Pan Am Unbuckled: A Very Plane Diary (6 page)

As horrible as it was for passengers and Pan Am staff, the decision was made to keep everyone on the plane for a little longer. Without adequate air conditioning on the ground, the air inside the plane was hot and stifling within five-minutes. The smells of the unchanged diapers and vomit was making everyone nauseated. We cracked open the galley doors and cooled the plane the best we could—-and waited. It felt like a life-time, but it may have only been a half-hour. Eventually the passenger busses pulled up to the plane. Kind hearted men and women of Guam reached out and took the babies and children—- to get them where they would go next. I gave my baby to one of the first Guamanian volunteers …and never saw him again. I was numb to what should happen— to what my emotions would be. We were in emergency operational mode. We had to make sure that every child got off the plane and each one of them was, in fact, okay. We had completed our mission. Every child and baby on board arrived safely—- and it was over.

This flight was but one of the many other baby lift flights during the 2-weeks prior to the fall of Saigon. Numerous scheduled and unscheduled flights for paying as well as non-paying civilian evacuations were completed.

And— my re-route didn’t prevent me from making it back to San Francisco in time to celebrate my First Anniversary with my husband, Doug.

Part 2

Winging It

I almost called this section ‘The Boring Bits’ as it struggles to compete with the more interesting stories of amazing passengers in the Exceptional Air Time section. However, this is how it all started for me and I hope you find enough to amuse.

Thank you for flying with me

Merci pour voler avec moi

Спасибо за полет со мной

ASV

Into the Blue

I don’t know why I decided to fly. It may have been the ads I saw in magazines, or my exposure to flight attendants that served us on adventures my mother took my sister and me on—to various worldwide destinations. Or, it could have been my overwhelming desire to shed my alma mater right then and there. Whatever it was, in the middle of my senior year at college, I packed my bags, said good bye to my sorority sisters at University of Florida, and announced “I am going to quit school and fly for Pan Am!”

My mother, a university professor, was stunned and horrified at my ‘rash’ decision. My father, however, in his wisdom, said “Well, you should go out and interview with a couple of airlines to get some experience looking for a job. Pan Am will be tough competition.” So I looked in the newspaper. National, Eastern and Delta Airlines advertised that they were interviewing for stewardesses. I sent for and completed the application packets for all three airlines. The application forms included personal information like: height, weight, and family demographics. I was interviewed by all three airlines. Eastern and National turned me down.

I called Pan Am’s local offices for an application form. They sounded very vague about if-or-when they’d be conducting local interviews. The application form was very detailed—especially questions about foreign languages and my level of education. Happily though, I did get a letter back and the interview date was set.

While waiting for my Pan Am interview, I received a job offer from Delta. Even though I was pleased to be accepted, in my heart, I said “this was not what I had quit school for. I want to fly for Pan Am.” Pan Am was my first choice and no other airline even interested me. So, I wrote Delta back, and thanked them, but said I was waiting to hear from Pan Am.

It turns out that Pan Am had just purchased Boeing’s initial fleet of 747’s and as soon as Pan Am knew they were going to get delivery of the fleet, they were hiring like crazy. This was very good news for me, as they needed crews to operate the new jumbo jets. The flight service on the 707 was a crew of 6, while flight service on the 747 was 14.

All of the recruitment interview experiences I had, or had heard about, took place at airport facilities— in rooms full of many, many hopefuls, and before panels of flight service administrative recruiters. Instead, my Pan Am interview was in a hotel business suite with only about 20 other girls.

I drove my mother’s Mercedes to the interview— in 2
^nd
gear the whole way and full of dread. I had on a yellow dress with matching yellow Pappagallo shoes and hand-bag. My hair was very short and didn’t require much styling. I was wearing mascara—something I had rarely used before. All the way to the interview I kept thinking about ….how much I did NOT want to go back to college—that I just wanted to do ANYTHING else. I tried to remember what my friends had told me. As a word of advice they had all said “Just don’t talk a lot” and I was trying to drill that into my head. My decision to fly was final. Now, I just had to get Pan Am on board.

