Pan Am stories: 'It was like, “I'ma stewardess!”' - Palm Beach Post
In the commercials for ABC's new Sunday night drama Pan Am, slim young women in neatly matching blue uniforms glide confidently through an airport, as enthralled travelers – and more than one handsome pilot – stand back and give way.
These stewardesses are fictional, but that scene is absolutely true, according to some of the real-life women who brought glamour and serious service to the international skies until the airline closed in 1991.
The former Pan Am stewardesses, some of whom will meet for an international reunion in Miami in October commemorating the 20th anniversary of the airline's closing, found a career that combined rigorous training, a love of travel and a chance for young women to have an international career at a time when a lot married early.
Meet the ladies (and one pilot, too!) who remember their time flying on the Big Blue Ball.
'People dressed up – it was more sophisticated.'
Marianne Victor, Palm Beach Gardens; Margret Ives, 72, Hobe Sound; Carry Zuercher, 63, Jupiter; Tracy Maxwell, 66, Hobe Sound
There's something that these ladies, all members of the Pan Am stewardess alumni group World Wings, want you to know.
"We were well-trained professionals," says Victor, as the ladies gathered at her Palm Beach Gardens kitchen table. "It was a serious business."
As part of World Wings, the ladies raise money for charity, including the Hope Rural School in Indiantown. They've also continued a very special sisterhood. "We've stayed together all these years and kept it going," explains Maxwell, who gets together with her friends once a month.
Like Pan Am, these friends are truly international. Victor and Zuercher are from Holland, Ives from Germany, and Maxwell from New York. And they share so much in common.
Among them, they've survived attempted hijackings (Victor used her stewardess skills to talk down a would-be defector to Cuba on a National flight she was actually a passenger on) and loss (some of them knew the attendants that died on the Pan Am flight that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland).
One thing the commercials for the new series has right is the breathtaking figure that stewardesses cut: "We felt like we were movie stars," Ives remembers. "We were so proud walking through the airport, with our heads up. Everyone just looked. It was like 'I'm a stewardess!' "
A big difference between the show and the reality of '60s air travel? ABC announced that the cast would not be smoking, so as not to promote cigarette use.
But in real life "everybody smoked!" Maxwell says. "We would stand in the galley with the passengers and smoke. We served cigarettes on a silver tray!"
"And our clothes would smell like smoke getting off the plane," Victor adds.
After Pan Am closed, Delta Air Lines took 1,200 of its 5,000 employees, including all of the ladies except Victor. Of the four, Maxwell, whose husband is a retired pilot, is still working internationally for Delta, logging almost 45 years in the air.
Of course, times are different, with increased security since 9/11, a change in amenities ("Now you have to pay for a sandwich!" says Ives) and a marked decrease in glamour.
"Everybody flies now but back then you had to have money. People dressed up – it was more sophisticated," Maxwell says. "Now, passengers get on in first class wearing outfits I wouldn't wear to wash my car!"
The ladies are thrilled to have been a part of Pan Am. As they talk at Victor's kitchen table, the image of a familiar blue ball hangs in the corner.
"It was the second-most well known logo after Coca-Cola!" Victor marvels. "Everybody knew Pan Am."
'Pan Am': 10 p.m. today, ABC
'It wasn't all glamour. It was hard work.'
Barbara Braunstein, 68, Boca Raton
A lot of former stewardesses joined the airlines to leave their everyday existence and see the world. Barbara Braunstein had already gotten a taste of that world, leaving her small New Jersey town for college in Maryland and then a year of study in Madrid, where she dated the brother of future international superstar Julio Iglesias.
Now, she just wanted to see more. And Pan Am was her ticket.
"When I graduated from college, I didn't have a boyfriend, and I wasn't getting married. Women of my generation, that's what we did," she says. "But I wanted to travel."
Because she speaks fluent Spanish, Braunstein fit the airline's requirement of speaking at least one additional language. She also found herself fitting quite well into Pan Am's image of international jet-set chic. "Oh, it was the most glamorous. This was the Jackie Kennedy era, with the pill box hat, the white gloves, the spike heels," she remembers. "Mostly everyone dressed up who came on the plane."
And Pan Am's standards ensured that its flight attendants matched its vision of sophistication.
"We had to weigh in before every flight, and go into the office with the grooming supervisors and twirl around to check that we had no runs in our stockings," Braunstein says. "Our hair couldn't touch our collars, and we couldn't have tinted hair and only certain kinds of makeup."
