SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to the Pan Am Podcast, brought to you by the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York. This podcast and our museum are dedicated to celebrating the legacy of the world's most iconic airlock, Pan American World Airways. My name is Tom Betty, and I'm the host of this program. Thank you for joining us. This program is sponsored by the generous support of Mr. Adam Aaron, the CEO of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Incorporated. The Pan Am Museum Foundation is a nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information at the Pan Ammuseum.org. Again, our website is the Panamuseum.org. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. If you are using Apple Podcasts, please consider leaving a review. It will help others discover this program. If you're not familiar with Pan Am, welcome. We are honored to have you here and for you to learn about what we're all about. If you already know of Pan Am, worked for, or flown on the airline, or just love our history, it's good to be with you again. So with that, let's get this episode in the air, so to speak. Welcome aboard your Pan American jet clipper. Johanna joined Pan American World Airways in 1970 as a flight attendant and was later promoted to purser trainer, and in 1986 was appointed corporate manager of Pan Am's new employee assistance program, also known commonly today as EAP. In this role, Johanna was responsible for the oversight of bio, psycho, social, spiritual aspects of the 1988 Lockerby disaster. Her new book, a memoir called Flight with Weighted Wings, was released in January of 2023 and is available from the Pan Am Museum's online store. There is a link in the episode description to purchase this book. Also, Johanna's Pan Am Corporate video to new employees from 1987 is available on our YouTube channel. There is also a link to this video in the episode description. Today, Johanna is an expert in crisis management from a psychological perspective and a renowned expert in the field of trauma, addiction, and recovery. She served as vice president of treatment services at the Betty Ford Center from 2006 to 2013 before serving as CEO of the Las Vegas Recovery Center, Senior Fellow of Clinical Services from 2013 to 2016. Johanna received her Doctorate of Philosophy and Clinical Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. In addition, she adds her 40 years of personal recovery to her long list of accomplishments. Johanna developed and implemented crisis response programs for Pan American World Airways, Trans World Airlines, and has facilitated the training of crisis response teams for several other airlines as well. Working at Pan Am during the Locker B bombing led to her becoming a pioneer in the aviation industry, organizing, training, and responding to aviation disasters, and facilitating trauma processing, grief counseling, and critical incident stress debriefing guidelines. In 1996, she provided counseling services to the family members of the 230 individuals, including over 50 TWA employees, who perished on Flight 800, the third deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history to date. In 2000, she received the FBI's Exceptional Service in the Public Interest Award. Then in September of 2001, Dr. O'Flarity was again called to New York to assist with counseling airline employees and facilitating the crisis response training for the New York City Transit Authority after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. She also conducted critical incident response training for the FBI and first responders. Dr. O'Flarity provided counseling to the first and last responders of the October 1st, 2017 massacre at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on the Las Vegas Strip, where 58 people were killed and another 546 injured. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the United States to date. Dr. O'Flarity has been featured on American news channels such as CBS, ABC, NBC, and CNN, as well as several podcasts as an expert in her field. To listen to more of Dr. O'Flarity, check out the podcast called Living on Brand with Kim and Glenda. There is a link in the episode description to Johanna's episode. For more information on Johanna or to contact her, her website is www.johannahelps.com. There is a link in the episode description. Today Johanna maintains a consulting practice and has an active schedule as a keynote speaker in crisis management and addiction. She resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. Welcome to the program, Johanna.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Thank you, Tom. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

We're glad to have you. Let's first start about how you started flying and when you started flying with Pan Am.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Well, I started flying with Pan Am in uh, I think I was hired in July 1970, and then based in New York. And uh it was very frightening for uh me. I'd flown for a couple of years with a chartered airline in England, Monarch, and there was a small airline and so on. Pan M was not frightening. Living in New York was very intimidating, and uh I thought that I'd get out of there as fast as I could. We could transfer after six months. And when the West Coast opened up, I already had become acclimated to New York and stayed there my whole career. Oh, interesting. And and where did you grow up? I grew up in Ireland in a very small town uh in the south, County Kerry. Uh, the name of the town is Calorgran. Uh, you've probably never heard of it, but it's a very beautiful little town on the Irish coast, the Irish Sea.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

So that's why moving to New York City as a young person was a little daunting.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Very daunting, very daunting, yes. But I got used to it, and it was the 70s, and it was pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Well, it was crazy. It was a it truly was a culture shock for me. Uh, you know, uh the 70s was uh the time of uh, you know, sex, what is it, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And I found myself with a high-flying, literally a high-flying group of flight attendants, and um got really involved in uh the New York uh nightlife.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

Oh, interesting. So tell us a little bit about that. I'm intrigued.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

You are intrigued, huh? You're too young. I don't want to corrupt you.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

1970s. Bring us back to the 1970s, partying what studio 35?

