Helen Davey

The Amazing 'Hippopotabus': The World's First Luxury RV

2013-05-13T18:26:49-04:00

Did you ever imagine a yacht on wheels? Well, my father did, though now you see such things on our roads and highways all the time. We call them "RV's." Along with his many achievements in his remarkable life, my father invented the first luxury RV.

This is the story of a bus -- a most unusual bus. In its first incarnation, the large vehicle was named "Diogenes" by its creator, Walter Chrysler, founder of Chrysler Motors. Though he designed it for his own personal use, Walter loaned it to the leaders of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1933. They borrowed it to crisscross the country to protest the repeal of prohibition. Up and down hills and vales, through small towns and large, the stalwart bus hauled its equally stalwart occupants on their fruitless mission. Imagine if that bus could talk!

And this is where my father, Jim Davey, comes in. As I've written before, I believe my father had the most incredible life of anyone I've ever known, and his exploits could fill volumes. Born in 1887, he was creative and exuberant by nature. He was a noted tree surgeon, naturalist, world explorer, sought-after lecturer, inventor, builder, and expert photographer. He also had great timing: this was an age when the world was bursting with new ideas in travel, transportation, technology, science, and communication.

Of course, my father had great genes. His father, John Davey, invented the science of tree surgery around the turn of the century. Like his father, my father saw his interest in trees as both a vocation and an avocation. In the 1920's and 1930's, he and his first wife, Mary Binney Davey, traveled the entire globe studying the world's trees for the family's Davey Tree Expert Company. In 1928, he and Mary had the first automobile safari from Capetown to Cairo. Throughout, my father photographed for The National Geographic, and would have been perfectly happy just shooting trees. However, the magazine insisted that he include a person or an animal in the picture. As pioneers in world travel, my father and Mary were often in the news.

The couple lived in Greenwich, Connecticut and Fort Pierce, Florida, traveling back and forth on my father's yacht, which he joyously called the "Dunworkin." While my father was an outdoorsman, he also enjoyed his creature comforts - to be honest, he insisted on it. To that end, he began to envision a yacht on wheels that would allow him to explore North and South America, and Canada; one that could also provide a comfortable home and photography studio that would enable him to photograph in the earliest morning light. Such a vehicle -- a yacht on wheels -- had never been done before.

When my father, an aquaintance of Walter Chrysler, heard about the automaker's unusual bus, he was immediately intrigued. The Diogenes was powered by a 125 horse power Chrysler marine motor, and in addition to the regular gears, had a sub-low gear which could pull it out of almost any hole that it might get into. There was nothing else like it at the time. In other words, it was perfect for my father.

Within three weeks of purchasing the Diogenes, my father transformed it into the "Hippopotabus," so named because its face really did resemble a hippopotamus. It was so ugly, it was cute! Nothing made my father happier than a new building project. Rolling up his sleeves alongside three carpenters who had worked on boats most of their lives, he made the Hippopotabus a veritable house on wheels. It was the prototype of today's RV's, but it was the very first one. It was such a novelty, in September of 1933, House Beautiful magazine featured my father, Mary, and their amazing creation. While the photographs are evocative, the most striking aspect of the magazine spread is that the Hippopotabus doesn't seem all that different from the RV's we see on the road today.

The Hippopotabus really was a home on wheels. It had a galley complete with gas stove and refrigerator, built-in beds, table and chairs for dining, hanging and storage space, a darkroom in the bathroom/shower, screens on the windows, and removable curtains on hooks. It also had a roof for sunbathing and photographing, and a hatch over the driver's seat that would admit enough light to photograph specimens inside the car when the weather outside would not allow it. Water was supplied by a 50 gallon water tank on the roof, and a 25 gallon tank in the galley.

The exterior of the Hippopotabus was painted aluminum with a tangerine trim, and unlike the sometimes drab interiors of modern RV's, the inside was highlighted with cheerful shades of yellow, peach, tangerine, and turquoise. Those same colors were repeated in the plates, cups, containers, and pitchers, which were unbreakable - a brand new invention at that time. The bathroom was entirely black, because it doubled as a darkroom, and the walls throughout were filled with my father's paintings. Mary pointed out that the Hippopotabus was so smooth to ride in, that she was able to do her delicate needlepoint as they traveled.

This remarkable vehicle came into being as a result of my father's wanderlust, a passion that he passed on to me. I had to find a way to see the world, and my timing was pretty perfect too! In 1965, I embarked on a 20-year career as a Pan American World Airways stewardess during the golden age of aviation. Like my father, I traveled the world, but in vehicles fashioned after -- and named for -- the old clipper ships of the nineteenth century.

My "yachts" had wings!

A Plea To The TSA: In Defense Of Flight Attendants

2013-03-12T07:00:00-04:00

On March 6, John C. Pistole, administrator for the Transportation Security Administration, announced that beginning on April 25, small pocket knives, souvenir baseball bats, golf clubs, lacrosse and hockey sticks, pool cues and ski poles will once more be allowed in airline cabins, because these things will provide little threat to pilots behind the locked cockpit door.

Flight attendants from many airlines -- and their unions -- are incredulous at this shortsighted policy, and are saying with one voice, "What about us, the first responders on the front lines? And the last line of defense! What are you thinking?"

Captain James Ray, spokesman for 4,000 US Airways pilots, says, "Pilots have a bulletproof door that stands between us and the passengers. The flight attendants have nothing."

As a former Pan Am flight attendant for 20 years, a psychoanalyst/psychotherapist for the past 27 years and a frequent Huffington Post blogger, I am hoping that officials in the TSA will weigh my words carefully, considering that I bring a great deal of experience to this subject.

I have written often about the monumental upheaval in the airline industry over the past 30 years, as well as the emotional consequences of these changes on airline employees (See Cracks in the Cover-Up). I have also written about the effects of the trauma of 9/11 on airline personnel (The Effects of the Trauma of 9/11), and have personally worked with many airline personnel from various airlines.

As a Pan Am flight attendant from 1965 to 1986, I became aware of terrorism in the late 1960s and 1970s, when we all lost friends in terrifying events, long before most of the world was even aware that it was happening. Most Americans have no memory of the 707 that was blown up on the tarmac in Rome in 1973, killing many and traumatizing others for life. Nor do they remember (in 1972) the Pan Am plane that was commandeered in Amsterdam and flown to the Egyptian desert, where it was blown to bits just minutes after the last passenger exited from the slides. What Americans do remember, however, is the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

I know what it's like to scan passenger's faces, wondering if this is the terrorist who wants to kill you and those in your care. It changes the way a flight attendant views his or her job, and in a way, changes the way he or she views the world.

I was always very aware, as all flight attendants are, that the most important role that a flight attendant has, besides ensuring the safety of passengers, is to create the illusion of the flight crew's emotional invincibility. In other words, to reinforce the denial of death. On board every aircraft are passengers who wonder how in the world this huge machine can actually fly. Moreover, they depend upon the comfort of knowing they have a fearless and confident crew taking care of them. Not always an easy task for the flight crew.

This recent ruling by the TSA is flawed for many reasons. They state that the reason for the change is to align its rules with International Civil Aviation Organization standards and to allow security officers to focus their efforts on finding higher threat items, such as explosives. Since U.S. airlines and Israeli airlines are the most vulnerable to attack, I don't see why they should lower our standards.

Mr. Pistole says that, "the TSA will keep the ban on box cutters and razor blades, because there's too much emotion." I wonder just what is the difference between a box cutter and pocket knife, when a person is determined to kill someone in that same manner? Almost all flight attendants have those horrifying images in their minds. I wonder if he has considered how many flight attendants will be re-traumatized by the thought of passengers with knives or whose nightmares will resurface with this new threat. Flight attendants can put on a very brave front, but after all, they are human too.

And then there's the problem of drunk and/or mentally ill passengers. I can imagine what they could do with a baseball bat or a broken pool cue. Why does anybody really need to bring athletic equipment on board, when there never is enough space for the things that passengers really need?

Perhaps this new policy has been designed to make the lives of TSA staff easier. I don't understand how this would be true, because the agents will still have to look at each blade to make sure it is the length permitted under the new guidelines. Are the rules in place only to deal with the safety of the aircraft and the pilots, and not the cabin crew or passengers?

