SPEAKER_00 0:15

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 airline, Pan American World Airways. 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! The Pan Am Museum Foundation is a nonprofit organization. Our mission statement is to educate, celebrate, and inspire present and future generations by preserving historical and diverse personal stories of Pan American World Airways. Please visit our website for more information at the Pan Ammuseum.org. Again, our website is the Pan Ammuseum.org. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram. We would love to meet you when you visit our museum on Long Island, which is just a short distance away from New York City. In this episode, we'll be talking about Pan Am's famous flying boat clippers, particularly the Boeing 314, which rolled the skies in the late 1930s. Later, we will be joined by Margaret O'Shocknessy of our sister museum, the Foyne's Flying Boat and Maritime Museum, which has the only full-scale replica in the world of a Pan American Boeing 314 called the Yankee Clipper. A link to this museum can be found in the episode description. She will also tell us about the origins of Irish coffee and its unique connection to Pan Am history, along with a conversation about Hollywood legend Marine O'Hara and her storybook romance with Pan Am Captain Charlie Blair, a love story fit for the silver screen. But first, let's dive into Pan Am's celebrated flying boat clippers. Throughout the 1930s, Pan Am's determination to span the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans kept the airline in an almost constant state of flux. Although the most famous design of this period was the Boeing 314, it was not the first flying boat. Two other companies, the Sikorsky Aircraft Company and the Glenn L. Martin Company, both built earlier flying boats used in Pan Am's fleet in the 1930s. Sikorsky built Pan Am's first four-engine flying boats, the S-40 in 1931 and the S-42 in 1934, followed by Martin's M-130 China Clipper and her two sister ships, which inaugurated Trans-Pacific Service in 1935. The airline was constantly pursuing new aircraft models with more range, developing procedures to cope with weather, sea condition forecasting for long-range flights, and providing maintenance and logistical support in remote areas around the world. By 1941, Pan American Airways was a decade ahead of the United States Department of War as far as technology and air base operations. When war broke out, Pan Am was instrumental in helping the American government catch up and develop their air power into a formidable force. In fact, even before the war, Pan Am was the government's chosen instrument. For example, during the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration asked the airline to spy on Japanese naval movements in the Pacific. On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese orchestrated a coordinated attack on Pearl Harbor, American bases, and Pan Am bases, where its employees were either killed or captured as prisoners of war. More about this in a future episode. The Boeing 314 flying boat was initially built exclusively for Pan Am and was hailed as the greatest pre-war commercial aircraft. Launched in the summer of 1938, the 314 was the largest long-range aircraft of its time and would later become an important part of the war effort. Boeing would only make a total of 12 of these aircraft between 1938 and 1941, with nine going to Pan Am and the other three to British Overseas Airways Corporation, or more commonly known as BOAC. The 314 was the only flying boat large enough to span the Pacific and Atlantic routes with a sufficient payload. The airplane consisted of a double-decker fuselage with wings large enough to accommodate a catwalk for the engineer to inspect the rear of the engines while in flight. The flight crew consisted of a pilot and a copilot, supported by a navigator, radio operator, and a flight engineer, all operating on a well-lighted flight deck 19 feet long and 10 feet wide. The interior passenger cabin was configured with spacious comfort in mind and was both expansive and luxurious. The plane included lounges, a dining room, private staterooms, and sleeping berths. The crew also consisted of celebrated chefs that prepared delicious meals that could have easily been served in any five-star restaurant. Elegant five and six-course meals served in gleaming silver service by white-coated stewards delivered a standard of luxury on Pan American's B-314 that has rarely been matched since. Flying boat captains took on a celebrity status among passengers and local peoples in faraway destinations. Pan Am founder and chairman Jupp recognized this lofty status and gave flying boat captains the official title of Master of Ocean Flying Boats. These pilots took on an almost godlike status, and Pan Am crews referred to them as sky gods. The crews were not only considered sky gods by their colleagues, but by pilots of other airlines too, and there was a reason for this. Pan Am crews were extremely skilled at long distance overwater flight operations and celestial navigation. Only the very best and most experienced were assigned to fly the Boeing 314. Extensive training and flying thousands of hours of flight time in other seaplanes was mandatory. Even the way they looked was all by design. Pan Am viewed its flight crew as sailors of the sky and modeled their rank and uniforms in a very military way patterned after the United States Navy. The flight crew dressed in their naval uniforms complete with white caps, would always walk to and from the aircraft in unison to make a striking appearance. The high standards of training, experience, and appearance were all due to the disciplines instilled in them by Panam's chief engineer, Andre Priester. Priester was a taskmaster and insisted on procedural compliance to all the standards he established. He stamped the airline with his own ethic of hard-nosed, conservative, safety-minded, meticulously planned operations. It was Priester who laid down the specifics for each of Pan Am's new flying boats. He plotted new routes and wrote operation manuals and calculated aircraft performance. Priester invented Pan Am's operational philosophy that would forever reshape the entire aviation industry to this day. The naval rank and uniform for pilots quickly became the standard aviation tradition among other airlines. So today, when you see a pilot in uniform at the airport, you'll now know that started all with Pan Am. The Pan Am Museum has a permanent exhibit that explores the Boeing 314 in more detail. Hailed as one of Ireland's finest tourism ambassadors, Margaret was instrumental in developing the museum what it is today. If it were not for her vision and dedication, along with the museum's benefactor, Maureen O'Hara, the museum and replica Panam B314 flying boat would not be a reality. She was awarded the highest civilian honor by her local government in 2018 for her years of work and dedication at the museum. Joining us from County Limerick, Ireland, it is a great pleasure to welcome Margaret to the Panam Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Hi there. Hi, Thomas.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Lovely to hear from you and delighted to be on your podcast tonight.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