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Studio 54. It was Studio 54. Yes, indeed. I hung out there, and uh along with my other slight attendant friends, and then we flew, which was wonderful. And uh, you know, we find each other, you know, it's it's kind of like birds of a feather, we find each other, and that was actually uh quite a fun time. Uh, but I uh I really was always a deep thinker, and I grew up as a devout Catholic in Ireland and actually had chosen the religion myself. So uh chosen to see you sort of uh worship uh the religion myself. So um the 70s and the behaviors in New York were really uh really quite contrary to the way I was raised, and so it was bothering me. And fortunately, I I found a way out of uh that lifestyle, and I'm very, very grateful for you know that I did.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

But let's talk about a little bit about uh flying for Pan Am in the 1970s. You were flying all over the world, 747, is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 9:25

I love the 747. I was flying the 747. On occasion, I would get on the 707, which I hated because I was on uh a 707 going to Trinidad uh once, L in the 70s, and we hit very, very severe clear air turbulence. Even the captain said afterwards it was the worst he'd ever experienced, and he'd been flying 33 years. So I was really quite traumatized, and I would avoid the 707 and fly the 747. That was my airplane. I loved it. And now Tom, I'm a lousy, I'm a lousy cook. I'm to this day, I'm a lousy cook. I loved before I checked out as a purser, I loved working the first class galley. I just loved it. I made everything look great, and anyway, all you had to do was heat things up. And so I used to work the first class galley or the first class cabin, which really were not very desirable uh positions because they were very, very hard work. But for some reason, I loved it and loved flying all over the world. It was amazing. What an experience for a young girl like me coming from Ireland who would never ever have had an opportunity to travel and be exposed to different cultures and all sorts of different peoples from all walks of life. And to me, actually, to tell you the truth, as somebody now with advanced degrees, uh, flying with Pan American was probably the best education I ever got. How so? Well, you begin to not be as myopic and narrow-minded as we usually are when we're younger. You see the world, and you know that, oh my God, we are all very much alike. You know, as I travel the world, I realize as human beings, we're so much alike. And uh, it's some of our religions and our politics and our culture that tries to separate us. I was very fortunate. I never saw that. I saw us all in the same circle, the same circle of life. And I I love traveling. And actually, I mean, maybe it was kind of crazy, but uh when I had my time off, I had to go off on my own. I mean, here I am, 23, 24, and I would go off on my own, traveling, traveling to Fiji, traveling all over the place. I had no common sense. I had no common sense, but I tell you, I must have been protected with Guardian Angel. I have absolutely no regrets. I loved working with uh Pan American, I love aviation, love it, because I also work for TWA.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Uh it's funny, a few flight attendants have told me that work the 747, that they also don't really cook now and and they and they don't know how. And they would say that, well, I can cook for 300 people on a 747, but I can't cook dinner for six people in my house. It would is that kind of the same with you?

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Absolutely, but I can make it look good, Tom. So when you come over, you I'm gonna fool you with presentation.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

