When he got to me, he stopped for what seemed a very long time. I could hear him breathing and up close he smelled even worse! Eventually, he moved away. But just when I sighed with relief, he came up behind me and punched me hard right between the shoulder blades, sending me flying through the air. I heard Sam yell and run up to catch me, just as the gorilla started to come toward me. One of the guides picked me up and stuck me in the trunk of a dead tree, ordering everyone else to form a tight circle around me. For what seemed like forever, the silverback circled us, panting and pounding his chest, until he finally gave up. But first, he hip-checked the guide hard enough to knock him down. Only later did I learn that the silverback’s nickname is “The Puncher”!
Finally, I was excited to write about women and aviation. When I got out of college, I worked as a flight attendant for TWA, the very airline that Amelia Earhart worked for! Unlike her, I did not have a desire to fly planes. But I did have a burning desire to travel and see the world. The first airline stewardess (that’s what we were called until airlines began hiring men for the job in the 1970s), Ellen Church, worked for what later became United Airlines. The first stewardesses had to be registered nurses, but eventually the profession became synonymous with pretty young women, even though their main role on the plane is to evacuate it during emergencies. Until the late 1960s, stewardesses could not keep their jobs if they got married. That changed slightly, allowing them to marry but forcing them to quit if they had children. By the time I became a flight attendant, the image had changed, partially because men were now doing the job but also because the role of women had changed over time. In 1978, when I started working as a TWA flight attendant, there were still only a handful of female pilots flying for commercial airlines. Today, there are over 5,200. Amelia Earhart would be proud!