Pan Am flight attendant reminisces

Going with the flow has always led Zolene Carlson in the right direction.

Just shy of her twentieth birthday, she became a Pan Am flight attendant and spent the next four years traveling the world.

But it wasn’t always as glamorous as the new TV show “Pan Am” portrays it to be. It required long hours, low pay, monthly weight checks and lots of red lipstick and red fingernail polish.

If she could go back in time, Zo said she wouldn’t change a thing.

“Pan Am gave me the gift of my husband, it gave me the gift of seeing the world and it gave me the gift of being able to meet by birth mother,” she said.

She was born in Germany in 1967 and adopted by an American U.S. Army couple. Her adopted parents raised her in Minnesota, but Zo always had a deep desire to see the world.

For the complete story, see the Oct. 20 issue of Navarre Press or subscribe online.