All right, sounds good. All right, so so you were a flight attendant and then you went to purser and a trainer. Yes. And tell us a little bit about that experience of being pretty much the the boss on the plane, being a purser.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah, I yeah, I was the boss. As the children say, I was the boss of you. I was, you know, as a purser and I loved it, uh, you know, because I uh I got a great compliment. Uh in back in the day, we used to sign in. We'd show up and we'd actually sign in, manually sign in. And uh there was a couple of flight attendants, and I was waiting to sign in. And they could see who the purser was, and they said, Oh, Johanna's the purser. Great. Because I was a team player. I worked, I would never ask a flight attendant to do something that I wouldn't do. So we were in there as a team and a crew, and we really had uh Julie, it was amazing, amazing camaraderie. And I often reflect back now because you know, I've been working for many years as a psychologist, and I think some of the best team cohesiveness is on board an aircraft, and it still goes on to this day, aboard an aircraft, among I'm sure the pilots, because they have uh, you know, crew resource management, and uh among the flight attendant crew. Because we absolutely have to have each other's back.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Interesting. And then you advanced to the EAP uh corporate program for Pan Am. Um, EAP is employee assistance program. And before we talk about that, I wanted to let our listeners know that the way you and I met is uh through Linda Reynolds' videos that we put on YouTube. And I reached out to you and I said, Oh, I found this video from the mid-80s. Um, so that's how that's how we met. So tell us a little bit about the employee assistance program at Pan Am, which was kind of a new concept in the 1980s.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Absolutely. And we did meet through that video, and when you initiated a contact with me, I thought, well, this guy's a scammer, you know, because there's scammers all over the place. And what a delightful connection. You were such an asset to the Pan Am uh museum and program. So it was 1986, and at that time, uh each union on the property had several peer counselors, they would call them, that were helping their uh fellow uh peers who had problems and primarily problems with alcohol. That was back in 86, so there wasn't too many drugs involved. Today's a different story. And so my manager, flight service at the time, Susan Cream, a lovely lady, and we'd become good friends because remember, I was a trainer for training flight attendants to be purser. So I worked a lot very closely with management. And she had said, Oh, you know, Johanna, Dr. McCann, who was the medical department in the medical run. He's looking for somebody to run, she didn't even know it was an EAP program. Why don't you go down and um visit with him? I said, I have no interest whatsoever in uh working five days a week, full-time. So forget it, Susan, it's not happening. So she finally talked me into going down to talk to Dr. McCann. And I did not want the job. I had said to him, you know, first what did it entail? Because I was a peer helping flight attendants. I was one of the peers helping the flight attendants. And I said, I'm really not interested in this job, Dr. McCann, but I'm coming here to you because I will help whoever gets the job. And I would have helped them because I was going to continue being um a peer in the flight service department helping flight attendants that had substance abuse. Well, a long story short, there was interview after interview, and um I got the job. And uh it was really quite amazing. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know what I was doing. I uh but I must say that I worked extremely hard. And back then there was not too many people that knew what they were doing. So there was a little airline group of airline employee assistance programs. So I would learn from them, and primarily my role was to do assessments of the employees that had problems and find them the appropriate treatment and then coordinate with management that they would be off the line and it would be confidential and so on. So it worked extremely well. And I tell you, Tom, we were very busy. I didn't just work with flight attendants, this was the corporate EAP. So I worked with pilots, mechanics, rampers, passenger service, management, and their families. So it was a very, very, very active program.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Let's rewind for a second and talk about your personal journey, how you got into wanting to help people.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Thank you. Well, you know, when I was a very young girl, I wanted to be a nun. And that would have been a way of helping people. But then I guess as I became a teenager, I uh somebody realized that I was attractive, and then finally I realized that I was, and I started dating, so I forgot about being a nun. But I always wanted to help. I always want there's a line from Whoopi Goldberg, and she says, you know what? I was going to be a nun or a flight attendant. And she's we're starring in this movie where she's a nun. And um, so I had personally, I had a problem. Uh I had a problem with alcohol when I was flying. Fortunately, I was only flying for seven years at that time, and uh I was a periodic, which meant it was on occasional intoxication and uh bad behavior. And so I was very fortunate. I got uh I got on the road of recovery. And so when I was on my road of recovery for several years, then I volunteered uh with the professional standards for the flight attendants, and most of the people that were on that professional standards were, you know, women in recovery. We helped a lot of flight attendants. So actually transitioning from that role to the EAP, you know, a lot of the skills transferred. But I, you know, uh grew along uh very much, very much and very fast uh in the EAP program because I started in '86 and 1988, Lockerbie happened.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Yeah, let's talk about the tumultuous 1980s. I'd like to talk to you about Lockerbie.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Okay, okay. Well, I was in the medical department, you know, uh, really as a counselor, knowing how to counsel, assess, refer, and manage the individual's care. And Lockerbie happened, and um my medical director uh went immediately to Lockerbie to work with a pathologist. And then I was uh told, uh, I want you to go to London and Lockerbie. And I go, and do what? What am I supposed to do in London or Lockerbie? We had no training on how to be uh, you know, caregivers to the families of the victims. So I went to Lockerbie and I flew over to London, and uh flying over, the the plane was full of relatives who had lost loved ones. And I was sitting next to a young woman who'd lost her husband, and she had two young children, and she's showing me photographs and everything, and I'm thinking, oh my God. So, and then I see the other Pan M employees that were pulled out of marketing and pulled out of all over, and they're doing the best, they're trying to take away the pain from these family members, which you can't do. And so uh we all went and we stayed in London for a while. Uh, and a lot of the families were in London. We were in the same hotel, I think the Hyde Park Hotel, if I recall correctly, because the folks at Lockerbie and the first responders, they had begged us not to come up there because there was no accommodation, nothing in that small town. But the families got very, very uh on very they got really really aggressive about wanting to go to Lockerbie, and I understood it completely. I mean, I was not a decision maker, we were there trying to take care of the emotions, and finally the decision was made to uh get uh two 737s from Berlin, uh Pan Amata Base in Berlin at the time, and management pilots, and I don't know where they found the flight attendants, but we flew up with all the passengers, we flew up on Christmas Day to Lockerbie, to Presswick, I guess. We flew into Presswick, and then we had motorcades going to Lockerby. I will never forget it, Tom. It's like it was yesterday. You know, the dreary weather in Lockerbie, pouring rain. Then we finally get to the scene, and there's the maid of the sea, and the you know, the nose cone scattered all over the Scottish moors, first responders all over the place, and the families. The families were rather agitated on the way up, and I thought, you know, I had some psychology uh degrees behind me then. And I thought, well, coming back, because they're going to make the connection of their lost one and this devastation uh of uh aircraft scattered all over the Lockerbie uh moors. So actually, that was true. That was true. The families, once they saw the nose cone and so on, they realized, you know, uh their loved ones were gone and uh they were much calmer on the way back. So all of us that were uh dispatched essentially to London and Lockerbie without training. Essentially, the training is on how to be a caregiver for somebody in intense grief and continue to have some form of objectivity and emotional detachment for yourself to protect yourself. We didn't have any of that. But I was one of the ones actually involved afterwards with the Air Transport Association in recommending training and developing programs. I was one of the pioneers out there for developing what now we know as care programs, because I felt we were all pretty badly burned psychologically with our roles in Lockerbie.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Thank you for sharing. I know it's a difficult memories. Let's pivot for a second and talk about the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, because you you dealt with that as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yes, I did. So being in the medical department, and we had the medical, I was the only counselor at the time, and we had, you know, full staff medical department with nurses and doctors. Male flight attendants would come into my office because they we really had an allegiance. They knew I was the next flight attendant, and they would come in and they would they really would say they would pull up their shirt and they would show me all of these, you know, like carcinoma that they had uh all over their body. And uh I didn't know what it was, and but I had one of the doctors who was very empathetic. Uh they were all the doctors were very empathetic, and I would say to the doctors, can you please help me? Uh I don't know what's going on with this. Can I send them in to you? They say, okay, fine, come on, come in. And then one of the doctors got uh very involved with the AIDS epidemic. He was a he was a doctor at Pan Am, but he had his own private practice. His name is Dr. Yano, and he had his own private practice in New York and was just a wonderful physician and got very involved in treating AIDS patients. So he was such a gift to us. Uh it was tragic, Tom, because here were all these young, good-looking in the prime of their life. Uh, and once you got a diagnosis of HIV and then HIV positive, and then uh, you know, progressing into AIDS at that time, that was a death sentence. That was a death sentence. And so we collectively were probably grieving at that time. We were grieving, we were scared, and we were uninformed, you know. And so were the doctors, you know. Uh many doctors that I've talked to is, you know, along the way. And afterwards, I said, Oh my God, uh, I knew nothing about AIDS when it came out, these physicians would tell me. And they had to sort of learn on the flight, so to speak. It's kind of like COVID. You know, when it hit. And so um, that was a very, very sad time for the airlines. And we had a lot of male flight attendants that we lost.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