When you see airline crews walking across the terminal with their suitcase on wheels, just know that they are also carrying another kind of baggage. There is always the possibility of a hijacking, a bomb on the plane or unruly and violent passengers on board. Most people who go about their daily lives and work don't have to be hyper-vigilant about terrorists. They have not had friends or colleagues murdered by political or religious extremists. They don't have to imagine ways in which they can protect their own lives and those who depend upon them in the air.

Please, TSA, re-consider this new policy that was put in place without consulting airline employees. It can have far-reaching and very damaging emotional effects.

The Reluctant Traveler

2013-02-25T16:04:42-05:00

I love a good story. I especially love a good story if it's true. And most of all, I love a good story if it's true, and it's about my family. History comes alive for me when I can imagine my own relatives living in different times and places, connected to me, and yet unknown in so many ways. It piques my curiosity, and leads me to want to do more research.

Luckily, relatives on both my mother's side (Crocketts) and father's side (Daveys) have done extensive genealogical history, which is made easier because both sides came from Great Britain, where the records are meticulously preserved. I do understand that it can be annoying to some people to hear others go on and on extolling (and exaggerating) their illustrious family histories.

My own father, when subjected to such conversations, delighted in interjecting the fact that we are descended from a woman that was rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of the famous sixteenth century writer, Samuel Johnson!

The records on my mother's side go all the way back to the time of William the Conquerer, and the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But in case that sounds like a big deal, I would be willing to bet that many of you with British heritage can find the same thing. After all, the gene pool at that time wasn't all that big. Websites like ancestry.com and television shows (Who Do You Think You Are and Finding Your Roots) have enjoyed great popularity, perhaps because in such an uncertain world, we intuitively reach back in time for a feeling of stability and continuity.

Meanwhile, back to my family: it is supposed that the Crocketts came to Virginia from England with John Smith in 1607. I come from a long line of ancestors who served their country in the Colonial, Revolutionary and 1812 Wars. I like to think of them as explorers and adventurers, with wanderlust in their DNA. All, that is, except for one, whose story seemed to jump off the page of our family album, and wrap itself around my heart. His name was John Boise, and he's my only relative that I think of as a "reluctant traveler."

Before I tell you John's story, I have to tell you another amazing fact that I've just discovered. John Boise was my great-great-great-great-great grandfather (5 greats) on my mother's side. Richard Thomas Atkinson was my great-great-great-great (4 greats) on my father's side. Turns out that, in comparing their lives, I discovered that they were both with Washington in Valley Forge during the harsh winter of 1777-78, when one quarter of Washington's men either froze or starved. Boise and Atkinson would have had no clue about a future family connection, but could my forbears possibly have met? One can only estimate the odds.

At the age of 16, John Boise had enlisted as a soldier of the Revolution in March of 1777. He was engaged in several battles - and was even wounded in one - before finally landing at Valley Forge with Washington's army. In the summer and fall of 1779, he was with the expedition organized under the direction of Washington and commanded by General John Sullivan, against the "Six Nations of Indians." The troops did some severe fighting and marched over several hundred miles through what was then an almost unbroken wilderness, in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

It was in that fall of 1779 that poor John's luck finally ran out. Taken prisoner by the British, he was put on board a vessel and carried first to Limerick, Ireland, and then to the infamous Mill Prison in Plymouth, England. Like many such prisons at the time, it was a notorious hell-hole, where deaths and brutal mistreatment were a daily occurence. Stories abound in history about various ingenious ways Americans escaped from Mill Prison - such as burrowing out in tunnels, or wading through sewers.

All I know for sure is that John, along with a number of others, made his escape, stealing a long boat and heading out to sea. How relieved the prisoners must have felt when they were picked up by a French vessel on its way to America. At the young age of 18, John had made an unwanted journey to England, and suffered the indignities of prison life, but now he was on his way to safety - and home.

Or so he thought.

As the French ship passed Sandy Hook and was within sight of New York City, a cruel fate intervened once more. The vessel was captured by a British Man of War, and the soldiers were transferred to the ship Essex, enduring the long journey back across the Atlantic to be committed once more to Mill Prison. As a punishment for trying to escape, the jailors compelled John to wear sixty pounds of iron for sixty days.

To vary the monotony of prison life, John kept a diary and completed a book of sums. After the surrender of Cornwallis in October 1781, he was released and returned to America. Once back home, he was offered quite a lot of money for his collected diaries, which he called, The Mementoes of Prison Life. However, he refused to part with them, which turned out to be a huge loss to history because, sadly, they were destroyed by fire in a schoolroom in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Nevertheless, John went on to live a relatively happy and prosperous life. However, I'm quite sure he had no interest in venturing out across the Atlantic Ocean ever again.

Having been a Pan Am flight attendant for 20 years, I think of the hundreds of times I've crisscrossed the Atlantic, at times peering out of the Clipper cabin or cockpit windows, observing how slowly the tiny ships below were moving. For John, in shackles and malnourished, the journey must have seemed to last an eternity. For me, travel has always been an amazing adventure. But that's easy for me to say. I've lived in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Poor John Boise didn't.

There's a saying that "tragedy plus time equals comedy." If my 5-great grandfather could have time-traveled forward into Pan Am's glorious heyday, how different he would have felt about travel. I can imagine him settled comfortably in a Pan Am First Class seat, enjoying the sumptuous 7 course meal catered by Maxim's of Paris, served by a smiling stewardess and contemplating the fabulous cloud formations and tiny ships below from his window seat.

What a difference a few centuries make!

Argo Got It Right!

2013-02-11T11:34:53-05:00

As a Pan Am flight attendant who traveled often to Iran in the 1960s and 1970s -- almost up until our very last emergency evacuation flights from Tehran -- I was transfixed by the film Argo, transported back in time with a strong feeling of déjà vu. The sights, the sounds, the fury of the crowds, and even the smells that were conjured up in my memory, came rushing back to me. The overwhelming vividness of the images made me feel I was there -- now - walking on those streets, and trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

Tehran was a frequently visited Pan Am destination because it was part of our famous round-the-world flights, both eastbound and westbound. The country of Iran straddles East and West, and therefore has always been strategically significant in the world.

Before my first trip, I eagerly consulted our Pan Am "bible," -- The New Horizons World Guide. To visit what used to be called the "Persian Empire" sounded exotic and intriguing. The truth was more complicated. I found Iran to be a complex country with a great deal of national pride about modernization juxtaposed with an ancient culture that bred resentment of Western culture.

Replacing his father on the throne of Iran in 1941, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi pledged to act as a constitutional monarch who would defer to the power of the parliamentary government. Instead, in 1967, the Shah crowned himself "King of Kings," heir to the kings of ancient Iran. He soon after began preparations for the over-the-top 1971 celebration of the 2500 anniversary of the foundation of the empire by Cyrus the Great.

Pan Am crews visiting Iran could feel the excitement -- and extravagance -- of this upcoming world event. We witnessed the building of the beautiful white monument outside of Mehrabad Airport, known as the Shahyad (King Memorial) Tower, now renamed the Azadi (freedom) Tower. Argo shows several shots of this gleaming white building, and captures the splendor of Tehran nestled at the slope of the Alborz Mountains. The scenes in the Grand Bazaar in the film were obviously not shot at the bazaar in Tehran -- a spot so familiar to those of us who loved to shop -- but it was close enough not to be distracting.

The last time I ever ventured out to the Grand Bazaar was in the fall of 1979. I went with a group of flight attendants, dressed as we always were to show respect for Iranian customs and dress codes. Leaving the bazaar, walking in the middle of four friends, I noticed a strange, menacing level of activity. I nervously observed a flow of people who were either just anxiously mulling around or walking quickly, all in the same direction. Suddenly, a large well-dressed man was striding directly toward me. Before I could figure out what to do, he walked right up to me, aggressively trying to grope me.

On the corner stood two policemen, watching the whole thing. From the hostile looks on their faces, I knew that if I turned to them for help, they'd put me in jail. My friends and I made a hurried beeline for a cab, and we sat there, dazed, wondering what had just happened. Even the taxi driver stared at us in a malevolent way. I knew that Tehran was no longer a safe place, and it took a while for my heart to stop beating so fast.

