Training School

On arrival in the United States, we spent the night at the Holiday Inn and the following morning the five of us were transported back to Kennedy airport where we met up with a few more other candidates from around the world. I started up a conversation with a pretty blond girl from Germany. Hwho grew up in Cologne had already been living with a family in White Plains functioning as an ‘au pair’ for two years before giving up her job to join Pan Am. Rteamed up with someone else and off we went to San Juan, Puerto Rico where we would transfer to yet another flight which would take us to our final destination, Miami international airport.

When I stepped off the flight from New York I thought that I had arrived in paradise. It was April and the air was balmy, I could see palm tree swaying lightly in the breeze, and I could hear the sound of music, strange exciting music that entranced and interested me. Hand I made our way to the nearest bar because we had two hours to kill before our connecting flight. It was an outdoor bar with a thatched roof and I ordered a vodka gimlet. The bartender had no idea what that was and so I explained to him that it was vodka with lime juice. He served me straight vodka with a slice of lime in it. He only spoke Spanish and between us H and I could only converse in French, German or English. I visited Puerto Rico many times over the next six months but was unaware that as a junior stewardess I would be obliged to pay my dues at the beginning of my career by taking the most unwanted flight schedules available. I was okay with it as long as I could spend a night or two on that fabulous island.

On our arrival in Miami, the limousine driver who was waiting for us gave us the good news. The hotel in Miami Springs where the trainees usually stayed had no rooms available, therefore we were going to stay at a different hotel a little further down the road but still within walking distance of the stewardess college where our training would take place. When the limousine driver heard our sighs of disappointment he laughed.

            “Don’t be disappointed,” he said. “The place you’re going to is beautiful. It’s much better than the hotel where the others are.”

I saw a color television for the first time in the hotel lobby and was a little dismayed to find out that we would be billed for the six week stay at a discounted rate, but it still seemed rather expensive to me. Breakfast and dinner were included and we were to be billeted in private bungalows (villas) on the hotel grounds. These villas were within walking distance of the one restaurant where we had our meals. The hotel receptionist handed us our bungalow assignments and to our delight, H and I were assigned to the same bungalow together with two American girls who had arrived the night before.

The bungalow was superb containing two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and two bathrooms although it puzzled me for a while how it could be so warm outside and so cool indoors. At mealtimes we all sat around a large, beautifully set up table bearing huge amounts of food in a side room of the restaurant. The food was always delicious and well prepared. The weather although torrential at times was interesting because the sun always shone even when it rained. Florida was a warm and welcoming place to me and still is because this is where I live now that I’m retired.

Thank God for the two American girls. They showed me how to take a shower without flooding the bathroom floor. They taught me how to operate the air conditioning system and also showed both Hand I how to wait for breaks in the torrential downpour, before we dashed to the hotel restaurant or across the road to the Pan Am building where our classes were held.

The other hotel guests were amused and rather enjoyed the sight of us as we took our places every morning at the table set for eighteen. We had become celebrities of a kind but we were advised not to mingle with the other guests because Pan Am wanted us to be above reproach. The hotel had extended its hospitality to us as a special favor to Pan Am.

It took a while for me to get accustomed to the meals that were served to us. The first morning I stared in disbelief at the half cantaloupe melon that was placed in front of me. I had rarely tasted melon in my life but on those few occasions when I had, the serving had been one small slice. They expected me to eat a whole half? That was unbelievable especially when they served pancakes, bacon, sausage and eggs at the same time. I was overjoyed with the large glass of fresh orange juice which was a treat that I still enjoy to this day. I had only ever tasted canned orange juice and again it was in very small quantities.

Half way through our training, Pan Am requested that the hotel change the meals that they were serving to us because some of the girls were beginning to gain weight. The quantities and richness of the food were reduced slightly and dinner always started with a full half of an iceberg lettuce that was waiting for us when we arrived. Once again I was taken aback by the sight of a whole half of a lettuce that I was supposed to consume on a daily basis. I could only eat some of it.

I was not in peak condition for the six weeks in Miami Springs. The smallpox vaccination had weakened my immune system and the situation grew worse when were administered a few other vaccinations the first week of our arrival. These vaccinations were necessary for our protection because we were going to travel around the globe to countries that were considered in many cases to be unsafe and disease ridden. I remember walking between two nurses and feeling the needles jabbing simultaneously into my right arm and my left arm, and then I fainted. Both nurses were accustomed to trainees who fainted and so I was just moved to a side room along with a few others to recover.

