Side of Paradise Life in the new cuba. The daughter of a former Panam Executive Julia grew up in the Pan Am family a still strong network across the globe. She now lives in vermont from where she joins us today. Julia is literally going to fly solo tonight for her presentation, but well have some time for audience questions at the end. So please post your questions anytime during the broadcast in the ask a Question Button at the bottom of the screen. Ill take a moment to remind you that you can order your copy of come fly the world from books and books below by pressing the green button at the bottom of the screen. We appreciate each and every order and the generous donations from viewers everywhere and now without further ado. Id like to welcome julia to the stage. Hi, julia. Hi christina. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Ill see you soon. Its a little different from the last time i was at books and books for a reading but its also fitting to be virtually in miami on international womens day. Miami was ground zero for panium. Where the airline began in south, florida. So it feels right. And id like to talk for a few minutes. I have one short reading that ill get to after introducing the book a little bit. And then im going to talk about my research a little bit and then Id Love to have some questions from you guys out there if other events have been a guide we have a fair amount of real stewardesses or more recent flight attendants in the audience. I hope so and Id Love to hear from you too. What airline you worked for . What years where you were based . Its been really fun at other events to hear about that so broadly come by the world is about the international stewardesses of Pan Am i use the word stewardesses intentionally because the book is about the women who worked for the airline and for a couple of airlines in the era in which that was the word that was used. In its Day Pan Am was the only american airline that flew exclusively international routes, which means that if you get on the Pan Am plane you were getting off in a foreign country. So that was what really was so exciting to me about Pan Am, i think thats all was incredibly exciting about Pan Am to the woman who worked on the airline. The book is about the places that these women flew to its about the way that they moved through the world the Work Culture of the airline and also the largely unseen role that the women played in the Vietnam War more specifically. Come play the world is about the lives of five women and their time flying and its about how flying impacted the choices that they made. Its about how it impacted the lives that they led its also about the fun. They had the challenges they faced and overcame the places they visited and what they did in those places. One reviewer at the book in an early review said that it reads like a novel but it was really important to me that the book would be about real women doing real things backed up by real research and put in the context of an incredibly tumultuous time in american history. And i came to the book in an interesting way. My dad worked for Pan Am, but i really hadnt thought a huge amount about the airline until i was walking down the street in New York and chatting with my husband about Pan Am and he said, you know, maybe maybe you should think about whats going on with Pan Am now, where are these people so i looked up the panama historical foundation. I hadnt really had anything to do with them prior to that and i saw that they were hosting an event at a someplace that id always wanted to to tour. It was the Twa Terminal at jfk in New York. The Pan Am terminal has been torn down but the Twa Terminal is still standing and its actually its now a hotel so i really had been living in New York and writing a lot about Art And Architecture and i was really excited to go tour the the Twa Terminal. I just wanted to see it. It was built by Era Sarin and the 50s. Its a beautiful beautiful structure. I went to this event and i met these two women who were magnetic they were former Flight Crew. They were stewardesses. They told me they were not flight attendants and i was intrigued by that correction. I thought it was it was telling it seemed to me to be pinning them to an era and a job that was important and was very different from the role of flight attendant today. So that difference i found really compelling. I was also incredibly i was i found them in magnetic they were. They were lively. They were funny they talked about. Events of geopolitics and global history with a sort of casual intimacy as if theyd either, you know conferred with prime ministers or had martinis with spies and to be honest some of them had i found them fascinating and i wanted to know exactly why they had how they become who they were. I wrote the book because the more of these women i met i started going to panama historical foundation events and meeting more and more of these former stewardesses and the more i met in the this then that first phase of research the more i sense that these women were never really given their rightful place in the history of restless worldchanging women largely because the Pop Culture of the image that was kind of foisted upon them. They were trailblazing women whose lives really reflected the changes of the era and who also really changed the era in a lot of ways. And i didnt feel like that had been truly understood. I am a