INTRO (NPR Version) + TRANSCRIPT:

It’s Friday… time for StoryCorps…

And a conversation between Darrell Anderson and his former colleague, Merribeth [MARY BETH] Bryant. 

Back in the early 70’s… Darrell was a young man who had just returned from Vietnam… and needed a job.

So he applied to be a flight attendant for a small up-and-coming airline called Frontier… 

Even though they had never hired a MAN… let alone a Black man… for that role.

DA: I figured I wasn’t gonna get the job, but I went and got an interview. The lady was about 60 years old. I looked at her and I said, “Ooh honey, you’re a fox.” [laughs] 

She looked at me like, well, you are the kind of person that we need, even though you’re full of it. And so I got hired. 

MB The pilots were really upset because it’s always been pretty young stewardesses that they could flirt with. And then they hired a male – and he’s black.

DA I remember opening up the cock pit and the pilots go, “Who in the hell are you?”

MB: [laugh]

DA [laugh] You know, there was a lot of different situations that happened on that airplane for me, and you get all types of people who fly. 

MB: That’s right.

DA: I had a guy on a flight going to Oklahoma City. 

So homeboy decided to call me Rabbit. You know, “Rabbit, why don’t you get me a drink?”

So I said, for me to hippity hop my butt up there, it’s going to cost you. 

And he just thought that was funny. So he ended up buying everybody drinks.

MB [laugh]

DA I’d make him tip us every time I had to go get a drink. 

I turned his stupidity into paying us. I had to beat the beans out of him with kindness, and all them people got all the drinks they wanted.  

MB: Even though you were up there trapped in that tube with him.

DA: Oh, but he wasn’t going nowhere. 

That’s the flavor that the airlines gave me,  how you turn madness into happiness. How to smile when I didn’t want to. How to give, even though I was exhausted.

It taught me how to always rise to the top. By the time you got off that plane, you were smiling inside. 

And so my life became delicious.

BACK ID

Darrell Anderson and fellow former flight attendant Merribeth [MARY BETH] Bryant in Denver, Colorado.

Their conversation is archived at the Library of Congress.