- We begin tonight with a story about acclaimed author and Rhode Island native, Ann Hood.

- Before Hood was a writer, she was a flight attendant.

When we first aired this segment back in June, Hood had taken to the skies with a memoir about a time when the objectified stewardesses of the past were fighting for equal rights during the Women's Liberation Movement.

- I thought, I need adventures to be a good writer.

Where am I gonna get adventures?

I grew up in West Warwick, I led a pretty sheltered life.

I went to URI, I didn't really see the world at all.

And I thought, I'll be a flight attendant and I'll have experiences.

- [Host] So please help me welcome Ann Hood.

Author of "Fly Girl".

(audience applauding) - Thank you.

Hi, everybody.

- [Michelle] Long before she was an acclaimed New York Times bestselling author, Ann Hood was a flight attendant.

It was the late 1970s when women's liberation was a fledgling movement and commercials to lure businessmen into becoming frequent flyers looked like this.

- [Narrator] Oh, slip into something a little more comfortable.

- Are we putting you on?

♪ Jet with National to see ♪ ♪ Coast to Coast to Coast ♪ - Unbelievable, right?

TWA infamously had paper uniforms for a while that used to rip as you wore them and they'd have to duct tape themselves into their uniforms.

Braniff famously had something called the airstrip where they changed their clothes four times on the flight, in the aisles.

Just kept taking things off till they landed in their hot pants.

So, listen, we get why this, you know we were objectified and why there was this sex kitten idea.

- How did you feel about that?

Having to always worry about your weight, your makeup how you looked with so much emphasis on that and that had to go against the grain a bit.

- Well, you know, I think if you wanted the job you knew you were entering like a corporate culture.

You know, I remember when men who went to work for IBM had to wear particular ties.

Like, you know, I think that every corporation has kind of an image they want, so you're signing up for it.

So it's not like you're surprised or oppressed.

- And women were still accepting of it.

- Absolutely.

- [Michelle] Hood says she was proud to wear her Ralph Lauren uniform.

She flew for eight years, most of them with TWA, Trans World Airlines.

During her tenure, flight attendants unionized, fought for equal pay and ultimately ended the weight, marriage and pregnancy restrictions.

But it wasn't easy.

Why did you decide to become a flight attendant?

- I had stars in my eyes from the time I was a little girl and I knew I wanted to be a writer too.

- So it would seem like this would be the perfect book for you to write.

What took so long?

- You know, we live our lives and history happens around us and culture shifts, but we're not even that aware of it.

You know, we just keep living putting one foot in front of the other.

I realized that I had really covered a big change in culture, in history, and in aviation.

You know, I started in 1978 where many women still had one foot in the past.

To me, a certain image of flight attendants is never gonna go away.

The ad executives did a very good job of imprinting that in our minds.

And so glorified waitress, sex kitten objectified, unfortunately still linger.

I had a passenger once say to me, when I said, oh I loved that book that he was reading, and he said you read, but I never thought it reflected on me.

You know, I mean, I knew I was smart.

I knew I was getting the life I wanted and I was learning so much.

You know, just learning how to talk to people.

- You must be unflappable.

- I pretty much am.

You know, when passengers say and do things that are so weird you have to figure out how to take care of it on the spot.

Or you know how to diffuse anger because the flight attendant is the one who gets blamed for bad food, weather, any flight delays, mechanical problems, lost luggage.

You know, the passengers come on ready to blame the flight attendant and you have to be able to make them feel okay.

But what I suspected and what turned out to be true, that is that it was the most empowering job a young woman could have.

You made all the decisions on that plane.

You didn't have a boss, really.

You went all over the world and often had to venture out by yourself.

If the crew didn't wanna go out or didn't wanna go out with you.

You learned how to handle emergencies, to think on your feet.

You learned poise, you were confident, you put on that uniform, and you became a confident woman.

- Why did you not want to become a pilot and have that adventure?

- Well, I think I'm too much of a coward.

I do not like the idea of landing a big plane like that.

I'm not a risk taker.

- Hmm.

I would say I took a lot of risks doing that when you did it.