Because I felt under the weather most of the time, I was well behaved and did not give the instructors at the college any problems. I studied hard, passed the exams and more or less obeyed every command without a murmur, even when the head teacher invited me into her office one day to chastise me for my short skirt length. Mini skirts were all the rage in London but not acceptable at the international stewardess college in Miami Springs.

            “Is there any way that you can lengthen your skirts?” the teacher asked.

            “Yes indeed,” I responded. If you can tell me where I can purchase some sewing supplies, I can attach false hems to all my skirts and lower them about two inches.”

She was pleased with the result and I had no further problems during the training phase. Shortly after we were fitted for our uniforms, we were given instructions to visit a particular shop where we had to purchase the special kind of lingerie that Pan Am wanted us to wear under our uniforms. The cost of the uniforms was prohibitive in those days but the three hundred dollars was to be subtracted from our paychecks in smaller sums, on a monthly basis until it was paid off. The underwear was unattractive and a complete waste of money but we were obliged to buy it. The long legged white pantie girdle reached to six inches above the knee, the slip was uncomfortable and thank God they didn’t have a bra in my size. I fully intended to continue to wear the trendy bikini underwear that I had brought with me from London together with the new fashionable pantyhose that had hit the stores. Pantie girdles, suspender belts and stockings were not going to be part of my future wardrobe.

The first two casualties came in the form of a haircut and a shave. We had a cosmetology instructor who gave us lessons while we were seated in front of gilded mirrors that were hung in intervals around the walls of a garish, deep pink, carpeted class room. We were permitted to apply mascara to the top eyelashes but not the bottom. We could wear stud earrings if our ears were already pierced but otherwise only a wristwatch, an engagement ring or a wedding band was allowed, and we sat through the usual instructions on how to apply cosmetics with good taste and a light touch.

            “Now for those of you who have never shaved your underarms or legs, please do so before you arrive in my classroom tomorrow,” were the words the instructor spoke at the end of the first day.

Many European women were not in the habit of shaving armpits or legs but orders were orders and that night H borrowed my razor for her first attempt at a hygienic procedure American style. She was in the bathroom performing the task and I was stretched out on the twin bed in the room that I shared with her when all of a sudden I heard a bloodcurdling scream. I rushed into the bathroom to be met with a horrendous sight. H was standing on top of the toilet bowl wrapped in a towel, with blood streaming down her legs and she was screaming hysterically while pointing at the floor. A large Florida Palmetto bug had made its way into the bathroom and this was something that she and I had never seen before. To us the insect looked ominous and it was enormous. We were both amazed when the two American girls who shared the bungalow with us came running in and started to laugh. One of them picked up the cicada, calmly took it outside and set it free.

            “It’s harmless,” they told us, still laughing at the commotion.

H managed to clean up her act and eventually learned the proper way to groom. The following day the whole class was taken to a local beauty salon for a haircut. We were not allowed to sport any hairstyle that was below the chin and most of us came out of the shop with identical looking hair styles. I didn’t even notice any commotion going on but there was one. One of the American trainees refused to entertain such a short hairstyle. She managed to persuade the hairstylist to leave her hair slightly longer than was permitted but that was a serious miscalculation on her part. The head teacher noticed. A few nights later, as we were seated in the hotel restaurant for our evening meal, we noticed that one trainee was missing. Half way through the meal she came in and she was sobbing. The head teacher had ordered her back to the beauty salon to have her tresses shorn and she had not been allowed to dry her hair after the cut.  She stood there in the hotel restaurant sobbing and crying and then a string of curses came streaming out of her mouth. These were words that I had never heard before but I could tell by the look on her face and the tone of her voice that they were pretty bad. The following day she received a one way ticket home; in other words she was fired. Three more trainees were fired before the six weeks were over and I was in a state of shock over the situation. It had never dawned on me that after giving up my life and job in the United Kingdom and travelling all the way to Miami, Florida I could be fired for the slightest infraction of the rules.

I had one major problem therefore I was absolutely dreading the life saving lesson. Everyone else in the class knew how to swim but I didn’t. Before the lesson began I did tell the swim instructor that I didn’t know how to swim but he just shrugged and told me that he didn’t really care whether I could swim or not. I either passed the class or I didn’t. I passed the class but I am indebted to H who gave me the suggestion that saved my job.

            “Just inflate your life vest and tell him it was accidental, “she whispered to me. “He doesn’t really care as long as you get to the life raft and pull yourself in.”

My graduation class of May 1968. I'm in the middle row, second uniform from the left.

