Tuesday, March 2 at 7 p.m.—WOODSTOCK—In a Mad-Men-era of commercial flight, Pan Am Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up. As Kirkus Reviews raved in a starred review, this “limber, well-researched … account of Pan Am World Airways in its glory days is smoothly interwoven with the engagingly complex stories of several longtime flight attendants … An entertaining, insightful look into a gritty and glamorous era in air travel.”
Required to have a college education, 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 the right height (between 5’3” and 5’9”), the right weight (between 105 and 140 pounds), and the right age.
Join the Norman Williams Public Library and Woodstock author Julia Cooke for the virtual launch of her book, “Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am” on Tuesday, March 2 at 7 p.m. via Zoom.
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, and as it played an astonishing part in Operation Babylift—the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children from Saigon.
Julia Cooke’s journalism has been published in Time, Smithsonian, and Condé Nast Traveler. She is the author of “The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba” and the daughter of a former Pan Am executive.
Register here: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rtZwOpwbSX2vWAUhJI1C4g.