I had one more round-the-world trip scheduled to stop in Iran. The Shah had not yet left, nor had the 52 U.S. hostages been taken. When our Pan Am crew arrived in Tehran, the air itself felt thick with anger and hostility. I found myself anxiously looking around as we boarded our crew bus. It was suggested that we try not to be seen, so I found myself sitting on the floor of the bus in the middle of an impending revolution. I sat there thinking, "I can't believe this is happening," and I could only imagine what a prize it would be to kidnap an entire Pan Am crew. We arrived at the hotel safely, and it wasn't long afterwards that Pan Am began evacuating Americans. Seemingly overnight, Iran went from being America's steadfast ally, to declaring themselves to be our mortal enemy.

And here is where the heroism of the Pan Am crews who volunteered to participate in the evacuation comes in. Historically, because Pan Am was known as the international flag carrier of the United States, the airline considered the well-being of our citizens to be part of the employees' commitment to ensuring passenger safety in our "Pan Am World." When Pan Am sent out a request for volunteers to help with the evacuation, more than enough people responded. If I hadn't been at home in Los Angeles -- too far away to get there in time -- I would have been there too!

Pan Am had always been central to many evacuations and missions of mercy around the world; for example, the Bay of Pigs, Beirut, and Vietnam, to name just a few. Argo accurately portrays the atmosphere of danger, panic, and violence that these brave Pan Am volunteers agreed to face. They knew that they were putting their lives on the line, flying into the world's most dangerous place. Their individual stories are compelling, these volunteers having had a front row seat in an erupting and massive revolution.

There's no doubt that we former Pan Am employees who were very familiar with Iran will collectively proclaim, "Bravo, Ben Affleck, et al. You nailed it!"

Horizons Unlimited: True Stories of Trauma and Triumph

2013-01-25T14:41:33-05:00

As a young girl, I spent hours poring over the family scrapbooks that my mother had begun to assemble. For the next 60 years, she lovingly put together photographs and newspaper clippings along with her own memoirs and family stories. Most of the albums cover the end of the 19th century and much of the 20th, although some of them go back to early ancestors. And it's the photographs that bring the stories alive!

The meticulously-preserved books abound with stories of expansion and exploration, trauma and triumph, in the lives of famous or near-famous people of the time, lives that were only one or two degrees of separation from our own.

An example of this is the never-ending public fascination with the life of Amelia Earhart (see "Amelia Earhart's Prenup Is Remarkably Modern," posted Dec. 11, 2012). Growing up, I was aware of Amelia's story in a close-up and personal way.

To explain that, I have to tell you a little bit about my family. My father, born in 1887, was the son of John Davey, the "Father of Tree Surgery," who developed the science of saving trees around the turn of the 20th century. Following in his footsteps, my father and his three brothers built the Davey Tree Expert Company, the first of its kind.

Always the adventurer and explorer, my father and his first wife, Mary, traveled the entire world researching trees. He became the era's foremost authority on the subject, and was often at the forefront of the expanding new world of foreign travel. Simply put, he was one of the major explorers of the first third of the 20th century, long before the world became so homogenized.

So what does this have to do with Amelia Earhart?

My father married Mary Binney, heiress of the Binney and Smith Crayola Company in 1916, and they settled in Greenwich, Conn., close to Mary's parents and sisters. Mary's older sister, Dorothy Binney, had married George Putnam in 1911.

George was the grandson of the man who founded the century-old G.P.Putnam & Sons, the oldest and largest publishing house in the world. Its authors included Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. For his part, George specialized in publishing books about travel and exploration.

Exploration was George's passion, and he had several notable Arctic adventures to his credit. He also backed a number of history-making aviation events. His wife Dorothy was an equally avid traveler, as well as a celebrated hostess to the most stimulating and celebrated adventurers of the day -- for example Admiral Richard Byrd, pioneering American polar explorer and aviator. In fact, the Putnams were so well known for entertaining famous adventurers that Will Rogers -- much-loved American actor, humorist, and social commentator in the 1920s and 1930s -- joked that you couldn't snare an invitation unless you had conquered some uncharted territory.

So this was the world that my father inhabited.

Both George and Dorothy Putnam were fascinated with the new advances in aviation, and George was the lucky publisher who signed an agreement with Charles Lindbergh to publish his first book, We. It was George who mentored Amelia Earhart in her career as an aviatrix and writer, and later, under the glare of tabloid publicity, fell in love with her. They later married, after George and Dorothy's 1928 highly-publicized divorce.

If you are interested in the real story about George and Dorothy and Amelia, I highly recommend that you read Whistled Like A Bird: The Untold Story of Dorothy Putnam, George Putnam, and Amelia Earhart (1997), written by Sally Putnam Chapman, Dorothy's granddaughter. Dorothy wanted to set the record straight, and gifted Sally with her intimate diaries. In the book, my father (Jim) and his wife Mary are mentioned as being present when Dorothy and George were in the process of making the final painful decision to divorce.

Which brings us to the point of the new book that I'm writing, Horizons Unlimited: True Stories of Trauma and Triumph. I feel so fortunate that my readers have traveled with me as I've posted blogs about not only the history of Pan Am, but my own personal adventures as well. Pan Am employees know that we took part in history-making events, and we often felt like Forrest Gump, thrust in the middle of the most important world news of the day.

But our experience pales in comparison to the grand adventures of my father and other relatives. Now I'm inviting you to go on this new journey with me -- true stories about real people -- who have some connection to my family, or just one or two unbelievable degrees of separation from us. I'll be posting some of these stories as I go along.

As a psychoanalyst, I'm always struck by the fact that truth is much more fascinating than fiction. The real story of Dorothy and George Putnam and Amelia is a poignant, heartbreaking, and absorbing tale about real people living amazing lives.

Stay tuned!

Remembering a Soldier's Face

2012-12-07T15:23:37-05:00

It was the summer of 1968. The Vietnam War was at its height, and Pan Am had been flying "R & R" flights in and out of the war zone. Wounded soldiers were taken to hospitals in nearby Guam and Manila. We stewardesses felt a strong obligation, whenever we could, to visit "our boys" there. We knew how hungry these young, homesick men were for a reminder of home, and, to be candid, how grateful they were for a conversation with a "round-eyed" female.

I'll never forget the first time I walked into the hospital in Guam. Never having been around seriously wounded patients, I had no idea what to expect. I suppose I was thinking we would just graciously converse with the young men, much like we did on the airplane. I was not prepared for an encounter with a dying soldier.

We entered a large, low-roofed room with many beds. There were soldiers everywhere, some chatting in groups, and others lying silently in their beds. I remember that it was very noisy, and the atmosphere felt chaotic. Some of the men were celebrating because their severe wounds ensured that they would be going home. Those lying ominously still in their beds would not be that lucky.

I don't know what drew me to the bed that appeared to be shaking, but I walked straight to it. There, under the sheets, was a young man who seemed to be trembling. As I moved closer, I saw that he had no arms or legs. It was an image that I just couldn't comprehend. I felt I couldn't possibly be seeing this, but I couldn't look away, either.

The young soldier opened his eyes and blinked, then blinked again. I could tell he wasn't sure if I was real or a dream. Tears welled up in his eyes and he said, "Who are you?" I told him my name and why I was there, but I'm not sure he could understand. If I could have held his hand, I would have, but he didn't even have arms! I felt dizzy and became aware of a deep heaviness that enveloped me. I didn't know it then, but that feeling wouldn't go away for at least two weeks.

The soldier was saying "Your face, your beautiful face. You're an angel." I knew that the only thing I could do for him was to get as close as I could, and return his stare. We were memorizing each other's faces. It reminds me now of the gaze between mother and infant. I don't know how long I stayed like that, but later my stewardess companions told me we'd been there about two hours. I'd never looked so deeply into someone's eyes and had that gaze returned with such intensity. It was obvious that he was tenuously holding on to life, and was not going to make it out of Guam alive.

When it was time for my fellow stewardesses and I to leave, I told the soldier -- whose name I never learned -- that I had to go. I stayed for another few minutes, during which he told me over and over, "I'll never, ever forget your face." I'm quite sure that he died within hours of my leaving.