And for our listeners, the employee assistance program that Johanna is talking about was a new concept. And Johanna, you you were really a pioneer in this because this was a brand new thing.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

It was.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

I'd like to talk a little bit about the foundation that you built.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

United Airlines had a good program at the time, and TWA had a program which was uh pretty good at the time, also. And so I would uh we were also very generous and sharing with each other. And when um Pan M, you know, started their corporate program, they were very good inviting me in, you know, United and TWA. And I go, what are you doing? And uh a lot of the things that we're doing was very similar to what I was doing as a peer counselor in the flight attendant department. What was really difficult was getting management to buy in to the fact that your employee management education was a huge part of my role. Educating management on how to refer the employees to the EAPE, to the employee assistance program. Because management, and I'm not blaming management, you know, when you have a troubled employee on your crew, whether it's in flight or on the ground, they're very problematic. And you want to get rid of them at all costs. And you can't get rid of them because of the unions and so on. And I would never want them to get rid of them. And I would go out and I would do, we we um developed an educational program, and we would actually also talk about uh look at the cost factor. If you identify a troubled employee, refer them early to the employee assistance program, we get them the appropriate treatment, return to your department, a healthy employee, look at the cost factor. Now we're talking about, you know, all employees, pilots, mechanics, again, as I mentioned earlier, all employees. So it took a little while, and uh I had a lot of I had a lot of resistance from some managers only to find out later that they had been very wounded because there was alcoholism in their family. We became friends, and they became some of my best supporters and would refer uh you know their employees. And of course, the earlier the employees refer, the better. Today, the majority of airlines have employee assistance programs, so all safety-sensitive companies have either an internal EAP program or an external, they contract it out. So I'm very proud of that um that part of my career and uh enjoyed it very much.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

The experience that you had with Lockerby, you were able to turn that into something positive. Yes, very much so. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

When I came back, I was really uh pissed off, if you can say that on this podcast, because I knew that I had been burnt emotionally and psychologically, and I knew that we were burned because we didn't have the proper training. And so I told my boss, you know, we've got to get a program here and we've got to get people, you know, uh trained. And I wanted to find out who are the best people to train in this particular field. And so I had this was 88, remember, and Pan M went on that in 91. So I had the blueprints pretty ready for the program. I had done a lot of research, and uh there was no airline that had a program at the time. None, nobody had a program, which now is the care program that they have. And um, I contacted the Department of Casualty and Memorial Affairs, the United States military, and uh they are the best, they know how to do this, and we became uh pretty connected, and subsequently they were very uh much uh collaborators with me when I went over to TWA because we didn't have the time at uh Pan Am. We had I had all of the blueprints, pretty a template, really, ready to go with my program for a care program. And Pan Am went under on December the 4th, 1991. And I can't, I mean, that's another, I couldn't believe it. I had multiple employees in treatment, and listen to this, Tom. No airline, no insurance. So the employees are in treatment and their insurance stops. Fortunately, all these treatment centers allow the employees to continue the scholarship them essentially and allow them to continue in and finish their treatment and so on. And I continued to run pro bono support groups for the employees. Uh, the union, uh, it was Transport Workers Union at the time. They set up a little quasi little room for me in their um union office, and I ran um for pilots and uh the others that were in recovery. I ran groups for, I don't know, maybe a year or less, because I went to TWA shortly afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

How was that transition working at Pan Am and then uh Pan Am ceases operations and you uh go over to TWA?

