The Pan Am Podcast

Send us a textIn this episode we explore the life of Kathleen Clair, executive assistant to Pan Am founder and chairman Juan T. Trippe for over 32 years from 1948 to 1980. We will also hear a personal and private memories of Mr. Trippe and Kathleen. We are joined by two special guests that knew Kathleen well: Wendy Trippe Barr, the granddaughter of Juan and Betty Trippe and John Luetich, a board member of the Pan Am Museum Foundation, Museum Curator, and the son of Mary Luetich who worked with Kathleen for many years in the Pan Am Building.Both guests remember Kathleen at an early age and will share their intimate perspectives on this incredible woman. After the airline ceased operations in 1991, Kathleen worked tirelessly to preserve Pan Am history and was a founding member of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and worked with Juan Trippe’s sons, Charlie and Ed, to preserve Pan Am’s historic contributions to the history of flight.Several audio clips from an oral history interview of Kathleen recorded in 2003 are used in this episode. A special thank you to the Pan Am Historical Foundation for allowing us to use these recordings for this program. Another special thank you to our high school intern Michael Genter for his help in organizing the audio clips.Kathleen Clair was born on December 12, 1918 to her parents Ted and Kit Clair and would later become the devoted older sister of Phyllis and Donald. She graduated from high school in Englewood, NJ, in 1936 and then went on to the prestigious Katherine Gibbs School for women in 1937.After graduation, she stayed in Manhattan and spent the next 11 years as a secretary at various jobs. One of the many gifts of Kathleen that become invaluable in her career was her photographic memory. She remembered everything to the finest detail with instant recall.In late 1948, she applied for a job at the corporate offices of Pan Am, then in the iconic Chrysler Building. She was hired and worked for Mr. Trippe for 32 years until her retirement in 1980.In December of 2018, Kathleen celebrated her 100th birthday with family, friends and many Pan Am colleagues. A little over a month later, Kathleen M. Clair died peacefully on January 26, 2019, after 100 years of engaging life on her own terms.She is missed by her large extended family, the Trippe family, colleagues from Pan Am and the larger aviation community, and friends from her long and well-lived life.Support the show Visit Us for more Pan Am History! Support the Podcast! Donate to the Museum! Visit The Hangar online store for Pan Am gear! Become a Member! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support!

Send us a textIn this episode we explore the life of legendary Hollywood costume designer Edith Head who designed uniforms for Pan American World Airways introduced in 1975 and used until the early 1980s. Then we will be joined by actor Susan Claassen who plays the Hollywood legend in her one-woman production called A CONVERSATION WITH EDITH HEAD. In her storied career in Hollywood, Edith Head won a record eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design between 1949 and 1973, making her the most awarded woman in the Academy's history. She is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential costume designers in film history.Actor Susan Claassen is celebrating her 49th anniversary with Tucson’s Invisible Theatre. As Managing Artistic Director (now emeritus), she has produced and directed over 500 productions. She was nominated for the 2011 LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award and BroadwayWorld LA Award as Best Actress for her portrayal of Edith Head in A CONVERSATION WITH EDITH HEAD and most recently, nominated for The San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle 43rd Annual Excellence in Theatre Awards for Best Solo Production and Best Production. A CONVERSATION WITH EDITH HEAD premiered at the Invisible Theatre in 2002 in Tucson, Arizona and has played coast to coast with more than 700 performances. The production has toured internationally to the Republic of Georgia; a “Sold Out” engagement at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Toronto and an acclaimed five-week run at the Leicester Square Theatre in London’s West End. Susan has also been a clown in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade since 2001. She dedicates her performance to the vibrant memory of her beloved mother, Goldie.Support the show Visit Us for more Pan Am History! Support the Podcast! Donate to the Museum! Visit The Hangar online store for Pan Am gear! Become a Member! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support!

Send us a textIn this episode we celebrate the Archer’s...a family of aviators. 89-year-old Pan Am Captain Stu Archer joined the airline in 1965 as an engineer after serving in the U.S. Air Force. Stu began flying the 727 and then was promoted to captain on the 747 and later Airbus A300 and A310. He stayed with Pan Am until 1991 and then went on to work for Delta Air Lines as a captain. When he reached the then mandatory retirement age of 60 after three years as a Delta captain, he successful took the company to court forcing the airline to keep him as an engineer and worked for another seven years before retiring in 2000. Many credit his lawsuit as one of the reasons the mandatory age was raised to 65. Stu credits his uncle, Lawerence Archer, as his aviation inspiration. Born in 1903, Lawerence was one of the early pilots trained by the Wright Brothers and was the first person to deliver mail by air in New England. Uncle Lawerence took Stu on his very first flight in a single engine, open air cockpit bi-wing plane when he was six years old and this forever changed the trajectory of his life. Lawerence Archer gave his life in service to his country in 1945 during World War II serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Stu’s daughter Deborah Archer joined Pan Am as a flight attendant in 1979 and worked for the airline until the end in 1991. Afterward, she hung up her wing and became a nurse. She sadly passed away in 2009. Stu’s son, Captain Jeffery Archer followed in his father’s footsteps and became a pilot for American Airlines in 1991 and became captain in 1995. And now his grandson, Stephen Archer, Jeffery’s son, carries on the family legacy started by his great-uncle and was recently been promoted to Captain with Envoy Air, a subsidiary of American Airlines. All three of these captains will be joining us to talk about their passion for flying and careers in aviation.A special thank you to American Airlines for allowing Jeff and Stephen to participate in this interview. If you are thinking about starting a career in aviation and want to be a pilot for American Airlines, visit the AA Cadet Academy. The Pan Am Museum also encourages you to visit the American Airlines CR Smith Museum in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. This museum is named after aviation pioneer and former President of American Airlines, Cyrus Rowlett Smith and has been open since 1993.  Support the show Visit Us for more Pan Am History! Support the Podcast! Donate to the Museum! Visit The Hangar online store for Pan Am gear! Become a Member! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support!

Send us a textThe Pan Am Museum Foundation recognizes the month of May as Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and in this episode we explore the history of Pan Am’s “Nisei” Stewardesses with Dr. Christine R. Yano, retired professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai’I and author of the book, Airbourne Dreams: “Nisei” Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways.This book is the story of an unusual personnel program implemented by an American corporation intent on expanding and dominating the nascent market for international air travel. That program reflected the Jet Age dreams of global mobility that excited postwar Americans, as well as the inequalities of gender, class, race, and ethnicity that constrained many of them.The Japanese word “Nisei” means second generation Japanese American.  In 1955, Pan Am began recruiting Japanese American women to work as stewardesses on its Tokyo-bound flights and for the airline’s celebrated round-the-world flights. Based in Honolulu, these women were informally known as Pan Am’s “Nisei” stewardesses, even though not all of them were Japanese American or even second-generation. They were hired for their Japanese-language skills, but in reality…few spoke Japanese fluently.However, the main reason for the hiring of these women was to enhance the airline’s image of exotic cosmopolitanism and worldliness as the iconic American company pioneered new frontiers of race, language, and culture. These young women left home to travel the globe with Pan Am, forging their own cosmopolitan identities in the process.In 2014, Chantelle Rose Acorda, Kim Nguyen, and Jasmine Pigford made a well-done student film and interviewed Hawaii state senator Glenn S. Wakai and Pan Am veterans Ailenn Sodetani and Mae Takahashi. The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii produced a short educational film, Pan Am Ambassadors, with interviews of Pan Am "Nisei" stewardesses. Support the show Visit Us for more Pan Am History! Support the Podcast! Donate to the Museum! Visit The Hangar online store for Pan Am gear! Become a Member! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support!