In fact, it was I who never, ever has forgotten his face. I had, indeed, memorized it. I close my eyes and I can see him clearly after almost 45 years. I had the privilege of being with him in his last hours.

And he has remained with me.

For more by Helen Davey, click here.

For more on death and dying, click here.

A Shared Trauma: The Death of Pan Am

2012-11-16T13:00:43-05:00

In September, I was honored to be the keynote speaker for the 43rd Annual Convention of World Wings International, the philanthropic organization of former Pan Am flight attendants, in Portland, Ore. Despite my initial nervousness (see my earlier blog, "Confessions of a Psychoanalyst: Performance Anxiety and the Dread of Shame"), the 400 attendees welcomed me so warmly and graciously that I soon felt right at home.

As I often do in my blogs, I used my own personal story (see my earlier blog, "Counting My People") to address several key issues about trauma that I often write about to help former Pan Am employees with their feelings about the death of the company that they loved so much. I must admit, I was gratified by how intently the audience listened to my message: Nobody in the audience even coughed!

And following the devastation left in the path of Hurricane Sandy, I invite those who are suffering from this massive collective trauma to view this speech. I hope that the concepts of re-traumatization and the importance of being able to share your emotional reactions with others will bring you insight into your reactions.

To watch my keynote address on YouTube, click on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOGxZnoFCVA

For more by Helen Davey, click here.

For more on emotional wellness, click here.

Family Scrapbooks: A Journey of Memories and Mourning

2012-06-11T13:15:36-04:00

My mother died in October at the age of 96. Though it was at the end of a long and protracted illness, the impact of her death was still profound on my brother, sister, and myself. Like many adult children, we grieved the loss of that connection. In her wisdom, she understood how profound this loss would be, and so left us her final gift: her scrapbooks.

For many years my mother lovingly collected photographs and newspaper clippings, as well as an extensive genealogy from both sides of the family tree. Along with this, my mother had written the memoirs of my grandmother and great-grandmother, as well as her own accounts of various stories from our family life. These scrapbooks -- moving, nostalgic, compelling, and funny -- are a family treasure. In fact, they're the only possessions that my siblings and I would each be willing to go to the mat for.

My father, whom we all adored, died when I was 8 years old. Not knowing how to grieve, my family and I never talked about my father, and we all tried to bury our feelings in an attempt to survive the trauma of my father's death. Little did we know that our silence was exactly what not to do in the process of mourning!

Fortunately for me, however, even then my mother was compiling her scrapbooks, with all the precious photographs of my father's exciting and adventurous life. As a child, I would spend hours poring over these pictures in an attempt not to forget my memories. I was terrified that I would forget him, so would go over and over my memories of him before I went to sleep. Somehow, even as a child, I intuitively knew that if you don't talk about someone, your memories will fade.

After my mother died, my brother, sister and I, who live in different states, decided that we would each make our own copies of the 15 scrapbooks. When I received and copied the originals, one at a time, I decided to do what my mother had always wanted to do: enlarge the photos, put them in order, and include her comments. The result is a beautiful story in pictures.

As I sat at my computer, enlarging the very small photographs that are over 100 years old, it felt as if my long-dead relatives were coming to life. The sparkle in their eyes, their facial features, the gestures I could never see before in the tiny pictures, even the fabric of their clothes -- in other words, their personalities -- came alive for me.

I found myself laughing with delight as the enlarged images appeared on the screen. I felt surrounded by and connected to my family, even those who died long before I was born. Wanting to share this delight, I'm now in the process of making these expanded scrapbooks for the whole family.

Moreover, I realize now how important my mother's scrapbooks and her written words are in the process of grieving. My mother, who always said, "Someday these books will be very important to you," knew what she was talking about. She was only 36 when my father died and didn't know how to help us grieve. She had lost her own father when she was only 3. But at the age of 96, my mother had learned a lot, and I'm convinced she wanted to do all that she could to help us with the loss of her.

In fact, this is one of the most important things my mother ever did for her children. Her work gives me a profound sense of history and my place in it. The scrapbooks have given us a vehicle for remembrance and emotional connection particularly important for a family that often did not know how to express its feelings.

My purpose in writing this piece is to encourage all of you -- especially those of you who are mothers and fathers -- to consider compiling scrapbooks of your own about your family to help them deal with the eventual trauma of losing you.

There's a reason they call it honoring your "roots," because compiling such records provides feelings of grounding, stability, and continuity. Such feelings can be quite illusive these days, making a record of a family's journey through time more treasured than ever.

For more by Helen Davey, click here.

For more on death and dying, click here.

Cracks in the Cover-Up

2012-04-13T11:29:36-04:00

The recent very public emotional meltdown of a JetBlue pilot -- just weeks after an American Airlines flight attendant broke down in front of passengers waiting for take-off -- has many people wondering about the psychological health of pilots and flight attendants. What is going on with the employees in our airline industry?

As a former Pan Am flight attendant for 20 years, and now a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst for 25 more, I've been writing at length to sound the alarm about the decline of the American airline industry. In particular, I've discussed the traumatic emotional consequences to employees due to the massive changes they've had to endure.

In addition to ensuring the safety of passengers, pilots and flight attendants understand that their major role is to create the illusion of the flight crew's emotional invincibility. In other words, they reinforce the denial of death. This is what I mean by the words "cover-up." On board every aircraft are passengers who wonder how in the world this huge machine can actually fly. Moreover, they depend upon the comfort of knowing they have a fearless and confident crew taking care of them. Not always an easy task for the flight crew.

Having been a flight attendant, I know how psychologically stressful that job can be. Even in the glory days of American aviation, when all employees got to share in the largesse of the industry's perks, the emotional demands of the work could be grueling. Maintaining an outward persona of friendliness, calm, and utter fearlessness for countless hours on end can be very difficult indeed.

Pilots have a particular problem in this arena, especially when it comes to seeking help. Due to antiquated 1940's FAA standards, it's very difficult, if not impossible, to get help for psychological distress. For example, given that statistics show that at least 10% of the population suffers depression at some time in their life -- and I think that number is vastly underestimated -- then what are pilots to do?

In 2010, four anti-depressants were approved by the FAA for pilot use, but he or she must be grounded for at least six months (usually a year), and subjected to constant re-evaluation for the rest of his or her career. I understand the flying public doesn't want to hear or think about this, but restrictive and sometimes punitive measures discourage pilots from seeking the help they need, even for "talk therapy." This creates an atmosphere of shame about needing emotional help, and is paralleled by the shame that so often accompanies combat-related trauma.

Despite the herculean efforts by EAP programs in unions and airlines to get proper help for vulnerable crew members before their behavior explodes into headlines, some people slip through the cracks. I personally would much rather put my life in the hands of a pilot who has received proper psychological treatment than one who suffers silently but has a "clean" record.

A salient factor that has been left out of media reports and pundit observations about the pilot and flight attendant incidents, is that what they have in common was that both employees began ranting about terrorism. In fact, the flight attendant screamed about having a friend killed in the 9/11 terrorist hijacking of an American Airlines plane, as well as about the recent bankruptcy of her company.

When you see airline crews walking across the terminal with their suitcase on wheels, just know that they are also carrying another kind of baggage. There is always the possibility of a hijacking, a bomb on the plane, or unruly and violent passengers on board. Most people who go about their daily lives and work don't have to be hyper-vigilant about terrorists. They have not had friends or colleagues murdered by political/religious extremists. They don't have to imagine ways in which they can protect their own lives and those who depend upon them in the air. Nor are they plagued by nightmares about getting stuck on another continent with no way to get home.

The "cover-up" of their vulnerability by pilots and flight attendants with a facade of emotional invincibility used to be all about the reality of occasional airline catastrophes, but it has now been extended to the nightmare of worldwide terrorism that is often aimed at airlines. Cracks in the "cover-up" are beginning to show.

There are many reasons for that, and one only has to look at the strained relationships between airline management and employees to understand what's happening. Not only are employees feeling attacked from the outside, but they are feeling equally attacked from the inside by their own companies as well. The executive hierarchy of airlines has changed dramatically, and we are long past the glory days of aviation when men like Juan Trippe led the way, and airline employees were all imbued with a passion for flying.