First of all, thank you for joining us. This has been your life's work for almost 35 years. When you look back at it, um, and it all started in 1987, what memories stand out for you?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Oh my, there are so many. Uh let's try and condense it a little for you. I suppose the opening day on the 8th of July 1989 has to be the starting one anyway, because while I started to try and put a group together, try and get a premises, all the things that you have to do, try to find some memorabilia and people to support us financially, all that started in 87. And we had a very little short time frame because we were faced with a very special anniversary, which was the 50th anniversary of Panam crossing the Atlantic with passengers in 1989. So that was the date we had to get started for. So that day stands totally out of my mind because Pan Am were still in disguise. We had, I would say, several hundred Panamers uh join us for the celebrations with the vice president of Pan Am, uh Mr. Murphy. I can't remember his first name now. And we had uh our patron, or who became our patron, uh the one and only Maureen O'Hara Blair to cut the ribbon with the American ambassador. So that has to be one of the highlights. Great. After that, there are so many Thomas of all the different people coming from around the world to visit us, to make friends with us, support us. Uh, and if I may say at the very beginning, without the enormous support we got from many, many Americans, our museum would not be there today. So that's one. And I suppose every year there's a little highlight when somebody nice comes through the door.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

So tell us about your museum there.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Well, I suppose uh when I started the museum, I didn't come from a museum background. Uh I came from a banking background, but I lived in this small village. And uh as a child, uh my grandfather was a coal merchant, used to deliver fire, firewood, coal, and he was a great horseman. And he had worked on the flying boats for the airport. And we used to often hear him talking about airways, but we were too small, we didn't know what it meant. But in later life, we began to realize that this tiny village in rural Ireland had a very special place in world history for travel, and that was that it was Ireland's first international airport and the first transatlantic airport in Ireland connecting our two wonderful countries. So I love history. I had been working uh with the group for community developments, and um I have no idea. I'd be telling a lie if I said I had this sudden moment when I said it must be, I have no idea where it came from. But I did meet a great local official in government, and he said to me, Um, you've done a lot of fundraising and promotion to build uh a sports complex in the village, which we had. What are you going to do now? And I just said, Oh, I suppose a museum about he said about what? And I said, flying boats. Now, Thomas, I didn't know the back of a flying boat from the front of a flying boat or what it did or how it operated or who operated, I knew nothing. So, but I'm I suppose I'm determined. And if I set myself a goal, nothing will get in the way. So it started off like that. And uh by 1989, we had just to shorten this, we had acquired four outhouses with mud floors and cobbles. That's all they were. There were storage rooms in the building that was originally the airport building. I had secured funding from a wonderful man called Dr. Tony Ryan, who set up the Rhine Air Airline, which is a major airline in Europe. Uh, he had given us £50,000. I got some money from the government, and I had got a few guys behind me who said, Yeah, we'll support you, not financially, but we'll come on a board of directors, you know, the usual. And we got cracking and got a very good historian to work on it. And then I did, I suppose, a crazy thing. I got uh, I think 'twas Delta and Air Canada between them. I took off on this mission and I went to New York, I went out to Long Island, I went out uh to anywhere that had a connection with flying boats. And um there was very few people around, I suppose, the New York area. I went from there up to Shediac, New Brunswick. I went from there up to Botwood, Newfoundland. So they were all the connections on the route and started chatting to people and got some insights. So came back and we got a builder in and we opened on the 8th of July 89, which was the 50th anniversary. So it was crazy times, wonderful times. And we started with three staff and opened the door with uh, I suppose, no great design or ambitions that this was going to become what it is today. And um it's it's it's an amazing story, really. It is.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Can you tell us a little bit about uh the history of foines and uh walk us through your museum?