SPEAKER_01 30:14

You know, the EAP field in uh the airlines, as you know, very, very small. So um the day that my colleague from TWA called me was the day that TWA declared bankruptcy. It was a few months after Panam went out of business. And uh I said, Are you crazy? That's like changing seats on the Titanic. I'm done, I'm done with airlines. Don't don't know, it's not happening. Well, so why don't you come and talk to us? So I went over to TWA and at the time I had set up a small outpatient program of my own, really, uh, to help LN employees. Uh the uh TWA and Chuck Thibodeau, who is the senior vice president of human resources, great individual. He was gracious enough to say, I asked him, I said, Chuck, you know, I'm very wounded because of Pan Am going under. I loved Pan American. Would you be willing to allow me to come on as a consultant? Because they wanted an employee. And he said, you know, I will, Johanna. Let's try it for a while. So I went on as a consultant, and I was a consultant for a few months, and then I was hired as the director of their um special health services, which is the exact same as an employee assistance program. So I was working with them for maybe two or three weeks, and I met with uh legal and some other uh senior officials, and they said, We want to develop essentially a care program, a trauma response program. And they said, Um, how long do you think it's going to take you to develop this program in addition to your responsibilities at special health services? And I said, Well, three months. They all started laughing. Three months to develop a huge program. I said, Oh, yes, because I have the template and I've done all the work. It will take three months. And it took three months, and we had like about um a hundred volunteers trained in three months. And by the time Flight 800 happened, TWA had trained over 600 individuals. 600 pilots, flight attendants, management, uh, ramp, mechanics, unbelievable individuals. And they uh we activated 400 of them to take care of the families of the victims of Flight 800.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

I know Pan Am tried to do their best in 1988 with Lockerbie, but you were there in in London and Lockerby with families and employees, and you were there with TW800 in 1996. How does that make you feel that you you took some of the challenges from 1988 and that disaster and was able to develop this program that helped people deal with the disaster in 1996?

SPEAKER_01 33:17

How does it make me feel? Well, you know, to me it was just the right thing to do, uh, because I didn't want to see people uh I call it burned, emotionally burned. And uh we had a very good program. In Pan Am, the folks that showed up did a great job. They did a great job. Uh I mean they did everything that the TWA uh folks did, except TWA had training. TWA were more organized. We were organized, we uh had uh multiple people trained, uh, that we had like team leaders and team members, and um but we got a lot of criticism from the politicians, you know, everybody goes nuts and they're territorial in the aftermath of aviation disasters. So um I actually uh um feel perhaps uh quite rewarded that I uh was able to develop the program. And also uh I have to acknowledge the support and cooperation I got from senior management at TWA. They were wonderful, wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Let's talk about you personally. Um do we have to? Well, as you said, we we could do whatever we want on this podcast. Let's talk about TWA 800 for a moment, another disastrous uh incident uh that crippled an airline, just like Lockerby crippled Pan Am uh Flight 800 crippled TWA. What was going through your mind in 1996 when TWA 800 happened?

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Oh my god. I was actually in uh Santa Barbara on vacation. And back then, Tom, you know, we didn't have cell phones. I mean, maybe there was a very few people that had very awkward cell phones, but we had beepers. And I was down by the ocean. I was going to be attending a conference, and I was down by the ocean just reflecting and being in gratitude. And all of a sudden, I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness. There was absolutely no practical reason for me to have this overwhelming sense of sadness. But remember, I'm Irish and we're very intuitive and kind of psychic. And so then the beeper went off because they they had a system uh where uh flight operations would simultaneously beep everybody that needed to be informed. And the beeper just went off with the number, and you called that number. So I went straight back to my hotel, it was like two minutes away from the beach, and I called flight operations, and they said flight 800 has disappeared from radar. And I'm thinking, oh my god. Because we had heard uh 103, flight 103 had disappeared from radar. That was the first uh, I think the first uh blast of news that you know executives got at Pan Am. So Flight 800 had disappeared from radar. Now I was not as familiar with the flights and the flight numbers, so I didn't know where it was going, but I knew Flight 800 had disappeared from radar. So I called one of my coordinators who was in St. Louis, Marilyn Scholl, a wonderful woman. And I go, Marilyn, what's going on? And she goes, Flight 800 going to Paris and then on to Rome, has disappeared from radar. And I said, activate as many team leaders as you can, get them to the hotel that I'm out of hotel. I will get in my car and drive down to Los Angeles and uh see how I can get to uh New York. And uh everybody's calling me. There was a cell phone, everybody's calling me. I had some sort of an awkward cell phone. So um, and uh my boss, Chuck Thibodeau, had said, Johanna, I want you to get to New York. I said, so do I, Chuck. I'm on my way to the airport, I'm trying to get to New York. And so when I got there, they already had a ticket for me on American Airlines. And uh American Airlines is another terminal at uh LAX at the time. And so the TWA at uh passenger service agent said, run, run, run. I said, I can't run, I'm in civilian clothes. If you run with me, we have some opportunity of getting on that aircraft. And so she did run with me, and we got true customs and so on. And I'm very thankful to the American Airlines crew. I don't know them, I've never met them. But you know, that captain on the American Airlines decided to delay the flight for two minutes because he knew there was a TWA uh person that absolutely needed to get on that aircraft. So I got on and I was in the front, and there were phones on the plane, and uh I was able to use the phone, um, talking to some of the pilots that were team leaders, and you know, so on, and they're telling me what happened. And then somebody told me, I can't remember who it was, Johanna, there were 53 TWA uh employees on board. And I go, wait a minute, what do you mean, 53 TWA employees on board? I could not comprehend it, Tom. And so what happened was there was the operating crew, there was a deadheading crew, and then there were families and employees on vacation. So 53 members of the TWA family on board. I thought, oh my god, I have to put that over here and bracket it someplace because I know what I'm going to be facing when we get to the Ramada Hotel. And uh so there was a lot of things going through my mind, but I had faced it before. So, and it was really like a deja vu. So uh, and we worked extremely hard and extremely what I feel very efficiently. And again, all the managers of uh TWA worked so much in collaboration in assisting our team, uh, because though their duties were to stay with the grieving family member until the body was repatriated and then escort the family and the remains to wherever they were going. And some of them were going maybe to Ohio, Tom, and some of them might have been going to Tel Aviv or Paris. And um the way everybody uh, like we'd call over the chief pilot and say, you know, so-and-so is going to be trying to get on this flight, and they'll have cremains with them, and so on, our remains, and it was amazing how it worked. Uh, I'm very proud of um and grateful to uh, well, the Pan American people and indeed the TWA people, they have a great soft spot in my heart.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Let's go back to your recovery. You went into recovery in 1978. Do you want to talk a little bit about uh your journey, your personal journey?