Long-promised wages, benefits, and pensions are being slashed, and flight attendants are increasingly on the front lines of an angry and disgruntled public with no tools to offer the public for passenger comfort. Mergers and takeovers and bankruptcies are forcing airline employees to adapt to a new and unfamiliar workforce in which many feel like the ugly, unwanted step-siblings in a blended family.

And on top of all these issues, there have always been expectable hardships for airline personnel that come with the job, requiring a stable, flexible person who is physically strong. Passengers take this for granted.

Working conditions have worsened to the point that along with emotional invincibility, physical invincibility is being demanded as well. Extremely long workdays, constant time changes, irregular schedules, and the feeling that their companies don't have their backs, are wearing down the employees to an extent I have not seen before. After all, no human being ever "gets used to" jet lag, exhaustion, sleepless nights, or the feeling of not being valued.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, similar things are happening to employees in other venerable old companies and industries in the past few years. In the wake of the recent economic turmoil, traditional emphasis on pride in one's company and loyalty to it is being replaced by concern only for profit. This has had a shattering impact on the emotional lives of many people.

And nowhere is this more apparent than in the current state of the airline industry. As long as it stays in denial about this massive undermining from within, we're going to see more cracks in the cover-up. Another airline employee succumbing to the pressure, captured on tape and broadcast tonight on your evening news!

Collapse of a World

2011-12-16T15:47:33-05:00

"After this, nothing happened."
(Plenty Coups, the last great chief of the Crow
Nation, on the disappearance of the buffalo)

On December 4th of this year, former Pan Am employees all over the world sadly acknowledged the twentieth anniversary of the death of their beloved company. And on December 21, they, along with the families and loved ones of the victims of Flight 103 that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, will be remembering that sad day when their lives were forever changed. For Pan Am employees, that day 23 years ago has been called, "the day that the heart of Pan American died" (Gandt,1995).

As a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist for 25 years, and former Pan Am stewardess for 20 years before that, I'm struck by the similarity of the feelings of instability in the world now with how we Pan Am employees felt as our company began to fail. Americans appear now, as a society, to be in a new Age of Trauma, mirroring the collective trauma that Pan Am'ers endured for so many years. Nowadays, fears about the global economy, the environment, terrorism, loss of jobs, and the astonishing collapse of formerly stable companies has spread and touches everyone.

Just as years ago, we Pan Am employees were aghast at the prospect that the number one airline in the entire world -- second only in brand recognition to Coca Cola and first in almost every new achievement in aviation history -- could collapse. Everything else in the country seemed to be booming, and Americans hardly blinked when Pan Am went out of business in 1991.

So what does this all have to do with the Crow Indians and the disappearance of the buffalo? Jonathan Lear (2006) vividly describes how the world can lose its significance as a result of the collapse of a communal way of life, thus illustrating collective trauma on a cultural scale. At the turn of the 18th century, the Crow were a nomadic, hunting, warrior tribe. To survive, they had to be good at hunting buffalo and beavers, as well as protecting themselves against rival tribes.

Everything in tribal life was organized around hunting and war, but when the Crow were moved onto a reservation in the 1880s, hunting and war became impossible. Not only had their way of life come to an end, but they no longer had the concepts with which to understand themselves or the world. The concepts that shaped their identity -- what they intended to do, hoped for, and desired -- had gone out of existence. All that was left was a ghostlike existence that stood witness to the death of a way of life. The Crow world was shattered. No wonder a witness to this might say, "After this, nothing happened," because their whole framework of significance collapsed.

For those Americans who are now feeling the loss of their companies, jobs and way of life -- as well as their belief in the country as Number One -- there is simply no better contemporary example of how one's world can collapse than the Pan Am story. Americans seem to be feeling a growing dread that the ground is crumbling beneath their feet, which completely parallels the collapse of Pan Am. Let me explain.

One of Pan Am's jingles was, "Pan Am has a place of its own. You call it 'the world.' We call it 'home.'" Pan Am was the airline that explored the routes and opened up the globe to air travel. As employees, joining Pan Am meant that we were given access to that entire world, and we felt a sense of personal ownership of it. We all thought that Pan Am would forever be the world's most fabulous airline, just as we believed that America would forever be the world's number one superpower.

Moreover, within our unique Pan Am culture, we embraced difference regarding race, culture, background, and belief systems; in fact, the more exotic, the better! No matter where we came from, our lives became large and global, and working for Pan Am was a way of life -- never a job. And, like the Crow, we too were a nomadic tribe who lived with concepts that shaped our identity, as well as how we saw ourselves, our role and what we hoped to achieve.

When I refer to the Pan Am "world," two very different meanings emerge. One meaning of the world pertains to geography, and of course, this was very significant to our peripatetic lives. Globetrotting was our lifestyle, but very few of us ever got over the thrill of taking off on a brand-new adventure.

But there is an important other meaning to the word "world," and that refers to the context of human significance through which people make sense of their lives. Many Pan Am employees have described their relationship to the company as "a love story." Pan Am felt to us as if it had a living, breathing soul, and so the company's essence was much more than a merely practical world. It was a very emotional world, and Pan Am was much more than a mere company. A job with Pan Am was a passport to the world with unlimited horizons, and Pan Am employees shaped their lives around the framework of the Pan Am culture. Every trip was a "happening," that is, a meaningful event.

That Pan Am culture had its own special flavor. From the beginning, we were introduced into Pan Am as "family," strongly bonded and loyal to each other. We became deeply invested in helping our company be the best, and while some people outside our "family" saw that attitude as arrogance, we saw it as striving for excellence. We were trusted by the company to come up with creative solutions to problems as they emerged when we were far away from home, and were not expected to check in with headquarters anywhere.

Moreover, we had our own unique language and understandings, our own special knowledge of the world handed down over the generations from the world's most experienced travelers. We shared some of our special secrets with passengers, and kept some of them strictly for ourselves; for example, the best shopping bargains and the most unique little restaurants. We had each other's backs, and we never, ever told on each other. Like the Crow, we were a tribe with our own rituals and understandings, quite unlike the other tribes (airlines).

For many reasons, which I have discussed in other blogs, Pan Am had been struggling to survive for years, but in 1988 the company looked like it was going to make it. And then there was that horrible day, December 21, 1988, when Clipper Maid of the Seas was blown out of the skies, and 243 passengers, 16 crewmembers, and 11 people on the ground suffered a nightmarish death. The Pan Am world and Pan Am family were shattered, and many knew that the end was only a matter of time.

Like the Crow Indians when the buffalo died, Pan Am's passengers went away in droves and never came back. Overnight, many people didn't want to fly on an airline that was the prime target for terrorists. As Pan Am's route systems were sold to other airlines, some flight attendants and pilots decided to go to work for those airlines, in an attempt to preserve some security. The problem with that, however, was one of trying to blend very different cultures -- like melding the Crow and the Apache tribes together. The airlines all had their own way of doing things.

So for the most part, those displaced Pan Am personnel can be compared to the Crow when they were moved onto a reservation. Their world of significance in belonging to Pan Am was shattered. They lived now in a practical world, but not an emotional one -- in other words, their jobs became "just a job." They could still be out in the world of geography, but their world of emotional significance died with Pan Am. Going on a trip ceased to be a "happening," and trips that used to be rich in meaning in the Pan Am world, became mere events. The "tribe" scattered and settled into various "reservations," leaving many Pan Am employees disoriented and traumatized.

I write this as a cautionary tale for those of you who are losing your companies and your jobs (airlines and other companies), as well as your way of life. This experience can be deeply traumatic, leaving painful feelings in its wake -- depression, panic and dissociated states. The collapse of one's world is the essence of trauma.

In that case, the most important requirement for emotional well being is to have a place where your emotional pain can be held and understood. Former Pan Am'ers have been very wise. We have constant reunions, travel opportunities, websites and Facebook groups, as well as many newsletters -- in other words, a constant sharing of our joyful memories and our painful losses. We have found an emotional home for our tribe.

