TWA's 'golden girls' enjoyed highflying ride: After 30 years together, crew looks back

LOS ANGELES — They began serving passengers as college-educated TWA "hostesses," wearing hats and white gloves. They catered to movie stars and foreign dignitaries seated next to travelers in their Sunday best.

Decades later, the glamour is gone. Their airline is about to be merged out of existence. But they are still flying — five flight attendants who have seen commercial aviation change radically along with the country's attitudes toward women and the workplace.

Attendants at other carriers may have more seniority individually, but no other cabin crew in the nation is like the "golden girls," as they call themselves. Together they have more than 200 years of experience. They've been on the same flight schedule for 30 years.

TWA Flight 894 recently left Los Angeles International Airport for Washington, D.C., with all five aboard.

Beverly Sanford was one of the youngest, with 37 years under her pin. She was working first class with Dolores "Dodo" Narz, the No. 1 attendant at TWA. "We've been like a sorority in the air, but that's sadly coming to an end," Sanford said.

It was one of their final flights as a group. Monday, they began working separate shifts because their direct Los Angeles-to-Washington route had been eliminated.

Trans World Airlines was acquired in April by American Airlines, which plans to take the TWA name off aircraft and give flight attendants new uniforms.

It marks the final chapter for a once-stellar airline that had many notable firsts: the first to serve freshly brewed coffee during flight (1957), the first in-flight movie (1961) and the first all-jet fleet (1967).

The golden girls — all based in Los Angeles — had seen and lived through most of it, from TWA's glory days to an airline that struggled to keep financially afloat.

"It does bring tears to my eyes to think of what an airline it was," said Sanford. "TWA has had its day."

The same cannot be said about the senior attendants, who plan to keep flying two or three times a week with American Airlines.

Cathy Gordon, 56, a 36-year veteran at TWA, is considered a baby among the crew that includes Narz, who is completing her 48th year with TWA, according to airline officials. Narz, a legend in the industry, doesn't much care for the No. 1 title and declines to divulge her age. TWA sources put her at 72.

Charmed by Narz's ripostes and cackling laugh, actress Joan Crawford once volunteered to help her serve dinner. And once, Narz consoled Elizabeth Taylor as the actress was flying home after a headline-grabbing breakup with Richard Burton.

In the glory days of flying, passengers wore their best suits and dresses, even if it meant sitting on the plane for a cross-country trip that took 10 hours. The "hostesses" were expected to fit a Barbie image: blonde with blue eyes, wearing a Size 6 dress with stockings, a hat and white gloves. Long hair was forbidden; short "Kookie" cuts, as they were called, were mandatory. Everyone had to use Revlon's Persian Melon lipstick.

When the airline wanted an image change, Narz obliged. In the mid-1960s, the airline renamed them "stewardesses" and ordered them to adopt a "girl next door" look. That meant blondes had to dye their hair black.

Mary Jo Knipe, a 39-year veteran who raised four children in between flights, kept a 1960s issue of Cosmopolitan magazine featuring black-and-white photographs of TWA stewardesses going through training. The headline read, "What They Teach You (About Men) in Airline School."

"Women didn't have many options," Knipe said. "We were expected to be either housewives or secretaries, and the opportunity to become an airline hostess seemed so exciting."

Still, career advancement was restricted. Women were not allowed to be pursers — the cabin-crew boss — until the early 1970s.

Knipe, 58, was one of the few hostesses who married and raised children. TWA's attitude toward marriage then resembled current military policy toward gay personnel, she said: Don't ask, don't tell.

Becoming a hostess was rigorous. A college degree was required. Hostesses also were expected to be young — perhaps in their early 20s — and single. They signed contracts agreeing to retire if they got married, had children or when they reached 32. Airlines dropped many of the requirements 30 years ago.

Three of the women are single. "I thought I was too young, and then all of a sudden I was too old," Gordon said.

There was a certain cachet in becoming an airline hostess, said June O'Mahoney, who is single and has been with TWA 42 years.

In 1959, 20-year-old O'Mahoney, who had just immigrated to the United States from London, applied to be a TWA hostess and was happy to be chosen.

"We were starry-eyed then. I was in awe of everything I saw," said O'Mahoney, 62.

She remembers that flying TWA was an event, a luxury for the few who got to sit in leather seats next to windows with curtains and be served meals on imported china with Tiffany silverware.

Nowadays, passengers are more likely to wear bluejeans and flip-flops than silk ties and wingtips.

"It's just not the same anymore," Sanford said.