When I arrived at the hotel, some of the interviewees were already there—all young ‘girls’ in their early 20’s, tall, slim and mostly blonde. I filled out another form and sat down. I was the last one to be called in. I was worried about what that might mean.

The interview panel consisted of only one man—Pan Am executive Harold Gray—up for the day from Miami. Instead of having a flight service recruiting team with him, he was doing the interviews by himself. He invited me in and said something about being “Last but not least.” He started talking and specifically asked me “What does your father do?”, and “Where did you learn Russian?” and said that “Pan Am is the only American carrier flying in and out of Moscow.” He seemed to ask many more questions than I had remembered answering at my Eastern, National or Delta interviews. “Had I joined a sorority?” “What was my major in college?” Even though it was on my application forms, I was asked again what level of degree I had, what foreign language(s) I spoke, and where I had learned to speak French. I started talking about boarding school in Switzerland and my sister Julia. He leaned back and smiled at one point.

Then he asked me if I would stand up and walk across the room. I wasn’t concerned, but thought “Oh, no, here we go.” After I walked back, he commented that I had “Very nice legs.” I said “Why, thank you, I got them from my father.” He laughed and said “Well, I appreciate you coming in and you will be hearing from us.” I asked “Uh… when exactly will that be?” I couldn’t stand the suspense.

To my horror, I broke into talking again ”I really need to know….I told my parents that I was not going back to school… and I have this offer from Delta and haven’t answered them, yet—but I only want to work for Pan Am…” He said that there were others who would go over all the interview paperwork and make the decisions. I asked if he would be part of the decision making. He said “Yes, I am an executive in the company.” Finally, he just looked at me and said “Oh…you’re hired.”

I said “Really?” He then leaned back and asked if I could start work on January 20. I said slowly “Uh….no I can’t.” He said “You can’t?” I said “Remember I told you about my sister, Julia, and that she’s scheduled for surgery and she needs a family member with her. Daddy will be in D.C. and mom has a teaching conflict, so it needs to be me.”

He looked at me and took a breath “So you can’t?” “No.” I said. “Well, when can you start? February?” he offered another date. “No, not really….it would have to be March…middle of March.” I rapidly shot back. “Well”, he thumbed through his papers. “How about March 10?”. I thought about it for a second and said that date would work fine.

Looking back on my youthful naivety, I’m rather embarrassed about my response as to my availability…but perhaps my resolve to keep a commitment to my family and caring about my sister bode well with Mr. Gray. At least it did not deter his decision—for which I am grateful. Plus, I had NO idea that he was Pan Am’s new CEO.

I drove the ten miles from the hotel back to the USF campus, where my mother was teaching, in high 5
^th
gear! I found my mother and blurted out “I got the job…I got the job!” She hugged me and said “Let’s go celebrate.” We went to a McDonalds and got the works—fries and all. My mother then told me something that I had never known before.

When she was a young girl, in Texas in the 1930’s, she didn’t want to be a teacher— anything but that. Clandestinely, she got hired by Braniff Airways, but her mother would not give her ‘permission’ to take the job. My long-widowed grandmother’s refusal of permission was part of a LONG list of things that she would not let my mother do because they were ‘unladylike’. Mom’s older brother, Uncle Jimmy, would often intervene. When my mother wanted to get her pilot’s license, Uncle Jimmy signed the permission for her to take flying lessons. When she wanted to ride dressage and take up jumping, Uncle Jimmy bought her new jodhpurs and signed the permission slip for her to do it.

At the time, I didn’t realize the significance of my mother’s journey in women’s liberation to work and do activities that she wanted to do. Individualization was not a problem for me. And, in the vernacular of that era, I was ‘doing my own thing’. In my mother’s case, she usually excelled at exerting control and getting her way. But she admitted to anyone who would ask— that her eldest daughter was not someone whom she ever felt she had control over.

Ever after that day, when my mother was asked by her university professor peers “What is your daughter doing?” her answer was “Shelby is
finished
with college.” And so she let me go.