Sky Girls and Service
In 1930 an idea to enhance the experience of flight was built from a friendship between a Boeing executive Steve Stimpson and nurse Ellen Church was put to the test. Church had gone to Stimpson with the concept of hiring a female stewardess for commercial flights. While men could do the work, Church suggested that bringing women on board to perform the service work and care for passengers, would create the critical link of trust between the inexperienced land bound public and the product of flight.
Intrigued by the idea, Stimpson sent a telegram to Boeing Air Transport officials stating, “It strikes me that there would be a great psychological punch to having young women stewardesses…I have in mind a couple of graduate nurses that would make exceptional stewardesses…Imagine
the psychology of having young women as regular members of the crew. Imagine the national publicity we could get from it, and the tremendous effect it would have on the traveling public. Also imagine the value they would be to us not only in the neater and nicer method of serving food but looking out for the passenger’s welfare.”6
Eight sky girls were hired for a three-month trial run and flew on the Boeing 80. They were an instant hit with the passengers, though the pilots and the pilots’ wives needed time to warm up to the idea, stewardesses became a permanent part of the flying experience. Inez Keller Fuite recalls the early confrontations with pilots and their wives, stating “The pilots didn’t want us at all and were not enthusiastic about women as crew members. They were rugged and temperamental characters who wore guns to protect the mail
. They wouldn’t even speak to us during the first couple of trips."7 The pilots’ wives were also skeptical about the notion of women on board, certain that these women were only out to steal their husbands and many were waiting at the airport upon arrival.
For their first few trips, pilots referred to sky girls as flying nursemaids and weren’t too far off with this description. Prior to World War II all stewardesses had to be trained as nurses. This was in part an effort on behalf of the airlines to give the public a feeling of confidence, providing trained medical help on board for the passengers who would inevitability experience airsickness. 
The hiring of nurses also strengthened public opinion on the hiring of women to perform what had been male work with an image of a woman who was already a trained professional and was not as Stimpson worried the "flapper kind of girl." Stewardesses did remain second-class citizens to their pilot counterparts, as Keller remembered that her funniest experience happened when the pilot couldn’t get enough altitude to get over the mountain outside of Salt Lake City. “He flew back to the airport and dropped me off. I only weighed 115 pounds, but the plane did make it over the mountain."8
A result of successful publicity, stewardesses fast became America’s newest folk heroine. A 1930s description sent young women from New York to Los Angeles a packin’ for the wild blue yonder. With depression ravaging the country, the promise of adventure and far away places – at 125$ a month for 100 hours work – seemed like a dream.9 Born during an era of economic depression, skygirls and stewardesses captivated the public.
They were chosen not hired, and therefore were among a privileged class, able to transcend the gender line, earn a living wage during the Depression, and see more of the country and later the world than most women and men ever had. With careful and dynamic marketing it wasn't before too long that stewardesses became icons of the industry.
6. Inflight Service: A Commemorative Edition, "The Mother's Name was Ellen...The Father's Steve." May/June 1980: p.11.
7. Footsteps in the Sky, 29.
8. Footsteps in the Sky, 19.
9. Inflight Service: A Commemorative Edition, "The Mother's Name was Ellen...The Father's Steve." May/June 1980: p.11.