SPEAKER_01 40:30

Uh yes, and uh we'll probably talk later. I just finished my memoir, and uh my personal journey is very much part of that.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Yes, Flight with Weighted Wings is the book. Our listeners can purchase it on Amazon. I was going to talk about it later, but we can talk about it now because it kind of goes into your personal story of recovery.

SPEAKER_01 40:53

It does, and it's very much part of, of course, it's a part of my memoir. And I the title, uh, along with my co-author, I think is a beautiful metaphor for a human being, a psychological metaphor of a human being who takes flight, but they certainly have weighted wings. So with weighted wings would be, you know, uh some issues. Don't we all have issues? My recovery and watching other people that I uh helped uh get on the journey of healing is such a rewarding, um, oh my god, it's just so rewarding and um spiritual that uh I'm very, very grateful. Uh I've done many things in my life, you know, went back to school and got advanced degrees, travel all over the world, lecture all over the world, but my personal recovery comes first. And my personal recovery is about being centered and being in alignment physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and of course intellectually. And so uh, and I love to help others. I'm committed to helping others, I've sort of dedicated my life to helping others, but in a very pragmatic way. I'm not in any way an enabler. First of all, I'm a professional psychologist now. That's my my journey. Uh, I feel very blessed and very grateful. So, you know, I'm sort of very fortunate individual.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Let's talk a little bit about mental health. It's been a very important topic, uh, I believe for everybody. I'm very open. I see a therapist on a regular basis. Uh, and and the reason why I'm open is because if somebody on this program is listening and they're like, well, if that guy can go see a therapist, then I can too. And that's good enough for me. But also I want to talk about mental health as it relates to airline employees, because we have many of our listeners that work in aviation, uh, especially during this turbulent time with uh passenger behavior on aircraft uh to flight attendants and flight crews. So let's talk about mental health and how it should be proactive. Everybody should see a therapist. I've said this for many years. I think the world would be a better place. Uh, everybody has issues, I have issues, you have issues. And if we talk to mental health professionals, the world's a better place.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

I agree. I agree. Now, I started working in the field as a professional in 1986. This is 34, going on 35 years later. And one disappointment that I have, and by the way, thank you for sharing that you're uh seeing a therapist. One disappointment that I have is in today's day and age, we still have mental health and substance abuse, which is a disease. They uh there's still stigma associated with it. If somebody has a broken leg, oh, everybody, oh my god, can what can we do? What can we do? If somebody is suffering from depression, Or anxiety or another mental health issue or a substance abuse issue, they're ashamed, ashamed to talk about it. And so for your listeners, I would really encourage you. There are some wonderful people, and we've come a long way. We have come a long way in understanding mental health and understanding substance abuse. So I would encourage you to reach out to a mental health professional in your uh, you know, in your area, are now on Zoom, they're doing mental health consultations on Zoom. Certainly a good friend or a man, a good friend or a peer, you may want to talk to them, but they don't have the training to be objective. And so with when you're with a mental health professionals, they have training to be objective. And you know, I've been counseling for years, and I still counsel. I still have some private clients, and I do I now do a lot of public uh speaking and lectures, but I don't want to keep somebody in um treatment for two years or a year. Usually it's uh brief with the proviso, they can always check in, they can always come back to what I call be recalibrated. It's absolutely amazing because the majority of people are very healthy, they just need to um you know have run something by a professional. You know, I always say if I have a problem with my car, I go to a mechanic. I don't go to a mental health professional. So if somebody has problems with emotional issues, they go to a mental health professional. And in the aviation industry, I want to give a little shout out here to Air Canada. Air Canada had the first national conference in Toronto last September, and it was called Cabin Crew Recovery Conference. And a major theme of the conference was destigmatization of mental health and substance abuse. And of course, the in the United States, we've been doing that for years, and particularly among the airline industry, and you know, in among the airline industry, each airline has their employee assistance program, but the flight attendants also have FADAP, flight attendant drug and alcohol program. It's FADAP, flight attendant drug and alcohol program. So that's a very, very effective program and actually funded by the FAA. So don't suffer, don't suffer alone because untreated mental health issues and substance abuse issues get worse, not better, without an intervention and appropriate treatment.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

And let me put it in a different perspective. So we go to the gym to work out our muscles and to build our muscles. And we should go to a therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor to exercise our brain muscle, correct? Is that a good analogy?