Glamour may have been key, but once the flight started, the spiked heels were replaced with more sensible ones and the work began.
"During first-class service, we served a three-course dinner! We served filet mignon, and cooked the steaks right on board! We did Cherries Jubilee, although we couldn't flame it."
After dinner, Braunstein says, the first-class service ended with cordials on a tray and "little four-pack cigarettes in a slim box. They had their after-dinner smoke right on the plane," she says. "Of course, you could never do that now."
As fancy as it seems, Braunstein says that the most important thing for people to remember is that "it wasn't all glamour. It was hard work. We were on very long, tiring flights. The flight from New York to Uruguay was 12 hours nonstop. We could take a turn taking little naps, but those were long flights. There were still cranky people and sick people."
She also wants people to know that although there were flight attendants that dated pilots, there wasn't "a lot of hanky-panky," something that, given the promos for Pan Am, she doesn't think people understand.
"Stewardesses were very well-respected. The public was in awe of us," she says. "We were sophisticated, mostly college graduates. There were mostly foreign girls – Swedish, French – and never any inappropriate language."
After flying for a year and a half, Braunstein became a stewardess trainer for Pan Am. She's now a motivational speaker, and believes that her work in the air provided her with a confidence that's carried over.
And she's proud of those days. "There were so many times that the stewardesses would go the extra mile. We flew during the Vietnam War, and people would take their R&R flights, where we would fly the women to see their husbands. They were so anxious, and the stewardesses did so much to help them feel better. It was a wonderful experience."
The view from the pilot's seat:
'I'm not going to kiss and tell. But how many times can a guy say no?'
Ken Slobody, 72, Gainesville (formerly of Boca Raton)
Former Pan Am pilot Ken Slobody, who began flying with the company in 1965, refers to the era as "the golden age of the airline business. You'd see Jackie Kennedy, Orson Welles. Pan Am was premier."
It was also, he says, "a fun airline. I worked on Christmas, and we had three days off in Rome. They took care of everything. When I went to Delta (after Pan Am closed), and the Rome trip came, we were at the same hotel having a big party, and the guy said, 'Let me know how many people there are. It's not like Pan-Am! You have to pay!' "
As for the dashing reputation of pilots of the era, Slobody is politely cagey – "I'm not going to kiss and tell. But how many times can a guy say no?" he says, laughing.
"It was a party outfit. The captain was the captain. As long as you got in on time and safely, you got to do what you wanted. There were not many rules."
A snake-battling stewardess!
Jennifer Munro, 65, Palm Beach Gardens
Four decades before Samuel L. Jackson profanely and comically battled Snakes on a Plane, Pan Am stewardess Jennifer Munro did the same.
While the job didn't usually require being an action hero, a passenger flying into the States from Panama and the hidden friends he brought aboard tapped that side of her.
"We had a stopover landing in Jamaica, and we always had to spray the plane to make sure we got rid of airborne bugs," she says. "We all had to get off the plane, and as we did, a passenger saw the spray and said 'No! No! My snakes!' I didn't know what that was about, but we found out that there were four snakes in a bag that he got in the Amazon. They were very rare."
Unfortunately, there were only three in the bag.
After searching frantically for the fourth, the decision was made to take off anyway, assuming that maybe the errant reptile had gotten off in Jamaica too. But later, mid-air, as Munro had the plane's crystal out on an unsecured counter space, the missing snake made himself known.
"The snake took off, and all the crystal broke all over the galley," Munro says. "They did catch him, and the man was arrested. He'd wanted to study them, but he wasn't supposed to have them."
"When Snakes on a Plane came out I thought 'I've been there!' "
EXPERIENCE COMES IN HANDY:
'A fabulous time to see the world'
Signe Owrenn, 67, Palm Beach Gardens
Owrenn works behind the concierge desk at Palm Beach's Colony Hotel, but she got her experience assisting international travelers as a Pan Am stewardess. "I think it is so funny that people are talking about it again," she says. "It was a fabulous time for me to see the world. It's so great to see that big blue Pan Am ball everywhere again."
24 Sep, 2011--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNHBTXLnkxdLX91m1-u-GscTngwpuQ&url=http://www.pbpulse.com/tv/2011/09/23/pan-am-stories-it-was-like-34-i-m-a-stewardess-34/
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