Joan Prince Crandall is among the pioneer flight attendants. She began her career at Pacific Airlines in 1959, serving aboard its 24-passenger Douglas DC-3 planes.
Then commonly called stewardesses, Crandall remembers the job as more glamorous then, as they wore fashionable uniforms while flying around the world.
After Pacific Airlines, Crandall worked for Air West, Hughes Airwest, Republic Airways, Northwest, and finally, since 2008, Delta Air Lines, CNN reported.
She witnessed the evolution of the profession away from the policy of employing only single women with mandatory retirement at age 32 to the introduction of jet planes with bigger capacity and an increase in their pay.
Comparing her job in the past to today, Crandall tells CNN, “The job — it’s harder, it’s longer.”
Her career spanning 66 years will finally end as she is retiring from Delta Air Lines. She plans to write a book and continue traveling.
Sixty-six years is a very long time to be working. But there’s an even more durable career woman than Crandall.
Sadie Jefferson has retired as an employee at the Gordons Chemists pharmacy branch in the seaside resort town of Portrush, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
The store was originally the JGW Boggs Medical Hall but changed its name and ownership over the years. Jefferson has worked there since.
“You had to make up all the medicines, prepare the tablets, and have them ready to go very quickly,” she tells BBC News NI, pointing out the difference in the profession today.
Jefferson loved every minute of her time at the shop because of the friendly customers.
“I’d known so many of them since they were born, and now some of them are retiring as well,” she said, according to BBC.
Robert Gordon, founder and owner of Gordon’s Chemist, says, “Sadie actually started working in this shop three years before I was even born,” the BBC reported.
No wonder many locals know Sadie, who started working as a pharmacist at 15, more than 75 years ago. It was her first and last job.