restless woman. I like to travel. I love traveling. I find it. Its where i feel most comfortable. And i felt i felt a kinship with these women and i felt like they had really opened doors for me on a generational level and i wondered why. Why that had never really been credited. So the book explains in a lot of ways why that is and attempts to place them where they belong. In history, so im going to do a little bit of reading very short reading from the book. This is from chapter one in which readers will meet a woman named lynn. Lynn is finishing up her last year at suny oswego. Shes going to graduate with a science degree. Shes been working in a couple of labs, but shes really not not loving it. Not because shes not she doesnt find the work interesting. She finds the work very compelling but being in labs is not thrilling to her. Shes more of an extrovert than that. And shes also vaguely intimidated by the the men in the lab. She doesnt really love being the only woman or one of two women in in the science labs. So she she also starts to learn about the Vietnam War the boyfriend of hers at the time and starts to get a little more politically engaged her last year of college. She goes to rome. And as once you get to rome, its like her world explodes. She decides that she wants to be out in the world. So she comes back home and has an idea that she floats to her parents that she wants to become a stewardess. And this section that im going to read right now it explains a little bit of why that was such an exciting job for her. Working as a stewardess gave a woman the ability to see different places and also to experience who she could be against those varied backdrops. This invitation to try out an unfettered version of oneself somewhere else. Had appealed to enormous numbers of women from the start of the commercial airline industry. Sadie in New York read a 1936 profile in the Chicago Sunday Tribune of a stewardess who had beaten out hundreds of other women for a spot on the united shuttle. Is a very different person from sadie and chicago. In Chicago Sadie Erickson lived quote a life of considerable Dash Biking swimming Roller Skating and shopping but twice a week her job took her to New York and new York City was a different sort of woman. As soon as she arrived there, she bought two books one fiction one nonfiction. And display of magazines. She stocked her Hotel Room with a pound of chocolates and a Half Dozen apples and she had her meal sent up as she read stretched across the Hotel Room bed in her dressing gown. A decade earlier when Air Travel was raw and new Cabin Attendance of the established model of train stewards had been men. But in 1930 a nurse and trained pilot approached an Airline Executive to convince him that nurses would make better cabin crew. The pitch worked a nurse could more naturally reassure a fearful passenger the executive written a memo. Or minister to Air Segment Quote the passengers relax reported in airline monthly and an atlantic monthly writer if a mere Girl Isnt worried. Why should they be . In the mid1930s as stewardess had dragged two passengers from the burning wreckage of a Pennsylvania Crash that killed 12. Though she was injured herself. She ran four miles for help. Front page articles celebrated her as a heroine. Profiles of other women in their crews friendships and habits appear to cross newspapers and magazines. Quote Air Hostess finds life adventurous red One Front paid Head Page Headline in the New York times. Indeed Sadie Erickson was a model of the duality expected of services. She had social skills and Selfdetermination Glamor and grit. The petite blonde looked quote like a captivating french doll and was quote almost magnetically endowed by Looks Temperament and education to the outstanding in a profession that required. Quote poise and fearless capacity for action and grim courage the next two decades consolidated the view of the job as womens work during the second World War women took cabin positions across airlines as men served in the military passengers began to favor Air Travel over Ocean Or Rail in the postwar 1950s due in part to technological advances such as the Jet Plane that sliced a trip across the atlantic down to six or 10 hours depending on whether they were tail or headwinds. Airlines competed for passengers by touting technical innovations but only so many customizations to the new Jet Plane existed prices were stabilized by the government at 400 or 500 dollars to cross the atlantic so flying was too expensive to be a regular undertaking for anyone but the rich each airline tried to convince customers that it had the highest level of luxury and service. And the women who served a predominantly male clientele became a particular selling point. And then there are a couple of pages detailing. The glamor of the era of Air Travel some of the the couturiers who designed uniforms for the women the Gold Carpet that was ruled across the tarmac and more so details a little bit of the contradictory danger. That these stewardesses were placed in hijackings and war flights. And then it returns a little bit to the women to conclude the section. In the United States the cabin of an international airplane was a sought after workplace for young unmarried mostly white women airlines in the 1960s hired only three to five percent of Applicants Base Pay was commensurate with other acceptably feminine roles. Nurse Teacher