that I should always tell everybody I'm 29.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:50

So there you go. No, you're 28.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:53

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:55

28. All right. Well, thanks again, Barbara and Karen, for your time.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:02

You're welcome. You're very welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:04

Thank you very much. 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.thepanammuseum.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. As flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world, thank you for flying, Pan Am.