In conclusion, sadly, in tribute to our Pan Am family, I will list the names of our heroic crewmembers of Flight 103:

COCKPIT:
Captain: Jim MacQuarrie
First Officer: Raymond Ronald Wagner
Flight Engineer: Jerry Don Avritt

PURSERS:
Mary Geraldine Murphy Milutin Velimirovich

FLIGHT ATTENDANTS:
Elizabeth Nichole Avoyne
Noelle Lydia Berti
Siv Ulla Engstrom
Stacie Denise Franklin
Paul Isaac Garret
Elke Etha Kuhne
Maria Nieves Larracoechea
Lilibeth Tobila Macalolooy
Jocelyn Reina
Myra Josephine Royal
Irja Syhnove Skabo

MAY YOU REST IN PEACE

Skygods: The Fall of Pan Am, Robert Gandt
Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic, and Philosophical Reflections, Robert D. Stolorow
Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, Jonathan Lear
World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-CartesianPsychoanalysis, Robert D. Stolorow

I'll Always Have a Mommy

2011-10-24T18:20:11-04:00

When my mother died two weeks ago, I turned to writing to make sense of it all. I was asking myself, "Does this mean that I don't have a Mommy anymore?" I wasn't expecting to find my answer so quickly, and I'm hoping I can give solace to others who have a similar situation with an aging mother or father who for most of their life has been their only parent.

Following the death of my father when I was 8 years old, the rest of my life has been filled with dread about the retraumatization of losing another parent. I didn't want to imagine how painful it would be to go through all of that again -- the lack of knowing how to mourn, the fear of what would happen to me and my family now, and the intense longing to still have that parent in my life.

Given the feelings of loss and confusion I experienced when my father died -- how emotionally shattering that experience was -- I could only imagine that I would feel the same when I lost my mother, and these feelings persisted into my adult life. What I didn't realize, despite my background as a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, is that the trauma of the loss of my father and that of my mother are completely different.

I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. However, what I had to actually experience from the death of my mother was the realization that throughout my lifetime, I was blessed to have had a long, loving, fruitful relationship with her. She has known me forever, and with her, I didn't have to miss much.

The death of my father left a gigantic hole in my heart, because -- unlike my mother -- I never knew him when I was a teenager or an adult, and he didn't know me. We were robbed of a mature, adult father/daughter bond. I will forever look at him through the lens of an 8-year-old who worshipped him, but didn't get to really know him. I never had the opportunity to challenge him as an obnoxious teenager, as I did with my mother. Nor did I get the chance for him to see me floundering and making mistakes when I struggled toward finding my path in life.

I thought about this the whole time during my flight back to North Carolina, but as I approached my mother's apartment in her retirement community (which she loved), I was overwhelmed by a feeling that I was not expecting -- relief for her. I had said the words, "I will feel relief for her," but I didn't really mean it. What I had been trying to do was comfort myself.

For the past five years, when my mother suddenly developed the dreaded "wet" form of macular degeneration and could barely see, her independent and feisty spirit was more and more tested as she slowly lost the ability to do things for herself. She couldn't imagine why she was still alive, and she would ask me, "Do you think God has forgotten me?"

My mother was a person who was almost always in motion, busy accomplishing tasks from morning until night. Famous in the family and in town for her "lead foot" when she drove, my grandmother called her "Miss Quick." To lose the ability to drive, followed by many small losses of independence day after day, was painful for my mother. I could feel it. I always felt she had a need to stay one step ahead of the many worries and burdens she shouldered without complaint -- raising three children on her own, as well as taking care of her own mother until she herself died at the age of 94.

My mother bravely assumed leadership roles in which she had to challenge some of the assumptions about what women were supposed to do. She'd be embarrassed if I told you the awards she received, so I'll honor her memory by not listing them here. Her greatest joy in life was to give a helping hand to others in any way that she could, and to bring a smile to their faces. In fact, one of her caregivers told us a wonderful story. She'd asked my mother, in her final days, what she hoped heaven would be. My mother's reply was, "It's a place where I can help people."

But still, my mother and I were very different. She couldn't figure out why I have such a passion to understand others and myself at a deep level. She would always ask, "But what do you talk to people about?" Her way was to roll up her sleeves and do whatever was needed to help people out, while my way has always been to say, "Tell me how you feel." However, although so different, together we made a dynamite team.

When my mother was younger, she would spend several months with me in Los Angeles during the winter. I would come home after work, and find that she had spent the day doing chores for me that only "mommies" would do. You know how there is always leftover "stuff" in purses -- a stray aspirin, paper clips, cough drops, a safety-pin, etc., here and there? Not if my mother got ahold of them. All of my purses would be scrubbed clean, inside and out. She would painstakingly copy my address book -- a hated task for me -- every year. So many little gestures of love, and it was never lost on me.

Even in my mother's incapacitated state, especially in the last two years, her mother's heart remained undaunted. She could barely see or hear, and was losing her ability to speak, but as soon as she would receive a new Huffington Post blog from me, there she was with her straw hat (with feathers) placed jauntily on her head, zooming around in her wheelchair through the corridors of her retirement community with the help of her loving caregivers, distributing my blogs to one and all. As a result, there are many residents at Carolina Village in Hendersonville, North Carolina, who know more about the Pan Am story that I often write about than almost anybody in the world.

And so it took my going back to my mother's apartment -- a place of a thousand little losses, pain, and endless boredom where she could no longer move around or see or hear. Now I know for sure that my mother is always going to live inside me. And all of the sudden, seeing the vacant place that she called home for 20 years, I am no longer picturing her as my frail, tiny mother as she's been for the last years. She has escaped the body that imprisoned her, and no longer allowed her to move quickly through her life. My internal picture is shifting, and my smiling, sunshiny, energetic mother is emerging once again. I can hear her young voice again, and picture her young eyes looking lovingly at me, as she often did.

Moreover, the moment that I dreaded the most at my mother's funeral, turned into one of profound comfort. As we all walked across the grass to the place where my father is buried, I was afraid of being overwhelmed with memories of that painful grey day in September of 1951, when we sat, stunned, watching my father's coffin being lowered into the ground. Instead, there was my mother's urn, right beside my father, just where she wanted to be. I looked around at my brother and sister, so grateful that I still have them, and noticed, finally, what a beautiful sunny day it was.

Inside the Mind of a War Vet

2011-10-18T09:21:00-04:00

There is exciting new hope on the horizon for the treatment of combat-related trauma, and I feel that I have had a front-row seat in watching this ground-breaking and hopeful solution to one of our country's most heart-breaking problems -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the military. Let me elaborate.

As a psychoanalyst, I had the pleasure of attending a conference in Los Angeles that highlighted the work of Dr. Russell Carr, a naval psychiatrist who heads up inpatient psychiatry at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Dr. Carr has spent a decade in military campaigns since 9/11 in both Iraq and Afghanistan. With this experience of his, if anyone can empathize with and develop ways to effectively treat PTSD in military personnel, I believe that Dr. Carr can. But before he was able to do this, first he had to look for ways to help himself.

In an attempt to survive and to tolerate his own shattering experiences with war, Dr. Carr read widely, seeking knowledge from various areas in psychology and psychoanalysis. Although drawn to psychoanalysis, Dr. Carr found that psychoanalytic theory and treatments were not specifically developed to address problems that arise in adulthood, such as the effects of combat on soldiers; that is, until he discovered the work of famed Los Angeles psychoanalyst, Dr. Robert Stolorow.

When he discovered Dr. Stolorow's book, "Trauma and Human Existence" in 2008 while he was still in Iraq, Dr. Carr carried the book around with him all the time, squeezing every bit of knowledge out of it that he could:

Stolorow's book was more like a companion in the darkness of trauma, helping me to understand and bear the experiences of being in a combat zone. Otherwise, I was left in my isolation, only with answers that seemed to blame my childhood fantasies about my parents for the mortars exploding outside my office.

Dr. Carr feels that his adoption of Stolorow's ideas has saved both him and his patients from the isolation and despair of living in a shattered experiential world following combat. He began to shift his stance from a more intellectual understanding of the patient's mind to one of empathic introspection on his part that follows along with the patient's feelings. Dr. Carr strives to provide what Stolorow calls a relational home between two human beings in a therapeutic relationship, for those "wounded warriors" who are dealing with massive issues of guilt, shame and mortality.