Librarian Secretary perks included insurance free Air Travel paid vacation and stipends on layovers layovers in themselves were extraordinary. A decade earlier solitary solitary international travel was rarely undertaken by a woman who could not leverage high social status to excuse her lack of chaperone. And most women had married long before their midtwenties. In the 1950s only a third of american women were still single at age 24 some years more teenage girls walked down the aisle and attended prom. The women applying for stewardess positions in the 1960s had in the 1950s been forbidden to wear pants in high school and sometimes even in college. Now during layovers a stewardess could pull off the skirt of her uniform put on slacks and chaperone free sachet around the museums of 16th around his mom. She could wear jeans and wander through mexican markets. Flight Routes Experience and expertise varied by airline but having a job on any plane was a reason for a woman to roam. What was revolutionary was the lack of should in this job the plenitude of could that explains a little bit of why the role was such a sought after position for the young women who applied for the job on Pan Am the requirements were physical they had to be between five three and five nine a certain weight and they had to be quite pretty and they were subjected to to pretty excruciatingly detail assessments of their appearance by the interviewers. They also had to be quite smart. They were college educated. I spoke two languages. So this was a pretty select. Group of women people who like lynn whose parents may not have reacted with such pleasure when they told them that they were going to become airline stewardesses people whose parents had thought that they wanted them to be more they wanted them to pursue perhaps professional. Degrees, but for the women who took the job they were really you know that the world. The world beckoned and the opportunity to get out in it was just huge it was too much of a temptation. So over the course of writing and researching this book i learned i learned a lot. I learned packing tips. Which are in the book i learned what foods for a Dinner Party fly the best across the atlantic ocean and across the african continent if youre trying to host Dinner Party in monrovia, what do you want to bring . And i learned about how the stuart the lawsuits that stewardesses brought forth against the airlines that hired them set the legal precedent for what . For the the Employment Law that my generation of women enjoys i learned about how airlines constructed the glamor of the Jet Age how we why we consider the Jet Age so glamorous some of it was constructed by the way that the airlines hired these couturees and and served the foods on Pan Am in particular menus were designed by maxims of paris and were the food was quite good. They had airline terminals and corporate headquarters that were designed by the best architects of the era. But a lot of the glamor was also about the women who wore those uniforms. I think that. And what the conclusion that i came to over the course of the book was that they really didnt fit any kind of stereotyped mold. They existed in a middle ground between feminine and feminists. They were both things at once in an era in which that was not really it was not very legible. They really did enjoy the new freedoms of the day. All of them and that was remarkable. They the conclusions i came to and this is what compelled me so much about them was. That they anticipated a lot of the changes that would happen much later. They anticipated a global marketplace. They were buying their shoes in Rome And Hose in paris and pearls in Hong Kong in an era in which it was only they who could who had access to those things from those places. They couldnt go to a Grocery Department Store in New York and by the same things at the same price is from the same places. The anticipated third Wave Feminism from my perspective. They really seemed like third wave feminists in a second wave era. And they anticipated the soft diplomacy. Of a much later era they were they were. Cultural diplomats everywhere and and they they were fascinating. So thats why it was so important to me to focus on real women and to do that. I focused on specifically five women. Three women three womens stories formed the backbone of the book. They all meet at the end of the book for Operation Babylift, which was a Refugee Flight in 1975. One of them began her career with the us army as well as as being on these Vietnam War flights she was she worked at a Service Club in germany in the american in the peacetime army. So she for im gonna show you a couple of things that i leaned on how i when i was doing my research. This is karen. In her Army Uniform and these are some of the letters that karen sent me from. From home to her family, so i got to look at all of her she sent me all of the letters that her mom had saved from that era these Letters Date from 1965 through the 70s. She sent her tons of letters. This is i have this huge Stack Right here, which i found fascinating and incredible to read through. So i got to interview karen but also see exactly what she was thinking and or if not thinking what she was telling her parents from each one of these places, which was incredible to be able to to ask her both to jog her memory to ask her questions about different places and you know what she was doing when but also