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Well, the history is that I suppose by Irish standards, Foynes would be a new village. You know, it came into major being 1700s, that's new in Ireland. Uh, it was a commercial port. Uh, when I say that now, not the ports we have today, it was a timbered harbor jetty, things like that, but it had trading on the river. It had uh a rail line from 1860, uh, it had what was to become the airport terminal was a hotel uh called the Monteagle Arms Hotel because there was an estate, an English estate, that owned most of the property. Uh, and that was Lord Monteagle. Um and when Pan Am decided, and that wonderful man won trip, and uh Lindbergh went off on his magical mystery tours to see where they could fly to. He looked at Fines, he looked at Galway, Cork, all different places. But I suppose we had a few things going for us. We had deep water, a sheltered bay, uh train service, bus service, and all the major aisle companies, Shell, SOBP, had terminals in fines where they imported their aisle. So a lot of those factors would have um helped to get us to be chosen. And once they decided it was fines, then everything started. The first Irish uh met service or weather service began in fines, first radio communications came in. You know, we've so many first air mills later on went from fines, and as you know, the first passenger flights. So um the village was one street, one long street. And of course, then that's when all the fun started, Thomas. Do you want a funny story? Of course. Um there was Pan Am and there was Imperial Airways, and they eventually signed an agreement to divide the Atlantic between them. They were trying to be one better than the other, but the British also got the contract of running the actual ground operations at the airport, and then all these people moved in. So, what do you do with them? There's no hotels, no guest houses, no Bs, nothing. A lot of the women in the village decided this was a rare opportunity to make some money. And they started getting the spare bedrooms all done up and prepared to take in people. And then they started getting notions, as we say in Ireland about their standing, and they all started hanging out these signs. And you had, oh my God, the names were hilarious, you know, the Crystal Palace Hotel, you know, these kind of names, and probably one room to rent. But one woman was really cute, and she called it the Unida Hotel, U-N-E-E-D-A, Unida Hotel. And I mean, there are stories abounding after that when people came. I have wonderful diaries from some of the staff uh that their families have given me, where they learned to uh fish, they learned to go swimming, they're boating, sailing, they went to Irish Cayleys, which are Irish dances. They had a most wonderful time here. Lots of marriages, you know. Guys moved in, met an Irish girl, married her. So you've all that kind of lovely background uh away from the airport, even. But as you know, Pan American and Imperial later changed the name to BOAC, both started in 1989. The trial flights were 87, 88, and 89. We started our passenger flights. And from that up to October 1945, uh, a guy called Captain Charlie Blair took the last scheduled flight on the North Atlantic, and Panam took a last flight out, I think, to Portugal later than that. And we had a few chapters after that. The war had hastened the demise, I suppose, of flying boats and brought land planes along in their in their design and everything. And um we were no more, which was very sad. And all this history had been totally lost. There wasn't even, you know, a plaque on a wall to say this all happened. So that was my my uh intention was that this history would be saved, that people in the future, many years from now, would still be able to come and learn about Pan Am, about the passenger flights, about the role our small village played in helping people unite around the world.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

That's great. Can you tell us a little bit about your museum?