SPEAKER_01 46:57

Yeah, our emotional rather than brain, because you will have a lot of individuals that are highly intellectual and highly compartmentalized, uh, and continue to stay in the cognitive, but uh they're hard-pressed to find emotions, you know, uh the affective level. I think the most important thing is uh what did they call it? Emotional health. Emotional intelligence was what the authors came out with some years back, which is very, very uh, you know, uh brilliant, but emotional health.

SPEAKER_00 47:30

So you worked for TWA. TWA was purchased by American Airlines in 2001, and you were involved with September 11th aftermath.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

Yes, I was. So I work with TWA and I love TWA, loved it, loved the folks. And if any of you are listening out there, hello, TWA, and of course, my Pan Am buddy. So TWA was uh essentially purchased, and I'm not sure exactly where they were, were they totally sold out and uh in the process of sinking crews and so on and employees, but 9-11 happened. American Airlines reached out to us to see if we could help out, and said, of course we will. And so they asked me first if I would go to Los Angeles. And I said, you know, I'll be glad to go to Los Angeles, but I can uh I let me make a suggestion. I'd be perhaps more effective in New York because I'm very familiar with the resources in New York, and I could help your New York base. And they said, Okay, that's very grateful, Johanna. So I said, Fine. I got off the phone and I told my uh colleague Ellen Cravett, who's a dear friend of mine to this day, was working in the EAP program with me. I said, We're going to New York. And so there was a pilot in our office, and he said, How are you going to get there? I said, Well, we'll fly. What do you think? How are we going to get there? Of course, all the planes were grounded. So Ellen and I we drove to New York from St. Louis. And um Ellen's son-in-law was one of the firefighters that had been killed. And we knew already, we knew already as we were driving. And uh so we drove to New York, and some of my pilot friends, which are just adorable from TWA, kept calling and I kept teasing them. Where are you now? You know, there was no GPSs back then. We had MapQuest, and I would tell them, I don't know, but I see a lot of Texas uh license plates. I was joking with them. So get to New York. Uh, it was absolutely amazing. On the way to New York, Tom, a friend of mine, Captain Gregorican from TWA, called and said, Um, Johanna Michael Judge, Father Michael Judge, the chaplain to the firefighting department, to one of the firefighting houses, uh, he got killed. Something dropped on top of him when he was giving um uh last rites uh and anointing of the dead, essentially. So I said, Oh my god, because Father Michael Judge had become very, very close to us in the aftermath of Flight 800 because he, along with other wonderful chaplains, uh helped us. So I got in New York, and to this day, I have no idea what hotel I stayed at, because we worked probably 18 hours a day, just like every other disaster. Uh, but what was different is every other disaster we had multiple resources going to, it's like moths to a flame, essentially. At 9-11, uh people couldn't get there. The the resources were slim. And uh my role was working with crew members and uh and ground employees, and uh again, the American Airlines employees were amazing, and we did whatever we could. Uh and uh I worked there for I don't know, several weeks, and uh you know, came back and shortly after that, uh American Airlines uh closed uh the TWA Employee Assistance Program, which was uh really uh, you know, that was kind of another hard blow, quite frankly. And uh, but I was able to negotiate with American where I I consulted with them back to consulting with TWA. I consulted with American uh in Los Angeles. I was in their LA hub, and I was finishing my dissertation at the time and getting my doctoral degree, so you know it worked out fine. Um, and I had planned anyway on leaving and going into working directly in treatment centers with um with the patients, and that's what I did.

SPEAKER_00 51:37

So Lockerby, TWA 800, and 9-11, you worked all three of those disasters.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Yes, I did.

SPEAKER_00 51:49

And then you moved to Las Vegas.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

Prior to moving to Las Vegas, Tom, I worked at the Betty Ford Center.

SPEAKER_00 51:55

Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

I worked there as the vice president of their treatment center, and that was a wonderful experience, a wonderful experience. And uh so I worked there for seven or eight years, and then I came to Las Vegas, and I thought, I'm, you know, uh at the Betty Ford Center. Uh that's not going to be bought out, the Betty Ford Center. Well, it was Hazelton actually from Minnesota bought the Betty Ford Center. And uh so I got a great opportunity in Las Vegas to run treatments, a small treatment center, but I thought I'm finished. I am finished with responding to disasters.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

And then October of 2017 happens. Uh, for our listeners, October 2017 was the mass shooting in Las Vegas.