to to see how she was presenting what she was doing back then these were letters some of the letters that were written in the second chapter that focuses on karen when she begins to fly and starts you know moving around the world. I have letters from from israel from rome from lebanon from Hong Kong from all over the place and some of these letters were written in the bathtubs of Hotel Rooms. If youre former Flight Crew in the audience. You know what im talking about. This is before the women got their Hotel Rooms they shared with other women and karen would go into the bathroom and write letters home and then in the last section about karen, well the second to last this is the one in which the women all meet. This is karen on Operation Babylift. She these are photos that she took. And she had always dreamed of becoming a writer and a journalist and she she did she wrote about Operation Baby that. For the mausoleum, this is the clip from the newspaper from 1975. And she wrote about the experience for her newspaper, which kickstarted a second career for her. She she both flew and wrote for a couple of years and then she was able to quit flying to pursue writing fulltime. So i i leaned on all of that for the personal side of things and then i looked at books like this book the fall of saigon by david butler, which was incredible. You can see its pretty dogeared and has tons of postit notes from all the sections that i i looked at harder and to help bolster. What i was hearing about i felt very strongly that i wanted everything that i included in the book to be verified either the scene was i would include something only if it was told to me by two different women in the same way that they had the same memory of the same event. Two different from two different people or if i could confirm the details that someone told me via a book like the butler book. So thats how i i tried to make sure as i could that everything in the book is completely factually accurate, of Course Nothing is perfect. And and but i did the best i could. So with that i would love to hear what some of you are thinking and if any if there any questions, i would love to hear them. Cristina here i am. That was that was fascinating. Oh my gosh. I have some questions, but theres one here waiting, you know, its from pat and she says i used to fly more years ago and all the flight attendants. Ive met were really great people. Was that your experience looking forward to reading the book . Thanks. Honestly, it was another you know, i got this. I got a question a little bit ago, which reminded me that my i had a real ulterior motive when i started doing this work. I wanted to know how they had. Done it they these women, you know, one of these one of them that i met at the Twa Terminal one of the first women. She said that she never bought a Return Ticket Home because you never know. She was so spontaneous. And so interesting they seemed to have really lived their lives so fully and they were their friendships were incredible. They have these bonds that are really amazing. They still travel together. They visit one another theyre the godparents to each others children. Its its remarkable to look at them and you know coming from the perspective of then i was in my early 30s now my late 30s, i really wanted to i wanted to learn from them about how to how to get older. And and i think i did learn a lot. Its certainly really impacted my friendships. I invest a lot more in my women friends, and i did perhaps i think i took them more for granted and now i think i try a little harder and i we make time for trips a little more than we otherwise would have its hard, but we we work at it, but the point is that they were yes, i found them. So many of them had these incredible backstories and and continued to live these incredible lives and were really remarkable people. So heres a question from katrina. And she would like to know how did the women feel about their beauty requirements . Did they resent these standards or saw them as a ticket to something bigger . Almost neither. I think they just kind of took them for granted and for the most part. The women that i talked to understood that they were just that they were just part of the part of the deal what they did chafe at was when the airlines began to really overtly sexualize them and Pan Am never panam was was not that sort of parent Pan Am had some ads that were a little bit sexist. They have an ad thats in the book that that has a picture of an Airplane Tale and it says grab the grab. What does it grab life by the Tail Or Something a little little innuendo there but some of the other airlines were really really overt about it. There was the national airlines fly me Campaign Braniff had a and ad campaign. That was the airstrip. They had their stewardesses getting on a plane wearing multiple layers and over the course of the flight. They would take off their one layer of clothing in flight. Until they were wearing pretty pretty scanty outfits and you know on southwest they were famously wearing hot pants and they served love potions and love bites instead of drinks and meals so that was what you know when their beauty was kind of you know weaponized in a way or you know, commodified for corporate gain. Some of them really i had an issue with that, but then some of them enjoyed it in a way and you know, and again this is not my my field of expertise. Its not the focus of the