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Well, as I said, it started in four rooms, a little cinema with 32 seats and uh two exhibition rooms and a reception. Uh, and gradually over the years, we managed to uh get the port company to give us another bit of room and another bit, eventually just to tell your listeners by 2002 we purchased the entire building and then had the job, and I'll go through it then with you, had the job of reconstructing what had been taken down and taken away, the control tower and the floor underneath it. So we put the building back into the exact shape it was in uh and the functions it had uh in the the 40s, uh, right through that time. So when you come in, now it's difficult at the minute because I've just said to you, we're starting a four and a half million uh development. So the layout will change a little if people come later on. But at the moment, we have a reception area and then we take you in, and we have a 15-minute black and white movie which takes you through the pate newsreels, the whole history, the interviews, all of that. So you get a grounding in the history of what went on. And then we have this glorious room filled with memorabilia, Pan American memorabilia. You must remember there was American Export as well, and American overseas. So there's bits of that, but Pan Am would be the predominant one. And then we have an original radio and weather room with Marconi transmitters, Morse keys, uh, all of that. And then we go into the airlines rooms, and in there we have a very large model of the layout of the airport because I think people don't understand. You have to keep explaining they could only land on water, not on the runways. Uh, and you also have to show that how did they operate right through the war? And we show this because uh of security and safety, they always left fines very late at night, and they always arrived into fines from um the United States early in the morning. But when they were taking off, Thomas, I don't know if you know this or not, on the river, the pilot would go and get his how many passengers and weights and fuel and all of that information. And then he would know that he needed so long, so many hundreds of meters to get off. The water. A boat with a crew would go in front of that plane and cast out to the left and to the right these special kinds of lights or beacons onto the actual water to make a flare path for the flight taking off. And yeah, he'd come behind the boat and take off on that. And I remember saying to one of them, what happened if you know it didn't go right? We'd just go back and do it again. So you can imagine in today's world, that's not pretty scary to hear that. So uh we have that room, we have lots of, oh my god, so many things. We've one of the precious things is Bill Maslin's logbook from that very first flight. Uh, from that Pan Ham flight. Bill Masland was the navigator. And uh we have his logbook, and that's lovely to have. We have some of the original flags that they flew on the flying boats. We have U Pan Ham uniforms, Madeline Cuniff, who was a very well-known um hostess, uh hostess with her uniforms. We have, I'm just going along at my head now. Uh, we have uh tickets and badges and luggage tags and plates, and we actually have a lovely, lovely thing that was given to me by Ed Tripp at that Pan Am reunion, an original blanket off the B314s. And that's wonderful to have. Fantastic. Yeah, passenger slippers. Uh, we actually, from a British flight, just for the fun of it, tell you, we have this beautiful tin, and there's a fruitcake inside in it that nobody ever asked for, and it was never opened. So I wouldn't care to open the tin now, but anyway, the fruitcake is still in there. And of course, you must remember as well, passengers in those days had to be either uh VIPs, war effort, movie stars, royalty. So we have all those kind of uh lists and things like that, passenger lists. And then we have um what I call a memory room, and the memory room is lovely because it's taken from the diaries of Dave Davenport, who was traffic, Pan Am traffic. Um, it's taken from uh there was Dave and Brendan Regan, who was in operations over the whole restaurant area, Dave Davenport and Bob Dowley, and they were all Pan Am people, and their families have so kindly given us um their memory, their diaries, and we've taken lots of bits from them and we have them on display, along with passenger records and then intelligence files. Because remember, when I when I do interviews over here and they ask me, describe fines. Well, I said during the war it was Casablanca, because if you, for instance, um a lot of Jewish refugees were brought to fines for safety from Europe and they waited in fines in safety until passage could be given on flights to America, and quite a few of them have come back. So there's that kind of side of it as well, which is um that's great where fleeing refugees are nothing new to us even today.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

But so you failed to mention uh the Boeing 314 replica, the Yankee. I'm coming to it, I didn't get to it yet.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

