The women in these pages and many thousands more were deeply committed to being in the world. So many stewardesses and then flight attendants striding purposefully through airports in uniform, visiting foreign cities alone—insisting on this one aspect of physical freedom—made room over decades for the women of my generation to move with more ease through more of the world than women ever had before. The space that stewardesses inhabited and the comfort they earned in motion allowed me, today, to take my own satisfaction from travel, and for that I am grateful.
My thanks first to Lynne Rawling, Karen Walker Ryan, and Tori Werner, who invited me into not only their memories in so many long and winding interviews, treading the same ground from different angles, but also into their homes and their families. Thank you to Clare Christiansen and Hazel Bowie, who answered similarly repetitive questions with candor and grace. They are all remarkable women, and I am grateful both for their time and to know them.
Many people have given me time and information again and again. This list will likely be incomplete, and I apologize to anyone I have overlooked. Edward and Roberta Trippe, Pamela Taylor, Jan Wollett, and Rebecca Sprecher, my pseudo-hippie-godmama, were especially generous, patient, and supportive of this work. In no order at all, my deepest thanks to Paula Helfrich, Laurien Nuss, Dian Stirn Groh, Joan Policastro, Bronwen Roberts, Alex Rawling, Nicole Rawling, Felicia Fairchild, Don Cooper, Helen Davey, Lee Trujillo, Karen Van Es, Myron “Rosie” Rosenstein, Nancy Hult Ganis, Kristina Kiehl, Renate Van Kempema, Margret Ives, Phyllis Johnson Siudy, Elke Etling, Theresa Webber, Valerie Lester, Donna Lively, Holly Borowiak, Mary Ann Mercier, Anne Sweeney, Tania Anderson, Al Topping, Alice Dear, Gail Jennings, Ingrid Templeton, Jane Fujioka Noe, Joan Carnell, Nellie Avillez, Melanie Camp, Diane Carlson Evans, Helen Hegelheimer, Jill Snow, Jim Trullinger, Marci Levine, Micki Voisard, Mindy Kammeyer, Peter Bennett, P. J. Rimson, Kathy Flora, Sabine Renard, Sam Wessling, Siv Adams, Sheila O’Brien, Suzanne Neal Perkins, Carla Manley, Carol Young, Helga Rohrs, Hildegaard Niepal, Marion Semler, Jeanne Jackson, Annmari Ryan, Tom Money, Tim Walker, Nick and Sandy Javaras, Alan Reynolds, Robert Dorsey, Doug Miller. Thank you to the veterans of the United States armed services who answered my questions on Veterans Day weekend 2018: Ann Kelsey, Andrea Beal, Judy Jenkins Gaudino, Marc Leepson, Jack Devine, Jim Ottman, Bat Murtha, Marione “Dino” Lawrence, Robert Lee Delawer, Kurt Sandusky, Bill Gray, Susan Miller, Karen Arndt, and Ann Mitchell Kilty.
World Wings International conventions and luncheons, Pan Am Historical Foundation events, and Internal German Service reunions allowed me to steep in the social environment of the Pan Am family. It is a remarkable network, and its leadership—especially Nancy McAllister and Leslie Manning at World Wings—opened many doors for me. There is much that I have learned in casual conversations with women at conventions in Bangkok, Savannah, and Berlin, and though it would be difficult to trace out exactly who helped me in what way, when, and how, I am grateful for the opportunity to crash their parties.
Three books provided a robust foundation for the research for my own: Kathleen Barry’s Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants, Victoria Vantoch’s The Jet Sex: Airline Stewardesses and the Making of an American Icon, and Jenifer Van Vleck’s Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy. I am indebted to their scholarship.
Thank you to the editors who worked with me on the first pieces of writing to come out of this material: Katia Bachko and Seyward Darby at the Atavist; Paul Reyes and Alison Wright at Virginia Quarterly Review.
Thank you to W. Ralph Eubanks, whose perspective on what these women could show the world matched my own from the start; to Lauren LeBlanc and Ashley Patronyak, whose eyes and minds helped refine initial, very rough drafts; and to Dartmouth’s Ed Miller, who let me sit in on his excellent Vietnam War class. The University of Miami’s archivists Christina Favretto and Nicola Hellman-McFarland helped orient me, and researcher Jeiddy Lopez got elbows-deep in files when I could not do so myself.
Friends and colleagues were so very generous with their time and their intellects. Their keen eyes, unwavering enthusiasm, and honesty were critical at many junctures. Alyona, Nicole VanDeventer, Megan Foley, Kathy Beaird, Tara FitzGerald, Spencer Bailey, Farah Hussain, fact-checker Angely Mercado, and—may our work together continue forever—Artis Henderson, Suzanne Mozes, and Tanya Paperny. Your attention and fellowship are a buoy and a boon.
My agents Zoe Pagnamenta and Alison Lewis have helped steer me toward what I want to do even before I know it sometimes. This book could not have found a more sensitive editor than Deanne Urmy, who has known exactly when and how to direct me. Thank you to Jessica Vestuto and everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Thank you to my mother, Joan Cirillo, and father, Roger Cooke. My mother moved around the world so eagerly and confidently with my sister and me in tow—in no small part thanks to the flight attendants who helped her care for the two of us in transit—and she still takes such pleasure from deep, honest immersion in places that are not her own. My father told me when I was young that a feminist is anyone who believes that men and women are equal. He also played so much Connect Four and gin rummy with me on so many plane rides that for me, flight has always been something to look forward to. I owe my mother and father very much, but travel and conviction are the two things I thank them for now.
Last, always, and forever, every day, thank you to Patrick Proctor, without whom none of this would exist in the first place.