book because the book focuses on Pan Am stewardesses and Pan Am did not part of the reason why Pan Am didnt really they never their their uniforms were always pretty conservative. Theres fashionable, but they didnt show a lot of leg or a lot or you know anything they wore jackets. And blouses and skirts because Pan Am was flying internationally. So the cultural, you know, the sexual cultural mores were not were not as they were not loosening all around the world and in all of the places that Pan Am was flying to so these outfits that were scanty would not read the same way in paris and tehran for example, or you know, New Delhi so Pan Am pandems women were generally pretty, you know modestly dressed but on the other airlines, you know, and some of the interviews that i read some of them in really enjoyed wearing the miniskirts, you know, they were they felt like it was part of an era and and they felt like it was it was brand new to be able to to to wear something short for yourself to date and have sex for you and not for trying to find a husband or trying to pin someone down or whatever. It was new. And so, you know, that was one of the things that really that i found so compelling about you know. Not only Pan Am stewardesses, but but every everyone all of them who took this job, you know, they were they were really. And they werent Coffee Tea or me women they were not that stereotype by any stretch, but they didnt necessarily they werent they werent prudes either. Yeah, it sounds like. It must have been such a fun job. I am old enough to remember what wanting to be a stewardess. So heres a question from ada. When did the Flight Attendant Job become open to men . And how did that happen . Did it start in the us or in other countries did the salary become more competitive when men also became flightant . So it had been open to men until the mid 60s. It was in the mid 60s that across all airlines they basically understood that women were going to sell more than women could become at this Selling Feature of the airlines and that was when they stopped hiring then and then in 72 that was when a lawsuit was decided that a man brought against Pan Am fact and that data that changed it. So again men had to become had to be allowed to be hired from then on out. I dont think it had any impact on on the on salaries it just and you know some some men very few had been being hired throughout it was never or at least on Pan Am it wasnt explicitly stated that it was a Company Policy only to hire women, but it was it was pretty rare. So we have a question from tk who would like to know why did you decide on this subject . And how did you find your main Interview Subject . So i decided on this subject of i think youre referring to. So the women in general because i wanted to know how they had acquired these incredibly sophisticated incredibly knowledgeable attitudes that i that its so impressed me when i them i i began to focus more on on warfights in part because i felt like that was such a the most drastic contrast that you could find between the perception of the job, which is that it was you know for lady women who wanted to meet men and go on dates and go shopping in reality. The reality was so far from that and i felt like the the war flights which were incredibly dangerous these women were put in positions. They were flying into active war zones. They were transporting soldiers. To a really . Dangerous for many of those soldiers did not want to go to that war. This is when the draft was still active and happening so they were really fraught and and truly dangerous flights and so to me that was that that contrast was really rich and and thats what i wanted to to explore. I found the women. Just one after another i started going to the pandem historical foundation events, and then i started going to world wings international events, which is the association of former Pan Am Flight Crew and then you know when i met i basically, you know at these events. Its really interesting the women would come up to me and say oh youve got to meet so and so she has incredible story about. Whatever and then i would meet soandso and she would indeed having incredible story about whatever and it would take note of that and it would be amazing and and then i would you know, shoot they would all me to friends of theirs and pretty soon. I realized that i wanted to find three or more women who had all worked on the same plate to kind of triangulate that experience from through various viewpoints. And and that was when i really i sent out emails. I had two at some point and then i sent out emails to everyone i new and said im looking for someone else who crude on this flight. Tell me who can you find and go and behold. I found someone else. Did you use the archives or anything at the university of miami . Yeah, and spent a ton of time at the archives that i think. There and christina, you know if christina and nicola have been incredible and they were they were amazing at you know, i had never done a ton of id done a little bit of archival Research And Graduate school, but it was not my forte most of my other work had been reporting. So, you know, there was a place that i could go to and take notes and talk to people and walk away and feel like i am i would do some you know research for my previous book about Youth Culture in cuba. I did a lot of historical research, but it was mostly secondary sources. It