When you've gone through the memory room, and there's a children's room where we flight Sims and all that, because it's important that the kids know all about it as well. And then we come, which are prized, prize possession, a full-scale, 100% authentic um B314 replica. And now that is a story in itself, Thomas. Oh, yeah, uh, I visited Boeing uh many, many years ago, and uh they very they were very good to me. And at that time, you could freely get lots of photographs of interiors, all of that's quite different now. And I got blueprints, and my one thing that bothered me always was people came to visit a flying boat museum without a flying boat. And uh, we did have one briefly, and the owner changed his mind, and it's now in Florida. Um, but uh a guy called Carmos Weeks owns it, uh, but it wasn't the 314. So there's this amazing guy called Bill Fallover, who is an Englishman living in Ireland for many, many years, but he builds movie sets and he, you know, all that kind of imaginary stuff, and he's he's gifted. And my historian again said to me, we go talk to him, ask him, would he build you a cabin, showing just the beds, you know, the night configuration and that. And we asked Bill and he said, not you think about it. And he came back and he said, No. And we said, Why? All or nothing, he said. I'll still remember it. And I said, You're a lunatic. We can't build all or nothing. And I said, What would it cost? I have no idea. He said, It's never been done, you know, in the in these times. So um I went away. And as I told you, I am terrible for getting something into my head. So I approached our minister for culture and arts at the time, called Minister John Adunahu, and I said to him, Um, we no, I was doing an extension as well. Sorry, I'm I missed out. We were doing an extension anyway. So I went to him and bought the extension first, and we got 1 million euros. And then Bill said, All or nothing. And I said, What'll it cost? I don't know. So I said, would half a million do it? And he said, Probably. So I went back to my minister and I said, We have this opportunity, which is really, really uh a rare opportunity with this gifted man to build this. And I showed him, you know, photographs and whatever. I said, but I need another half a million. And believe it or not, Thomas, he gave it to me. Wow, that's great. Bill Fallover started building. Then we had terrible trouble to try and get authentic um materials. You know, we got all the materials spun, especially from tiny, tiny little samples people sent us. And um, it worked out in more than half a million. But anyway, we got it. He brought it in sections by night, by road, from up near Dublin where he built it. And we have a video of the or a DVD now of all of it. And it went into place, and there it is, sitting on its own pond of water. And people are mesmerized by it. And we get emails and everything. People say, I visited your museum. Will you settle an argument? Does it fly? Is it real or is it a replica or a model? They can't tell, you know. And we've had one or two funerals for pilots on it. They've brought the ashes and we've had um some ceremonies on board.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

So, how does that feel? I mean, you you are behind all of this. How does that make you feel?

