Glamour, danger, liberation: in a Mad Men era of commercial flight,
Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out,
and wanted up
Required to have a college degree, speak two languages, and possess the
political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess
serving on iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between
5′3″ and 5′9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under twenty-six years
old at the time of hire. Cooke's intimate storytelling weaves together
the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from small-town
girl Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for
her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few Black stewardesses of the
era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life.
Cooke brings to light the story of Pan Am stewardesses' role in the
Vietnam War, as the airline added runs from Saigon to Hong Kong for
planeloads of weary young soldiers straight from the battlefields who
were off for five days of R&R, and then flown back to war. Finally, with
Operation Babylift--the dramatic evacuation of two thousand children
during the fall of Saigon--the book's special cast of stewardesses
unites to play an extraordinary role on the world stage.