was actually all secondary sources. I dont think i went to any archives for that. So id spent some time in archives, but i really hadnt i was pretty pretty green. And christina had was very gracious. Yeah, were talking about the special collections at the university of miami and our friend is Christina Favreto who heads the collections there. So kendall would like to know and im not sure did you fly for panama . I did not. No i was i was nine when the airline. Okay. Yeah went under it was asking what years did you fly for Pan Am but zero i flew on Pan Am a lot when i was when i was a little kid. Oh my god, thats thats great. So i would love to know more about martinis with spies. Yeah, so, okay. And so it in at the end of the Vietnam War. I mean all throughout the Vietnam War and these women were in and out of saigon and saigon was you know rife with operatives american operatives of all sorts covert and you know army, people and and contractors and and especially at the end of the war a lot of the women a lot of the flights were through Hong Kong and through bangkok and a lot of the the people who were i guess the cia agents but not necessarily overtly declared as such were in those places. So the women who, you know were spending time, you know, you would just socialize around the pool or at the bar at the Hotel And Wind up meeting people one of my main subjects told me about. Well, theres also the fact that Air America was a branch of the cia and it was the Cias Airline and Air America operated. I mean the Air American pilots were always around also. So they were just in the know you one of my main subjects told me about. What she looked back on understanding that she had been taking messages for ocia agent. She had she would socialize with him like they would go get a drink when she was in Hong Kong. I think either Hong Kong or bangkok. I and bangkok they would have drinks at the intercontinental hotel and he would say to her. Hey when you get to Hong Kong. Go have a drink with my friend. Hell be hell be there at so and so on what could you just let him know that im gonna be a little Bit Bit late doing this ill do this at this time and ill meet him here and do this. And she would go and you know relay the message to this other person and looking back on it. She was like ha two, i think i think that was not what i thought it was. Oh my god, how amazing so heres a question about any stories about hijackings. Yes, so not i didnt have any none of the women that i profiled were on a plane that was hijacked but one of them tori she got to the airport. She missed it by nothing. She she got to jfk so for okay, so hijackings a little bit of context hijackings back. Then this was the golden era of hijackings in the late 60s. They were not for a brief period of time they happened with incredible frequency and no fatalities. So they were kind of seen as a novelty most of the time the people who the hijackers would get on the plane and make a threat and ask for the plane to go to cuba in a lot of cases not always but sometimes a lot of times the planes would wind up in havana. And they would have to stay overnight. And so the the passengers would be treated to a night in a Hotel Room and sometimes a cabaret for the tropicana. And so they people almost looked forward to for a very brief period of time these hijackings time magazine published an amazing relic that everyone should google and read what to do when the time what to do in the hijacker comes its like a tongue in Cheek Travel Guide to havana based on being on hijacked plane so this so tori was flying in this era out of jfk and she got to the airport and was told that you know, she the flight that she was supposed to be on she was switched to and the shuttle that was an hour later because were shuttles to miami and she while she was in the air that pilot called her into the cockpit and said you were supposed to be on flight 218 right . And she said yes, and he said lucky you you werent on it. I we just heard that its just been setting to havana. And they said she said i wish id been on it because shed always wanted to go and cuba so not everyone, you know and pretty soon the the hijackings took a turn they did become much more dangerous. Why and then no one looked forward anymore . At what point did stewardesses become Flight Attendance late 70s early 80s the once it was no longer stewards and stewardesses. They sought a more genderneutral term. Okay, we have. The question from karen do you describe the womens personal lives outside of when they were flying . How they live or how they spend time during layovers. Definitely. Yeah, one of the things that i found so interesting was the way that the women behaved so differently that they really wanted to do different things on the ground in these different places. So, you know, for example one of the women that in the book really is a very social creature she has even to this day she is incredible network of friends. Shes incredibly social so she would go to so on guam for example, she would go to the Officers Club for dinner. And she would you know Play Card games all night, and they would go dancing and she loved crew parties. So that that you know her experience of these different places was much more social. She if she you know, she was she was a tourist but with other people she would go places always in a group not always but most of the time and then another woman also