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Well, you know, it takes more than one person. I I'm there to kind of push it on all the time, but um I've had fantastic support from the Irish government of different colours because there's in the long time I'm there, my God, 33, 34 years, I've had several governments and I have to deal with several different ministers. Uh, and we've been fortunate. And we have um, when I set up the company, Thomas, I set it up as a registered charity and a not-for-profit organization. I didn't want to financially gain from it, and I didn't want anybody else to that anything it would make would go back in to doing more, improving it, and giving employment. And that's what we've done. So that has helped, and we've been able to set ourselves up recently as um a 501 charity in America as well. So um, the plane is certainly the highlight of anyone's visit. I mean, if you're driving through the street of fans, can you imagine you're passing out a building and the next thing, this big three prongs of a tail of a plane is sitting on the roadside, and people you can see the cars and they're stopping suddenly and looking if they don't know about it. Uh, it's it's a showstopper and it's wonderful. And then also when our visitors go out, open the double doors to go out of the building, which is at the back, and this massive American flag hits them in the face, you know, it's fabulous. And on the wall, we tell the history of all the 314s, and of course, I reckon it was the first Air Force One because it took the president down to down to meet uh Churchill and all that. So, um, so that's it. But of course, since then we've moved on and we've built uh a maritime museum, which partly cuts across the flying boats as well. And then people go up into the control tower, and they love to go up into the control tower. It's a shame we don't have the equipment for the control tower, but they can go and they they go outside and walk around and they can see the whole estuary where where everything happened.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Tell us about Irish coffee and its relationship with Pan Am.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Everything in Ireland happens around weather. And a Pan Am flight took off in October 1943 for New York. Now, every flight leaving Fines or every flight leaving New York, if they hit dreadful, dreadful weather on the Atlantic, the pilot had the decision to keep going or go back. And on this particular night, he made the decision that it was too bad and he'd turn back. So, my grandfather's job, as I mentioned him previously, working for the airport, because he was a great horseman, he would be called and he'd be told the flight is returning, it'll be here again in three or four hours or whatever the time frame will be. Go out now and call in A, B, C, D, E, F, G, you know, all the different staff we now need. When the passengers come, they'll be frozen, tired, and we need to feed them. There was a wonderful restaurant in the airport. And uh, and that was his job. We call him the Paul Revere of Finds. So that's what happened. And the chef and the staff were brought in. The chef was an unusual guy. He was from Northern Ireland, and his name was Joe Sheridan. And uh the flight came back, and the passengers were brought up um to the airport terminal and to the restaurant to be fed and to get some uh liquids. And there was what we think was the guy was um an American diplomatic courier, Mr. Carter, from the best of our research. And the ground hostess for Penham was Lel Dowley, who only died last year. Uh, she lived in Martha's Vineyard. And uh she took them in and she said to Joe, Joe, they're frozen. Will you just give them something special? And Joe had been tinkering around, so he just gave them the coffee, but he put Paris whiskey into it and gave it out to them. And we have a hologram that you go into, you know, and you can see all this reenacted. And um Carter said, My God, Joe, he said, This is lovely. What is it? It was a Brazilian coffee you used. And Joe, being smart, said, Not at all, it was Irish. I mean, we don't grow coffee in Ireland, as you know. So that's where it started. And a few days later, uh, Joe put it into a glass as we know it today. And as I said, the man in charge of the restaurants here was a wonderful man called Brendan O'Regan, who said always to his staff when they were preparing food, it must have eye appeal. And Sheridan went down, he knocked on O'Regan's door, and he opened the door. He said, Boss, how about that for eye appeal? And Brendan O'Regan said, Genius, Chef. Irish coffee was accepted as a welcoming drink in finds and later in the new landplain. But Joe Sheridan had a great history in that um a journalist from the San Francisco Chronicle came to Ireland in 1951 and was given Irish coffees and uh went back to the Bonavista in San Francisco and said, Um, Mr. Copler, who owned it, you know, this is a wonderful drink, we should try making it. And they tried, tried, it just wasn't right. They came back and they offered Joe a job in San Francisco and he immigrated and started the whole thing of Irish coffee in the United States in the Bonavista. And he's buried in Oakland Cemetery, and we've been to his grave. And it says, Here lies the inventor of the world's greatest drink, Irish coffee.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

That's great. Yeah, it's a beautiful drink. Uh, you can find the link to the original recipe for Foyne's Irish coffee in the episode description. Uh, we're gonna take a quick break with a Pan Am commercial from 1982.

SPEAKER_05 34:19

In 1935, only one airline, Pan Am stood poised on the edge of America, ready to challenge the Pacific. And today, the mighty clippers of Pan Am rise majestically from six continents for the far corners of the world. Where will we fly to next?

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Well, we can think of welcome back to our interview with Margaret O'Shocknessy from the Foines Flying Boat and Maritime Museum in Ireland. You mentioned the late Marine O'Hara as the museum's benefactor. Can you tell us more about her impact and also her romance with Pan Am Captain Charlie Blair?