So just how does this approach work in ways that manualized cognitive-behavioral methods don't? Instead of adopting a stance of "here's your problem and here's how to fix it," Dr. Carr helps his patients to feel that they are coming up with solutions that fit their unique situations, allowing them to feel safe and trusting in the relationship, as they develop the ability to find words to describe their experience. The patient hopefully can feel a profound sense of being "found," and of having their traumatic reactions witnessed. It is that process that leads to recovery.

Another important aspect of treatment is the illumination of the patient's shattered sense of innocence and illusions about life in general. Because we are all finite beings over whom death and loss constantly loom, Stolorow theorizes that human beings develop what he calls the absolutisms of everyday life. This means we all develop unquestioned beliefs and assumptions that we unconsciously live by, in order to flee from the uncertainties of life and to maintain a sense of continuity, predictability and safety.

For example, when you say to a loved one, "I'll see you tomorrow," it is taken for granted that both you and the other person are going to be around. Stolorow writes, "It is in the essence of emotional trauma that it shatters these absolutisms, a catastrophic loss of innocence that permanently alters one's sense of being-in-the-world." (Stolorow, "Trauma and Human Existence")

When we can no longer believe in such "absolutisms of everyday life," many of us feel that the universe becomes unpredictable, random, and unsafe, and it is especially traumatizing when this loss echoes what happened to us in childhood. But can you imagine how these absolutisms are destroyed completely for warriors who are confronted day after day with a dangerous world that threatens their very existence, and even their memory of a safer world?

Because of this shattering of the illusions of safety, often traumatized people see the world differently than others do. They feel anxious, alienated and estranged in an unsafe world in which anything can happen at any time. Anxiety slips into panic when it has to be borne in isolation. In the absence of a sustaining relational home where feelings can be verbalized, understood, and held, emotional pain can become a source of unbearable shame and self-loathing.

Therefore, this feeling of alone-ness is exactly what happens to wounded warriors, who are at great risk of falling into the grip of an impossible requirement to "get over it." Could anybody ever imagine John Wayne developing PTSD and -- even worse -- admitting that he needed to seek help for it?

Using an in-depth case example of a patient he calls "Major B," Dr. Carr was able to impress upon the audience the complexity of the experiential world of a severely traumatized Major in the Air Force, as they worked together on the critical issues of guilt and shame.

For Major B, it is not the violence he witnessed in Afghanistan that haunts him; it is his feelings about the violence he inflicted. He often maintained that, given the circumstances again, he would kill the same people, but that doesn't make it any more bearable. He has nightmares in which he can't stop killing people, and, seeing himself as an emotionless "killing machine," he's afraid that he won't recognize the difference between what is normal and what is a threat. According to Stolorow, when these unendurable emotions cannot be processed with others, these feelings become dissociated and the individual feels a sense of deadness, dullness and a loss of vitality, and it becomes difficult to feel any connection with other human beings.

As if these feelings of guilt were not difficult enough, the feelings of shame are even more painful. The worst part for Major B was his feeling that he couldn't handle combat and that he needed help with the unbearable emotions from it. Before he met Dr. Carr, he believed he could not seek out other people to help him bear and process his feelings about killing large numbers of people. In his mind, he was supposed to maintain the persona of the stoic tough guy whom nothing bothered. Before he began to wrestle with the emasculating experience of admitting to his problems, and then seeking help, he turned to "Dr. Alcohol" and the comforting thought of committing suicide as antidotes to the feeling that he had lost his mind in Afghanistan.

Dr. Carr states:

By providing a relational home to the traumatic experiences of many combat veterans, I understand the guilt and shame that many of them feel. I understand why some severely traumatized veterans feel as if they deserve to die, why they feel more at ease sleeping under a bridge than rejoining the communities they fought to defend. And through my work, I understand better my own feelings of alienation from the rest of America after participating in a decade of military campaigns since 9/11.

I feel profoundly privileged to have witnessed this important event in which the field of psychoanalysis has broken ground in the treatment of military personnel. Dr. Carr, whom I consider to be a national treasure, received a tearful and extended standing ovation from a large and seasoned group of psychoanalysts, who never imagined that the words "military" and "psychoanalysis" would be uttered in the same sentence! My hope is that Dr. Carr's work will receive the acknowledgement it deserves, and that his methods can be implemented throughout the military to bring our wounded warriors the sense of hope that many of them have lost.

Interested readers can find Dr. Russell Carr's article "Combat and human existence: Toward an intersubjective approach to combat-related PTSD" in Psychoanalytic Psychology Volume 28, Issue 4 (Oct. 2011), pages 471-496.

Does This Mean I Don't Have a Mommy Anymore?

2011-10-04T21:52:05-04:00

As a writer, psychoanalyst and stewardess for Pan Am for twenty years, I've shared many personal feelings about my life in my blogs. My reason for doing this has never been so that you, the reader, will know about me. My goal has been to encourage you to think about your own life, in case what I have experienced and learned might be of some help to you.

Today is a profoundly sad day for me -- the day I've dreaded my whole life. My beloved mother died this morning, at the age of 96 years and 6 days, and she's now at rest. I know that she's been ready to die for some time, and for her, I'm relieved. For me, it's a different story.

I often ask my patients, when they accuse themselves of "feeling sorry" for themselves, that they change that shame-ridden phrase to one of "feeling sorrow" for themselves. Feeling sorrow is about allowing ourselves to grieve. I know how important grieving is when we lose a loved one, but as a child, my family and I didn't know how.

My father was almost 30 years older than my mother, and when I was just six months old, he suffered a massive heart attack that nearly killed him. The doctors, unable at the time (1951) to help heart patients, predicted that my father would die with his next heart attack. Our lives became permeated with anticipatory anxiety surrounding the fear of his death, and my brother, sister and I savored each moment with him.

When my father died when I was eight, our family life was completely shattered, and none of us, including my mother, had any idea how to mourn. We bottled up our feelings and rarely talked about him, concentrating instead on somehow surviving the loss of this man who was the idealized center of our world (See my blog, Counting My People.)

My mother confided to me recently that she remembered nothing at all about my father as he lay dying in the hospital, or his funeral, or about the following years as we all floundered to find our way as a family through this very difficult time. She was obviously in a traumatized state. Her father had died when she was only three, and she had no memories of him. She did, however, remember one exchange with me, her youngest child. After days of being very quiet, trying to take in the magnitude of what had just happened, I came to her and said, "Does this mean I don't have a Daddy anymore?"

So, as a psychoanalyst who writes about trauma, I recognize that the death of my mother transports me back into that old, familiar, traumatized state, and I feel, once again, eight years old and bereft. My Mommy has died. She, after all, is the person who knows me best, my biggest fan who is incredibly proud of any little thing that I accomplish. I know, of course, how lucky I am that I had her for so long, but for much of my life, I worried about losing her.

I was never able to develop the usual absolutisms of everyday life that human beings develop in order to flee from the uncertainties of life and to maintain a sense of continuity, predictability, and safety. These are unquestioned beliefs and assumptions that most people unconsciously live by. For example, when you say to a loved one, "I'll see you tomorrow," it is taken for granted that you and the other person are going to be around.

However, emotional trauma shatters these absolutisms, and children who experience early trauma experience a loss of innocence, and know that anything can happen at any time. For us, it is essential that there be a place where painful feelings can be verbalized, understood, and held -- a relational home. Without it, emotional pain can become a source of unbearable shame and self-loathing, and traumatized people can fall into the grip of an impossible requirement to "get over it."

There is no "getting over it," but with understanding, a person can learn to integrate the experience. When a child only has one parent left, that parent becomes extraordinarily important. My fear about losing my father immediately transferred over to fear of losing my mother. I remember sitting at my desk at school, hearing sirens outside. I would sit, paralyzed, waiting for the knock on my class door that would confirm my panic that my mother had died, too.

Moreover, every child just wants to be like every other child -- to have a family like everyone else. At the beginning of the school year, each student would have to stand up and tell everybody what their father did for a living. I would have to stand up and say, "My father is dead." All summer long I would dread that first day, feeling the shame that I felt about being different, and enduring the awkwardness that others would feel about not knowing what to say.