I don't know.

Hood writes about dealing with some eccentric passengers like the time she found a man sitting on the plane without his pants.

- Sir, where are your pants?

And he said up there, and I said, well you have to have pants on.

He said, I can't.

Why can't you wear your pants?

I have a job interview and they'll wrinkle.

And so I felt for him and I got him a blanket and he sat covered the whole time.

But that's what I mean about thinking on your feet.

You never knew what was gonna happen when you get on that plane.

I always said, life unfolds on airplanes.

You're in that like tin can with 300 people on a 747 or our small planes had about a hundred and you're there for hours and things happen.

People go into labor, people fall in love, people break up.

- People die.

- People die.

Yeah.

- [Michelle] Little did Hood know, she would one day write about the sudden death of her five-year-old daughter grace taken by a fatal form of the strep virus.

- One of a writer's jobs is to make sense out of the chaos that's life.

You know, life is messy.

Life is hard.

And a writer has to have the ability to step back and write about that truthfully and bravely, really.

And when we lost Grace, that was in 2002.

I couldn't read or write for over a year.

I mean, I was completely destroyed.

And everyone kept saying to me, gently and nicely, write about it.

I thought, I can't because I can't make sense out of something senseless.

And then one day I realized, wait, I've gotta write about this honestly, I'll write it as a novel.

So, you know, I changed everything, but I got to the emotion that it was hard to put out when I'm telling my real story.

And I wrote "The Knitting Circle" and that kind of freed me to write the real story.

- [Michelle] And the real story, like her novel, "The Knitting Circle" became a best seller.

Her memoir, "Comfort: A Journey Through Grief", was the book Hood says she wished had been available for her.

- And over time, I had been making as much sense as one can and that if I published that book there would be countless people who would benefit from it.

And that indeed is what happened.

I get letters every week when someone finds "Comfort" and reads it.

- [Michelle] Despite logging hundreds of thousands of miles as a flight attendant, the author still hasn't fallen out of love with flying especially when it's with her family.

Her husband is chef and writer Michael Ruhlman.

There's also grown son Sam and teenage daughter Annabelle.

She says they tease her that sometimes she acts like she's still on duty.

- I'm either the most fun person to fly with or the worst because I'm so it put your tray table up, you know to my family it's time to put your, turn that off.

You're not supposed to have that on.

Put that under the seat in front of you.

You know?

- Old habits die hard.

- Oh my gosh.

And I check it out.

And I'm always aware if the flight attendants are doing a good job.

- Do you confess to being a flight attendant to them?

- I do.

You often get like a free bottle of wine or something if you tell them.

So it's good.

I always do.

- [Michelle] Why did you name it "Fly Girl"?

- Because it has a double meaning.

TWA called them hostesses, not stewardesses.

So there was a lot of different names for them but they were all fly girls.

They were all, that was the general name.

But I'd liked the idea of Fly Girl, like soar, like take off, start your life.

- So fly, girl.

- Yeah, like that.

Yeah.

- So when you think about it now would you do it all over again?

- 100%.

I wouldn't even think about it.

I even sometimes have a fantasy of I'm gonna apply again.

I could do it for a couple more years.

- [Michelle] Because as she writes... - Never has the magic of flying been more obvious to me than on a long ago December flight.

Right before Christmas of 1985.

The captain of the 747 I was working from Rome, invited me to sit in the cockpit for landing.

And as we descended, snow started to fall.

Small bright flakes like fairy dust.

Then Manhattan came into sight.

The air grew tense, electric with voices and the crackles of the radio.

The ground seemed to lift up to greet us.

The lights of the runway and the jet brighter until the wheels hit the ground.

It's something, isn't it?

The captain said softly.

I could only nod.

Few times in my life have I experienced something that felt that majestic that that reminded me that, I, that all of us, on this world are alive.

When I understood or understood as much as we can, how sky and earth and snow and light and man coexist, thank you.

- "Fly Girl" will soon be out in paperback and Hood tells us that she's now writing a new book which will be released next year.

(peaceful music) (bright music)