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Well, when I was starting the museum, Pan Americans were still flying into Shannon Airport. And Trevor Lewis was the manager for Pan Am there at the time. So naturally, I had conversations with Trevor and with his PR people. And they said to me, Really, you should um talk to Maureen O'Hara. So younger viewers or listeners, I should say, mightn't know her, but I mean she was a big, big star. And I was terrified of going to have to talk to Maureen O'Hara. But they gave me her phone number and said, call her. And I kind of thought about this for a while and eventually said, look, I better do it. So I called her and I thought I was some fines. I didn't get past that when she said, Oh my God, it's lovely to talk to you. Once I said, fines. So I explained to her what I was trying to do and the madness of it and all the rest. And I'm thinking about it. And she said, Stop thinking about it and do it. So from then on, we had communication several times. I remember she walked the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York the following year, and she told the world to come to Ireland, there was a new museum going to open. So she used her image and her profile in the media to promote us at every chance. So we asked her then, would she become patron of the museum? And would she officially open it? She said yes. Now, the reasons for all of this wasn't because we were a movie set or anything like that. It was because she was married to Captain Charles Blair, one of the top pilots before flying boats and during flying boats. And he was one of your top pilots in Pan Am. Maureen didn't ever fly into fines in a flying boat. People often say that no, because um she wasn't she wasn't flying flying boats. She wasn't, she didn't know, I should say, uh Charlie Blair at that time. He was a friend of her brother's, is how she met him. But um they got married and um in 19, I think, 68, and they were only married for 10 years, unfortunately, when he was killed in in um an accident in a flying boat down the Caribbean. She retired from movies when she married him. He retired from Pan Am and they set up Antilles airboats in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. And she went down there and she wrote the magazine for the islands, and she was kind of around and Charlie ran the airline. But one thing they did, Charlie flew the last commercial flight on the North Atlantic out of Fines, and he went up over the street and dipped his wings to say goodbye. But he was the favorite pilot at the time coming into Fines, and the locals liked him, he'd have a pint with them. He was just one of these guys, you know, that had an image and could could chat to guys and all of this. So when he bought Sandringhams, one in Australia, two in Australia, he decided he would fly back. And Maureen's article in our museum says, last to go and first to come back. So in 1976, he came back to Finds in a flying boat with Maureen and all his extended family. That would have been the first time I would have seen the two of them together. And there were thousands upon thousands of people on the pier to see them land and see this amazing flying boat land and see this Maureen O'Hara movie star. And I'll always remember I got married in 75. And 76, I would have been 22, standing at the back of hundreds and hundreds of people, trying to get a glimpse by going on my tippy toes to see Maureen O'Hara. Little did I ever think I would get hurt much closer than that. So he was killed in 78, so he didn't get the chance to come back anymore.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

We have an interview clip with uh Ms. O'Hara from Irish TV in 1989. Uh let's take a listen.

SPEAKER_04 39:09

Your your husband, Charlie Blair, Lord Reston, was probably the most famous pilot in the entire world. Yes, indeed, he was.

SPEAKER_03 39:24

Well, it wasn't it wasn't little airline. No, we had 26 planes and 22 pilots. Didn't realize we were the bus line of the Caribbean and we had to flight every three minutes. Where'd you get all those flying boats, Regular? Charlie Blair found them. No matter where you hid them, he found I didn't realize. Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_04 39:41

That's a huge that's a big boy.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

It was a big airline and and uh made a great deal of money.

SPEAKER_04 39:46

And is that all finished now?