We lined up on the edge of the huge swimming pool and when the instructor blew his whistle I yanked on the cords that dangled below my deflated life vest and miraculously the vest inflated. I didn’t exactly jump into the pool but I sat on the edge and carefully lowered myself into the deep end. With some difficulty I managed to reach the life raft and the others helped to pull me up and over the side. I can swim now, but that was the scariest part of the training for me. Someone told me later that they used to conduct these life saving classes in the ocean but discontinued that practice after one of the trainees accidentally drowned.

I really enjoyed the rest of my training after that. We learned how to prepare meals in the galley and how to serve them to the passengers. We were given lessons on how to mix and serve alcoholic drinks and we had a tough written exam to pass.  Towards the end of the training we knew that the exam might be difficult especially for those to whom English was not their native language, and there were no second chances.

On the day of the exam we filed into the classroom, the instructor passed out the test sheets and she gave us our instructions. Anyone caught cheating would be expelled immediately. After reading the first page, I was puzzled and raised my hand.

            “Please may I step forward with a question,” I asked.

After receiving permission to leave my chair, I approached the instructor to tell her that by accident she had given me the answers to the questions. When I showed her my paper, she laughed.

            “This is what we call a multiple choice test,” she explained to me. “We give you four answers for every question and you have to choose the correct answer by marking the box beside it. One answer is the correct one and the other three are wrong.”

With an incredulous feeling I returned to my chair. This was the easiest test I had ever taken. Multiple choice tests were something that I had never seen before or even heard of and I knew that for me, it would be impossible to fail this exam.

There wasn’t much time for sightseeing but I did manage to spend a day at Miami Beach, visit a nightclub at nearby Fort Lauderdale and have fun with some of the Eastern pilots who were there in Miami for training purposes. We were allowed to bid for our bases but it was a forgone conclusion that based on our second language, H and I would be heading for New York to be based at J.F. Kennedy airport. Most of the trainees who spoke European languages were based in New York where these flights originated, and those trainees who could speak Spanish were based in Miami. The lucky few whose second language was Asian were destined for San Francisco or Los Angeles.

At the end of our six-week training period the head teacher came into the classroom accompanied by two other instructors.  She gave us a carefully prepared speech.

“Because Pan Am is suffering from a shortage of qualified flight attendants, we have decided to allow the remainder of you to graduate from this class. Tomorrow you will come to class wearing your new Pan Am uniforms. We will present you with your wings, but I must tell you that this is the most difficult, insolent group of young ladies that we have ever had in our school. There is only one person in this class who has consistently met our standards of behavior, deportment and etiquette. That same person passed every test with high marks and she is the only one of you who will receive an excellent report from us that will be placed in her employee file. That is all I have to say to this class.”

We sat in silence as our names were called out one at a time so that we could have a last face-to-face meeting with the head teacher. I heard later that she was civil but cold to every member of the class. When it was my turn to sit down and take a beating, she asked posed this question.

            “I have asked every one so far if they know who I was referring to when I said that only one trainee met our standards, do you know who she is?”

“No,” I said quietly. 

“Well then I’ll tell you who it is,” she said. “It’s you. However it would be unwise to tell the others, I have left them guessing and to my surprise not one of them guessed that it was you.” 

“Thank you.” I gasped before I left the room. “Thank you very much,” I said with relief. 

I was saved again and I hoped on my way to happiness. Because of that report I was given some choice assignments over the years. The reason for my good report had a lot to do with the fact that I had been nursing along my delicate immune system and my only goal was to complete the course. Therefore I had been keeping a low key. When the others went out to party, I had gone to bed with a magazine and two aspirins. The rumors were that there had been spies at those parties and the spies had carried very bad reports back to the school. The trainees had nothing good to say about the teachers or their training methods and had voiced these opinions freely while socializing with other airline employees. I had missed the whole spectacle. Feeling delicate had saved me from harm.

There was one more task to accomplish before we left Florida for good, and that was our training flight. The schedule of flights available confused me and so I just wrote down some numbers and hoped for the best but I didn’t receive the best. My training flight was dull. We flew from Miami to San Juan with no time for a layover. From there it was to New York and then back again to Miami via San Juan, but I do remember tasting swordfish for the first time in a New York restaurant and it was a very good meal. The flight crew that I travelled with did get a laugh after I handed out copies of the New York Times newspaper to the first class passengers. I had no idea that each fat bundle was only one newspaper and to the chagrin of the chief purser, I gave each first class passenger only one section of the newspaper with the mistaken belief that each section was a newspaper in itself.

We packed our bags and traveled to the American base that had been assigned to us.