The TWA museum in Kansas City Missouri
I went to the TWA museum because my mother was a “stewardess” for United Airlines. Her story intersects with TWA, which I will detail in a moment. And my story intersects with with her TWA story. But first let me set the stage: Mom was a stewardess in the day when the women had to be young, single and attractive. She flew for five years, before she met my Dad and fell thoroughly in love with him. When they married, she was automatically released from her job. Truly unbelievable today. But that was a different era. Mom and Dad had a fairy tale marriage, and after raising 5 children, they spent the rest of their lives traveling the world round many times over. So as I prepared for my visit to the TWA museum, I wore Mom’s clipped wings badge (for alumni). I was looking forward to entering that world of the initial years of passenger flight. This museum did not disappoint. It is shockingly fascinating. It is remarkable that those planes, with such antiquated technology, flew people all over the country. I am not sure I would have been brave enough to try flight back then.
This is the oldest flying TWA aircraft (1940 – 1945). It is tiny on the interior. I was almost crawling through it. You have to double over, in half, in order to make your way through it. Just being inside of it gave me the willies. I can’t even begin to imagine being up in the sky in this diminutive craft. Everything about it screams – “unsafe!” to me.
Howard Hughes owned TWA. In the lounge, they have arranged his office furniture. If you get a chance, read a book about Howard Hughes. Very few people have such a scintillating life history. I got a kick out of sitting on his personal couch. I learned that both Charles Lindberg and Amelia Earhart worked for TWA as well. Now, that’s impressive.
In the pilot training area, you can sit in the cockpits. I couldn’t get over how many buttons and knobs there were. What if one of them got stuck??! I can’t tell you how proud I was of my Mom for having the courage to fly in these old airplanes. They were taught how to evacuate 700 people in 90 seconds. That is utterly inconceivable, to me.
And now I arrive at the part of the museum where our stories intersected 66 years apart. I recently had an out-of-state client, Dr. Martin Harford. In our communication, he randomly mentioned that when he was a child, he was scheduled to be on the TWA flight that crashed into a United flight over the Grand Canyon in 1956; but at the last minute, his family’s stand-by seats were given to someone else (his father worked for TWA). As I read his email, I sat back in astonished silence. I pulled out my Mom’s memoirs, and found she had journaled the crash. Mom was the stewardess supervisor on duty that day. When she received word of the crash, she went to the United terminal to help with the families who were arriving. The stunned grief of each person was cumulatively overwhelming and beyond horrific. I don’t know how Mom held it together. Plus, she had to help identify the remains one of her stewardesses by the color of her nail polish, which she obtained from the woman’s apartment. The loss of her two cherished stewardess friends gravely anguished Mom.
My mother and my client both had connections to this crash. And here I was standing in front of the exhibit. Dr. Harford commissioned an exact replica of the plane to be built for the museum. It is shown with Mike Nelson’s book about the crash – “We are Going In”. I read it. It is rigorously researched for every possible detail. I hope anyone who had any type of association to this historic event will read this book and visit this museum. I was profoundly moved by this singular exhibit.
Please visit the museum. The volunteers give an outstanding tour, providing unendingly interesting information. There is an Archive department, but the employee records are scant. Even still, Joe Ballweg provided this good
website. The museum is at the original, old KC airport, which was built in 1926. TWA was sold in 2001 to American Airlines. So there is plenty of great history to experience here. You will appreciate the tremendous work they have done in crafting this museum.
