36 years in the clouds

Despite tough requirements and occasional turbulence from passengers, a flight attendant's retirement is a time to recall many happy landings.

By KATHRYN WEXLER
© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 6, 2001

[Times photo: Scott Keeler] Brenda Sheehy saw many big changes during her career as a Delta Air Lines flight attendant but points out one constant: “I always felt special to be a flight attendant.”

CLEARWATER -- In all the years Brenda Sheehy served up damp chicken and dry pasta to passengers on Delta Air Lines, no one ever threw the food back at her.

But she suffered indignities that, however small, added up over a 36-year career.

Consider the archetypal passenger with unresolved issues about her mother: "I'm going to miss my connection! What are you going to do about it?"

The prima donna: "Bring me another towelette!"

The unfunny drunk: "Anover martini, beautival."

She was handed a pillow covered with vomit. She once spotted a couple writhing passionately beneath a flimsy airline-issue blanket. Some troubled soul stood one time at the front of the cabin, stripping down to her bra and rejecting Sheehy's entreaties to return to her seat.

Then there was the older man she tried to rouse after the flight landed. Stone cold dead, that one.

"That was very nerve-wracking," says a lipsticked Sheehy, 56, sitting beside her enclosed pool in Island Estates.

But most bothersome, in the days before her retirement last week, was a certain coarseness that wasn't present when Sheehy started welcoming passengers back in 1965 with white gloves and -- in compliance with airline rules -- a left hand unfettered by a wedding band.

"There has definitely been a trend toward more rudeness," she says. "I think that's the whole country. You know, shock radio and all that stuff. It's different. Air rage is a fairly new term. That was something we never ever spoke of or experienced way back."

During her years in the air, Sheehy saw the world and a world of change. Her career began when air travel was genteel and ended when everybody could fly, and did.

She was a dreamy young woman at 20, a receptionist at the Miami Board of Education stuck cleaning her boss' desk and sharpening his pencils. She'd gaze up at the airplanes streaming overhead, ferrying everyone to exotic destinations and amazing adventures.

Her parents, who owned an orchid business, had a friend who worked for Delta Air Lines. Why not apply there?

Her interview in 1965 was in Atlanta, Delta's headquarters. She wore a tan dress with a jacket and matching pumps. They flew her first class and put her up in a budget hotel.

How she wanted to soar with the rest of the pretty Delta girls.

"I was in awe of them."

[Photo courtesy of Brenda Sheehy] Brenda Sheehy, bottom row, left, with other members of her 1965 class at Delta Training Center in Atlanta. Then they were called stewardesses, wore white gloves and heels, and had to weigh in monthly.

She was soon memorizing the layout of emergency exits. Learning how to evacuate a plane safely. And discovering the definition of the perfect hostess of the skies: young, fresh-faced, single and thin.

Red lipstick required, but never frosted lipstick -- "too racy, not classy enough." Eyeliner forbidden. Ring on right hand and watch on left. Little earrings. Heels no lower than 21/2 inches.

"We signed a paper saying we would quit at 32," said Sheehy, who stayed on 24 years past that.

And then there were the monthly weigh-ins. Standing 5 foot 2, Sheehy was allowed a meager 107 pounds -- or she risked suspension.

She was suspended.

"I gained 5 to 7 pounds in the late '60s," she said. "I lost the weight, and I came back."

If other stewardesses (they were stewardesses then) resented the industry's blatant sexism at a time when the women's movement was turning from a whisper to scream, Sheehy didn't hear it.

"I don't remember any grumbling," she said. "We grumbled about the passengers."

The tumultuous changes in society during the past 30 years shook the airline industry like white-knuckle turbulence. Flight attendants put on pants and wedding bands. They applied frosted lipstick or wiped it off entirely. They ratcheted down their heels. Men were hired. Black people, too.

Then came the lawsuits over weight restrictions. Weigh-ins ended before anyone knew what anorexia was.

Sheehy wasn't one to buck the system. National Airlines once ran a commercial of a stewardess cooing, "Fly me to Chicago."

"There was something about it that was a little offensive, like a come-on," Sheehy said. "It wasn't a big issue for me, just a little nagging thing. I was mostly busy living my life."

That meant settling in New Orleans and marrying a man in the auto parts business, having a daughter, getting divorced.

She claims she was asked out only twice by passengers. In 1988, a pilot invited her to dinner.

Sheehy accepted, despite the warning she remembered from her very first training session: "Just remember, most of them are married."

He was getting divorced. She married Tom Sheehy herself.

Never did she consider changing careers. The flexibility was great. So were the benefits. There was a certain clout in it, too.

"I always felt special to be a flight attendant. People would say, "That must be so glamorous, so wonderful.' There was a status to it."

And yet it took her all of one flight to realize the glitz had its price: tiring work, long hours, little sleep, aching feet and dry hands. Her first assignment was to fly to Chicago. She figured she'd catch a play, maybe head to a museum. She had 12 hours in the Windy City before she was pressed back into service. She slept the whole time.

"That's when the reality set in," she said. "Working on the airplane is very physically hard, so when you get to bed, you're exhausted."

One thing that never bothered her was the thought that cruising 30,000 feet above the clouds, far beyond a world of dependable concrete and metal detectors, she could die.

"I never thought I'd crash," she says. "I thought that happens to other people."

And now, post-Sept. 11, Sheehy says she still doesn't worry, even about terrorism.

Concerns about her personal safety had nothing to do with her decision to retire early. The life of a flight attendant is tougher now, she says. For a time in recent years, they had to pick up trash in the aisles between flights. They currently have to board passengers. Who would have guessed they'd have to learn to guard cockpits?

What's more, while the changes over the years were mostly good for flight crews, when Sheehy looks back, she can't help thinking that some of the old ways weren't all bad. The weight requirements, though stressful, were helpful incentives to keep slender. And today's lower standards for grooming: "Maybe that's not such a good thing," says Sheehy, perfectly coiffed.

"I've always been big on makeup and fixing up."

Her flying peers are too, she says.

"I think for the most part, we're all pretty prissy . . . We don't have to wear heels in the concourse anymore. But we still do."

[Photo courtesy of Brenda Sheehy] Brenda Sheehy’s last trip as a flight attendant was on Nov. 28, when she flew from Atlanta to London.

When Delta offered her a fat retirement package, she gladly accepted. On her final flight last week, she flew to London with her husband along for the ride. Flight attendants held a Mardi Gras party in her honor during the trip over.

During 36 years as a flight attendant, she won her wings every day.

She has snapshots of the flight that show her holding a serving tray, working the rows one last time, a wide smile on her face.

Did she love it all those years?

"Not loved. I would say there were things I loved about it, and times I didn't like it at all."

Her daughter, Jessica, a sophomore at Florida State University, has no interest in following in her mother's footsteps. Sheehy says she never wanted Jessica to become a flight attendant anyway.

"I always told her to be a pilot."

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