named karen and was she was much more of a she really liked to do things by herself. She wanted she loved just walking around the different cities that she landed in so she had these routines that she would follow in each city and because she wanted to be writer. She would have her. Nope pad with her everywhere and she would take notes. She would take herself out to Lunch Or Dinner and just be writing the whole time and taking notes and reading books and and you know her experience of a place was much more. Much more independent. I mean, theyre both pretty independent. Theyre both incredibly independent women, so thats the wrong terminology, but her she was by herself. Yeah, so that they really they explored they explored different cities in different ways and the book also does, you know talk about the lives that they lived around their flight . Their their flights one of the things that really intrigued me was what would what was it like to be a woman Whos Job kept you away from home for so for so much of the year. How did that Shift Or Change or condition your personal relationships back home both with family and with significant others, so it does include that as well. Any plans for this to become a Tv Series or a Block Or Anything in the world of film . Yeah, and im starting to talk to to people about that. I hope so it would be amazing. Well, this is a fantastic book. So i just want to remind everyone thats watching that you can order it by just pressing the green button and will ship it right out to you if youre in miami and you want to come by one of our stores. Were carrying it as well, and then i have Christina Favreto letting you know, please tell julia that hes one of our favorite researchers on top of being delightful in every way. So so i think that that is it for questions if youd like to say a few do like a little reading or just wrap things up a little bit. That would be greater. Yeah, and i so, let me see. Im gonna i im not sure what to read. I love the writing. Oh, thank you. It was it was really fun to be. To be reading and researching about especially feminism and the way that the feminist movement was moving through that era and then watching it watching the changes of the era. Change these womens lives like the it was a Feedback Loop in a way that the womens lives were changing and even as they were changing. They were propelling those changes in the what broader public if that makes sense. You know they were choosing to be much more independent and to marry at later ages and then i was looking at you know, i would look at the statistics for marriage and and see that they were part of a much broader a much wider, you know, a bigger phenomenon than even they realized and but the that they were they were making those changes happen. So thats what what i found incredible. Did the women have to retire at a certain age or was this like a longterm career for a lot of them or do what did they go on to do if they did a great question . Im so glad you asked that because that is necessary for wrapping up this talk. Of course, i have to get to that before before signing off yeah. So basically this cohort of women the women who worked for the airlines in this era are the reason that it changed from being a really a twoyear stint in the airlines to a profession a job that women and men could hold for as long as they wanted to and what happened was that at the beginning in the 60s at the beginning of the books time period in the 60s they at the rule was that you had to retire upon getting married or turning either 32 or 35 on various on the different airlines. Pan am didnt often, you know, anecdotally i heard that they did not often use that option. They didnt really often and fired the women who turned 35 as long as women continued performing their job well and still looked good. They could keep working but you know, even that phrase should reveal the truly sexist nature of that rule it, you know, the women were asked to stay young they were required to stay young both to keep, you know, appealing to the male passengers and also because it was cheaper they didnt have dependence for their Health Insurance costs were low if they were single and young and and they werent necessarily speaking up for themselves or like acting you know acting out on their rights. And acting upon what they should what they really deserved. So thats why the airlines wanted them to be young now the women wanted to keep their jobs. They didnt necessarily have a problem with a certain level of you know, it wasnt that they that they had an issue with the sexism or the objectification that this entailed that was not necessarily even though some of them did that was not necessarily what these lawsuits were about the lawsuits. This is what i found so interesting that the lawsuits were about women not wanting to quit they just wanted to keep doing their job. They just wanted to keep flying and so, you know, they they took the airlines to court to dismantle those age ceilings and dismantle the regulation that they had to quite if they got married and eventually dismantle the regulation thats stated that they couldnt pregnant couldnt have a children. They were all so, you know. The assumption was that you only get pregnant if youre married, so by you know not allowing women to get married. They thought they were keeping them in from getting pregnant also, which clearly we dont know. Its not the