Interviewed on December 20, 2019, January 17, 2020, and February 7, 2020
The interview describes Barbara Sharfstein’s career as a flight attendant, purser, check purser, and in-flight director with Pan American World Airways from 1951 until her retirement in 1991; discussion of her education in Spanish and its benefit when she applied at Pan American; work for the Latin American Division (LAD) out of Miami, Florida, her training, and her first flight to Havana; description of an inflight incident on a Boeing 377 in which her friend Pat Monaghan was killed, the recovery efforts, and her reaction to the situation; transfer to New York in 1952 and her transfer to the Atlantic Division; relates many anecdotes from the Stratocruiser, including an encounter with Louis Armstrong and his band on a flight from Rio de Janeiro; flights to Europe via Frobisher Bay in eastern Canada; flights from New York to Johannesburg via Lisbon, and Accra; an eventful personal trip to Finland; experience accompanying an Irish orphan from Ireland to Los Angeles; transfer to the San Francisco base and her home; provides a secondhand account of the emergency landing of Pan American Flight 6 in the Pacific Ocean heard from Doak Walker, captain of the Coast Guard ship that rescued the passengers and crew; flights from San Francisco to Asia, including flights to postwar Tokyo and the first Pan Am flights into Beijing, as well as the ‘round-the-world flights (Flight One and Flight Two); R&R flights for GIs serving in Vietnam; Operation Babylift flights from Vietnam with a description of a reunion of people who had been part of the operation as infants; in-flight mechanical incidents: engine failure on a Boeing 747, Boeing 707 that had been shot at while landing in Vietnam; discusses her work as a stewardess, a purser, a check purser, and an in-flight director, and the changes that she experienced over time in those roles; anecdotes about the passengers she met, including a vivid story about the problems caused by an inebriated passenger, and a passenger who had a medical incident on a flight to Tokyo; meeting Jane Russell and Mary Rockefeller; involvement with World Wings, her work on the organization’s newsletter, and the reunions she attended; her decision to leave Pan American for United in 1986, the last Pan Am flight that became the first United flight on PAC Day (February 26, 1986), and her feelings about that transition; describes a United charter flight with some wealthy Texans; the real estate business she began with her friend and fellow PAA flight attendant Naomi Lindstrom and the houses they developed, remodeled and sold; retiring from United after an injury; subsequent volunteer work with SFO Museum.
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