But if I had to have only one parent, I can't imagine having a better, more loving mother than mine. Of course, I'm not saying that she was perfect, but my mother took over the responsibility of raising three children and caring for her mother, and if anybody ever had the right to play the "martyr card," it would have been my mother. She never did. She always said that my brother, sister and I were the bright spots in her life. She always put our needs ahead of her own, and never, ever complained about it. Her life was all about helping others in any way that she could, and she was greatly loved and admired.

I have a lifetime of stored memories about my mother. One time, when I was a senior in high school, I had a very difficult English test coming up, with a lot of memorization. I studied and studied and was very worried. My mother had read an article that said that, if a student has to do a lot of memory work, if another person reads the assignment to the student while they are asleep, it will help the student to remember. So sure enough, on the night before the test, I woke up a little bit to see my mother with a flashlight, softly going over and over the material. I remember feeling very loved, as I went back to sleep.

And what I am most proud of as a daughter is that after I became a Pan Am stewardess, I was able to take my mother on many different trips all over the world. Last week, I found a snapshot of my mother, all stretched out in three seats for a snooze on a Pan Am 707 Clipper, with the biggest smile on her face that you could possibly imagine! In the photograph, she is her vibrant, energetic, loving self -- my mother whom I will miss every day for the rest of my life.

And I can't help but wonder what this will mean, now that I don't have a Mommy in my world anymore.

The Real Stories Behind Playboy Club and Pan Am

2011-10-02T01:30:03-04:00

I'm posting a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio interview that I did with Brent Bambury about my reaction to the new ABC series Pan Am, on Sunday nights at 10:00 P.M. My responses are based on the advertising I had seen on TV, on billboards, and in magazines, before I had seen the first episode. I later posted my review of the episode itself. From the responses I've received from stewardesses/flight attendants who worked for other airlines worldwide, they, too, are very excited about this show. I'll borrow a line from the show: "Thisis all of us!"

Here is the link: http://www.cbc.ca/day6/blog/2011/09/23/the-real-stories-behind-playboy-club-and-pan-am/

Pan Am Takes Flight -- Again

2011-09-25T21:29:07-04:00

As a former Pan Am stewardess from 1965 to 1986, I have eagerly -- yet ambivalently -- awaited tonight's debut of the new ABC series, Pan Am, on Sunday nights at 10:00 P.M. My ambivalence is a mixture of feelings of hope and dread.

My fervent wish has been that the show can bring alive the glamour, excitement, and amazing historical significance of our Pan Am world. My dread has been about the show deteriorating into a sexy soap about "mean girls." And so, after having just watched the first episode, it is with feelings of happiness and relief that I sit down to write this review.

In my opinion, there are three elements that we Pan Am'ers want to see: (1) the incredible feeling of "family" and intense bonding among all Pan Am employees, which to this day inspires great loyalty and pride (2) the feeling of bold expansiveness, excitement, adventure, and endless opportunities that we all shared, and (3) Pan Am's profound influence on the aviation world, and its place in America's history in the 20th Century. It's a story that to a large degree is unknown to the American public because for most of Pan Am's history, we only flew internationally (see my Pan Am history blogs: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-davey/)

At this early stage, I would say that the producers, writers, and actors are off to a good start in portraying a romantic era in aviation history that no longer exists. Those of us who experienced it first hand are extremely grateful for our good luck. What many Americans don't understand is that whatever was happening in world news at that time, Pan Am was there, often rescuing Americans. Much of our work involved helping traumatized people, and we were on the front lines of most of the breaking news of the day. We all have amazing true stories.

The first scene, set in Pan's Am's World Port Terminal at JFK International Airport, transports me back in time to the excitement of the hustle and bustle of our passengers who are eagerly looking forward to their experience on our Pan Am Clippers, and to the feeling of camaraderie among the Pan Am crews. I remember so well walking as a group through admiring crowds that would part to let us through, and hearing the whispers of, "Oh, they're Pan Am!" And there were always the little girls with that look on their faces that telegraphed, "I want to be you someday!"

Another scene that is guaranteed to warm our Pan Am hearts is the one where the pilots and stewardesses are ready for takeoff. One stewardess reminds a newly hired stewardess to "Buckle up. Adventure calls!" and as the airplane lifts off the runway, the look on the pilots' faces says it all. We all felt that we had the best job in the world. And then, our beloved Pan Am emblem flashes on the screen, and for us, I don't think there will be many dry eyes.

Now, of course, there are many details that will stand out to former Pan Am'ers as just plain wrong. Pan Am blue was a tunis blue shade, grey-blue and very sophisticated. The bright blue of the stewardess uniforms jars me, but I'm sure it was decided that bright blue was better for television. Our hair had to clear our collar. Captains were all middle-aged, having waited a long time to claim that left seat, and Boeing 707's required at least three pilots but usually also needed a navigator. The configuration of the airplane is very different, but my guess is that it's probably because of difficult camera angles in small spaces.

Girdles have been a topic of much discussion about the show. The fact is that in this time period, everybody wore girdles, if only to hold up stockings. Pantyhose had not yet been invented, and garter belts have never been practical. I remember hearing stories about a particularly difficult grooming supervisor in New York (who is portrayed in the series), but I never personally experienced any rudeness from supervisors. I find it interesting that while girdles are equated with suppression of women, the recent and astonishing success of companies like "Spanx," which are simply girdles by another name, are never put in that category.

Pan Am was a no-nonsense company when it came to being on time -- one minute late and you were sent home. No excuses! Our weight standards were enforced, for sure. The rules had nothing to do with bone structure, so for me who is small-boned, I never had to worry about reaching my maximum weight. Women who had larger bones weighed more but could still look perfectly slim, and they were the ones who suffered the most from the restrictions. Later the policy was revised.

By the time I was hired in 1965, I flew with many married stewardesses who followed a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and nobody was ever fired for it. There was also no rule that stewardesses must quit by a certain age. The other career choices for women were teaching, nursing, or secretarial work. We stewardesses were well-paid, respected, and able to travel anywhere in the world and take our families as well. I remember thinking that more exciting things were happening each month in my new life than had happened in all of my prior 22 years.

I'm happy with the casting of Pan Am. The stewardesses and pilots strike me as people I would have wanted to fly with, and they are believable. The storyline has opened up many possibilities for plot twists and turns. The scene with the runaway bride and her complicit sister is delightful and fun, and their complicated relationship promises to get more interesting. The CIA theme might seem unbelievable to many viewers, but in fact, because of Pan Am's close relationship with the State Department, there were quite a few Pan Am'ers who also worked for the CIA. It actually was the perfect cover, but we only knew about this after the company went out of business.

I enjoyed watching the scenes that convey a sense of what our lives were like -- the beautiful hotels, our luxurious Pan Am service, the adventures that could turn dangerous, the close bonding of our Pan Am "family" as we traveled our world and had each other's backs. When we arrived at our luxurious hotels, we were handed packets of money in the currency of the country, which felt like allowance from Daddy. And we always knew that if we needed assistance, we could call on Pan Am to help us.

Comparisons of Mad Men to Pan Am have been greatly exaggerated. Unlike the women in Mad Men, Pan Am stewardesses enjoyed an amazing freedom within a company that revered, protected, and respected us. They never sexualized us in their advertising. Instead of ads like "Hi, I'm Barbara. Fly Me," or "We shake our tails for you," Pan Am's advertisement when I first started flying was, "Pan Am stewardesses know their way around the world better than most people know their way around the block." For all of us, that ad quickly became true, because we shared an inner wanderlust, curiosity about the world, and desire for adventure and knowledge. And one of the good things about our job is that we never really had a "boss," unlike the oppressed women with the chauvinistic bosses of Mad Men.

So, at first glance, this show holds the promise of telling our largely unknown Pan Am story in a respectful way. If, in fact, the plot becomes oblivious to the real lives we were all privileged to experience, then I'm sure all of us Pan Am'ers would prefer for Pan Am to remain tucked away in our hearts, and not be defiled by a glitzy show that doesn't portray its excellence accurately. But so far, I'm hopeful that viewers will be enamored of the depth and breadth of stories that are waiting to be told.