SPEAKER_01 52:40

Yes, it was. And two years prior to that, I'd come to Las Vegas, and I was only in Las Vegas about a month or two, and they'd done they did a write-up in the local papers about me taking the position and so on, and that I was also very experienced in disaster management, and that I was very experienced in uh teaching what's called critical incident stress management. It's a two-day training protocol. And I got a call from a fire captain, and my secretary said, you know, Sonso, Captain Sonso called you, and I said, Okay, fine, let's talk to him. He wanted training for his people, and I go, okay, fine, you know. I thought, training? I said, Oh, well, I'll train. I hadn't trained them in a while. Ironically, I had trained over 200 first responders here. They call it a valley, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Clark County, North Las Vegas, and Henderson, and Boulder City. I trained firefighters and police, 200 of them, on the methodology. Essentially, what it is for their listeners is psychological first aid in the aftermath of crisis. And to train these peers on how to help each other is quite a wonderful uh program. So, yes.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

And that was before the shooting?

SPEAKER_01 53:58

Before the shooting, I had trained 200 uh first responders. And so the night of the shooting, I was in bed very early because I was leaving the next morning to go to Dallas to give a presentation for American Airlines. I continued with my presentation. I would continue to go to Dallas and my presentation because I knew I wouldn't be needed. You do not interrupt first responders' tasks. Don't interrupt the task. They're still in the midst of the task. For the firefighters, you know, were taking people to hospitals and morgues and so on and so on. So, and the police, of course, their work is not uh done for quite some time. So I knew I'd be uh working with them, but I'll work with them when I come back. And American Airlines were great. I had planned on staying there two days, but I did my presentation and they got me an earlier flight to come home. I came home and I worked with the first responders of the Las Vegas shooting for oh my god, months, months.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

So you knew that you were not needed until after the incident. Yes. Interesting. Because the normal uh way somebody would would think is that you know, I'm needed, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go and help. But you knew that they didn't need your help at that minute.

SPEAKER_01 55:21

Not in my role. Now uh the families of the victims they need immediate help, and the Red Cross are there, and the Red Cross will call in other counselors. That's not my role. I'm essentially a psychologist with a lot of crisis management experience. And and I work with first responders and last responders who are the coroners. So I had a great opportunity to work with a Las Vegas coroner and his staff, also, who uh were uh unbelievable individuals. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

So you're a very busy woman. Uh, you travel the world um speaking at different conferences, doing trainings. You have a new book coming out, Flight with Weighted Wings. Uh, there is a link in the episode description to purchase this book. And also you're going to be on another podcast of uh two good friends of mine, uh Living on Brand, with Kim and Glenda. And you can uh listen to that wherever you listen to podcasts just like this one, Living on Brand with Kim and Glenda. You're going to be a guest on their show too.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

Yes, I am. And they are two unbelievably, incredibly uh positive, professional women. And I'm very excited to, I'm very excited about the work they're doing in supporting women. And uh I'm looking forward to being a guest speaker on their podcast.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

So as we reach the conclusion of this episode, what words of wisdom have you seen a lot in your career as a flight attendant, a purser, a trainer in charge of the employee assistance program at Pan Am, and then setting something up that's that was new at TWA, uh, working on some of the most uh heartbreaking disasters of the 20th and 21st century, Lockerby, TWA 800, uh September 11, 2001, the Vegas mass shooting in October 2017. What words of wisdom do you have for the listeners of this program about mental health, dealing with crises, and so forth?

SPEAKER_01 57:37

Thank you. Uh what I would say to the listener is that we are not alone. I'm not alone. I have a group of uh wonderful people in my little circle, and I live, I live an authentic life today. I don't live with a public persona mask, a false mask, a false self. What you see is what you get. And what I would encourage all the listeners to do is try to be as open and honest as you can with your close friends. And if there indeed is, if there's something troubling you, something troubling you, or something troubling you from your past, or indeed one of the my great uh interest is healing ancestral trauma, because you know we we really do inherit a lot of trauma from our ancestors. Reach out, reach out to counselors um for an assessment. If you have a substance abuse, please reach out. This does not get better on its own. I want to say recovery from any substance abuse disorder and recovery from mental health issues is a beautiful journey. A beautiful journey.

SPEAKER_00 58:46

Very good. Anything you'd like to add as we close this episode?

SPEAKER_01 58:50

I really don't think so, but as we talk about all of these disasters, uh, the airline folks used to have an affectionate term for me. They used to call me the disaster queen.

SPEAKER_00 59:03

Oh my.

SPEAKER_01 59:08

Now, I didn't ask for any of those. I didn't ask to be in the midst of any of those. I happened to be working for these airlines, and these unbelievable tragedies happened. I happened to be here involved with the Las Vegas first responders, and lo and behold, the worst shooting in the mass shooting in the history of the United States happens in Las Vegas.

SPEAKER_00 59:34

So let's on this program, we are going to rename you the Disaster Queen of Help. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

I like that.

SPEAKER_00 59:45

You like that?

SPEAKER_01 59:46

I like it, yes.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

Well, thank you very much. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. Um, and I very much appreciate your time coming on the program.

SPEAKER_01 59:56

Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you so much for having me. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

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.thepan Amuseum.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