case, but they they definitely you know soon if they were if they dismantled the regulation against marriage and they all so had to be allowed to have children. So this you know one by one these regulations were you know, attacked and fell and so that those lawsuits actually set the Labor Law Precedent for a lot of the womens rights womens Employment Law that followed it in the later 70s, but most importantly to the women that i profiled it meant that they could keep flying and it meant that they you know that the the job changed from being a twoyear stint that women pursued for, you know a little bit before settling down to to really, you know a profession. It was very interesting when you spoke about their anticipating diplomacy hmm certain extent or a style of diplomacy how they were cultural diplomats. They really were so yeah. So basically, you know, because Pan Am was this international airline that was really intertwined with the us government and Pan Am flu it panin was very involved with in World War ii and it airlifted orphans and in the korean war and then it also flew these soldiers out to to vietnam. In in the Vietnam War so in part because of that and then in part just because of the flight roots it as an international airline it was it and as some would argue the premiere international airline of the era it the passengers the clientele was so varied and the women were taught and speaking of Christina Ferretto and the miami archives the the manuals in miami are absolutely amazing. Theyre incredible to look at in part because they cover such a wide range of of information the women were taught and training to how to for example the manuals have representations of each of all the fraternal organizations pins the women were taught to look for, you know a Masons Pin and if there were two people on board wearing the same pin, they were taught they were told to introduce them in flight and you know, they were taught to recognize that they were taught the different culinary traditions of the different places that they were flying to and how they should be serving people differently on different flights. So and they were they were all of these the common thread in that section of the training really was diplomacy that then they were told that they were diplomats that they were representing the United States in the air and that they needed to behave as such and you know, they were expected to know what we would call like and they were all so told how to how to calm passengers down who were anxious at flying when because flying was new a relatively new technology. It was new certainly for a huge amounts of the public so they were they were told how to you know, whats the best psychologists say that this is these are the best subjects to discuss when when someones nervous and this is how you should calm someone down. Heres what here are the signs of anxiety to look for and they were also told that they were taught the physics of flight because they if people asked they wanted to be able they wanted the services to know how to respond. So these training manuals just the gamut and then youve got also, you know, of course the how to slice a rack of lamb and how to what ingredients to put into a highball in what order how to serve things. So its really so they had to be very smart. Yeah. Well they had to think on their feet. Well, this is so wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing these stories. Especially now when we are all longing to travel. Yes, i think this really well what the appetites of all of us even further. I hope so the research took me to a lot of interesting places. How long did you work on the book . Six years may um, just what are your hopes for the book . So really thats a thats a great question and i hope that it it reshapes how people think of the job. Honestly. I really hope that on a more widespread level that these women can can find their place in in a really dignified and important history in the way that they they actually were they were the job that they were doing was dignified and important and you know, i think that it really i do i do believe that it paved the way for younger women travelers when they started flying in the early 60s it was you know, barely acceptable for women to be traveling on their own and you know, 10 years later. It was much more common to see you know groups of young women in foreign countries. And i think that this is because of them. Wonderful. Well again, thank you. Thank you for joining us in our little virtual bookshop. That books and books. I hope were going to get to see you in person at some point. I hope so too. What in the next time youre in miami . Hopefully absolutely and just remind a reminder to everyone that you can order the book a books and books and that we would love it if you would. And again, thank you for to everyone watching from everywhere. Stay safe. And fly safe. Yeah whyhello Everybody And Welk to a house divided. This is bjorns captain. This is bjorn skepticon coming to you from Abraham Lincoln Book shop in chicago, and i have our guest with us right here and it is dr. Karen cox, dr. Karen cox the author of no common ground confederate monuments and the ongoing fight for racial justice dr. Cox. Welcome to the show. Its great to be with you. Wish it was in person, but glad to be with the Abraham Lincoln Book shop. Again. Thank you very much and we all so wish you were here in person