October 30, 2007

Shirley Thobe - United Air Lines Flight Attendant

Chickasaw resident Shirley Thobe, wife, mother of 2 and grandmother of 3 shared her experiences that led to her fulfilling a lifelong dream of being a flight attendant.

Shirley shared that after a 10 year career in selling insurance, her role as a mother took over for the next 28 years in raising 2 children as a full time domestic engineer.  After they were raised and graduated college, she began the process of looking for a job for herself and was helping her daughter with her job search as well.  After coming across an ad for United for flight attendants, she called and started the process that led to her being hired as one of 26,000 flight attendants for the company.  She was based out of Newark NJ which posed challenges in itself since it is the #1 crime city in the US.

She went on to share about experiences of sharing a crash pad in Newark where various pilots and flight attendants would go for rest in between flight assignments.  In a daring moment, she gathered her confidence to go into New York City alone which, with her newfound confidence, allowed her to visit many cities around the world which she otherwise might have missed.

Shirley also told of her experiences of meeting many interesting people on flight crews from all around the world.  On a note of sadness, she recalled that she was scheduled out on the next flight to California from Newark after Flight 17 on 9/11 but it turned into a day of mourning the loss of some of her friends on the flight crew who perished that day.  

Her career included many experiences with a variety of customers and weather conditions which she shared with enthusiasm and an obvious love of her job and the experiences it brought to her life.   Just short of her 10 year anniversary on the job, she made the difficult decision to quit as she encountered a battle with cancer.  Had her home base been in Dayton, it would have been manageable to stay on to complete the ten years and receive full retirement benefits but the 6 hour commute to get to work was too exhausting for her.  She closed with an encouragement for others to follow their dreams whatever they may be and shared 'Behold the turtle, he never makes progress until he sticks his head out'.

Hosting Rotarian: Wayne Lybarger