SPEAKER_03 39:47

Did you when Charlie died to prove a point, I ran the airline for two years for him, and I was the first woman to be president of an airline in the United States of America, and I sold the airline to Resorts International, the big um gambling concern in the United States. And now they eventually closed it down, which is a very long story. When I write the story of my life, I'll I'll I'll write all about it. But let me tell you, Charlie was not only a great man, he was uh a great pioneer pilot, the greatest in the world, uh, but he was a gorgeous man and a wonderful man. And in Foines, when he used to bring in the seaplanes, the local people, the villagers, used to call him the God who walks. And he was.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Morning was on, I suppose, the biggest TV show we have in Ireland with the late Gay Byrne, who was our top uh interviewee, uh interviewer, I should say. And uh she was on talking about Charlie at Lent. She liked nothing better than talking about Charlie Blair. She came to Fines every year, and this would have been one of the visits when she went up to do that TV program. And she, her birthday was the 17th of August. So we would hold a big Irish coffee festival for those few days, and she would celebrate her birthday with us every year in Fines. But like Charlie Blair was the first man to fly solo over the pole. You know, he holds all the records on the Atlantic in a flying boat, the three fastest crossings. And I mean, she absolutely adored him. And once that is her connection to Fines, really, it was it was Charlie Blair's favorite little place to fly to. So for that alone, that was her connection to us. And uh, but we became, I have to say, the best and closest of friends. We had her birthdays I say every year. She stayed with me, I stayed with her. And I know she reached the ripe old age in 95, and yes, she died, but God, we miss her so much because she was there for us for so long. Uh, if I rang her and said, I'm launching a box of matches next week, can you make it? If she could at all, Maureen would be home and be there for the box. And you see, Thomas, it wasn't a financial thing, it was the fact she was there. So the TV cameras came, the radio stations came, we got the promotion, we got the media profile. And that is why I suppose now uh having gone, by the way, I went to her funeral in in Washington, and my God, that was something else to see uh how they do their funerals over there. And they buried her with Charlie Blair uh in Arlington, and the uh American Air Force took out the casket, and oh, it was something else. But uh after that, she has just one, she had a daughter, one daughter, and that daughter had one son. So it's a very small family. And unfortunately, her daughter Branwyn died uh eight months after her. So that just left Connerborough, her grandson, and he made the decision that if Gran could have told him what to do with all the memorabilia, all the paperwork, everything, all the beautiful costumes and clothes and her Oscar and everything, he thought she'd wanted them fines. So he graciously uh donated everything to us. We have, I'm sure you know, but the quite man was a big, big movie with John Wayne. We have the trap from the quite man, we have her clothes from the quite man. And now it my big challenge was to try and put 4.2 million together so that we could uh redesign our museum. We just couldn't kind of catch on a wing. We had to redesign. So if we redesign, we took everything into account and made sure we got more Pan Am space. And uh, so we're we're starting that actually next week. And uh it'll take 17 months to build. And then yeah, that'll be the next big thing, you know. And I'm sure she'll help us out somehow up there. She used to always say that they wouldn't let her die because John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart said, Don't let that woman up. Anyway, she's joined them all now.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

So I, along with many of our listeners, are probably now thinking of planning a trip to see your incredible museum. Anything more you'd like to add about the museum and the general area?

SPEAKER_01 44:14

Well, we're on this wild Atlantic wave, which anybody looking at Ireland will see. It's the entire West Coast, and it is a huge hit, you know, with everybody in spring. What I would say is don't come for a little while more. Why do I say that? Because I want to get this wing finished so that you see the complete thing and you get to really enjoy it. And uh, we have so much more Pan Am memorabilia that we want to put on display, and all this space will let us do that now. Uh, and then I'll be very happy to retire and uh leave the next generation put their input in it. But I have to say, I have the best friends all over the world through Pan American. Uh I started out not knowing anything about museums. I wasn't a person that visited museums, but when you get to know the Pan Amers, you have to keep going. Uh, they are just something so special. And uh I'm privileged, I'm honored to call some of them my friends now. And I just want some time now that I can actually take off, visit your museum in Long Island, go and see them up in Newfoundland again because I became great friends with them all up in Newfoundland, that I can go to you know all the other places that have little bits of history of Panama, and I'd be happy to thank you so much for your time, Margaret.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

And I so look forward to meeting you in person uh when uh I come to visit Ireland.

SPEAKER_01 45:43

We look forward to welcoming you. There is always a wonderful uh hundred thousand welcomes, Kidney Lafarta to everybody that comes. We have a special relationship, I think, always with the United States.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

Excellent. Well, I enjoy having some Irish coffee with you as well.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

Well, I hope now that you don't get too drunk on us because it is uh it is strong, but it is beautiful. Okay, thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

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 aircrafts 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, and Instagram. 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. 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 Am Museum.org. And with that, we're going to close out this episode with a Pan Am song from 1969 by Sammy Davis Jr. As flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world, thank you for flying, Pan Am.

SPEAKER_06 47:33

Leave the mail in the box, tie the hands of the clock, hang your tears out to dry, leave your house on the fly. Get away right away like today. Get into this work. Let the smoke, blow it back, leave the smile and the fly. Turn the rain. Get away right away like today. Get into this one. Makes it going great. Makes it going great.