Courtesy of Sharon Carroll Williams
Williams worked as a flight attendant for 34 years.
Botetourt resident Sharon Carroll Williams has spent more time in the sky than most people. For 34 years, she served as a flight attendant for some of the nation’s largest airlines. Her experiences from 1984 to 2018 are collected in a 31-chapter memoir, Life at 36,000 Feet: Where Faith and Fear Connect, which was released last month.
The book took her roughly two years to complete. After finishing all but six chapters on an old computer, it crashed. She ended up losing nearly everything she had written. Determined to complete the memoir, she started writing again on a new computer. The COVID-19 safety guidelines last year that stipulated self-quarantine allowed her the free time needed to finish the book.
Her journey to becoming a flight attendant started when she was hired to be Bob Poole’s secretary in 1983 when he was manager of the Roanoke Municipal Airport. A year later, she decided she wanted in on the action.
Although she spent many years in her dream job, she had no plans of retiring after just 34 years. Some attendants, Williams explains, continue to work into their 80s. Unfortunately, her career was cut short at the age of 62 when her femur broke while chasing a rescue dog up a hill.
Courtesy of Sharon Carroll Williams
Sharon Carroll Williams released her memoir late last month.
It was during the six month recovery period that she decided to turn all of the journals she kept throughout her time as an attendant into a memoir. “I kept journals about who was on the flights and various incidents,” she jokes. “When I would go to social events, people were really interested in my stories. It’s a job where you see a lot of unusual things.
The process of turning her journals into a full-fledged memoir ended up being very therapeutic for her. “I had only written for myself up until that point,” she says. “It was therapy for my mind and helped me come to terms with the fact that I had to leave a career I loved.”
The book starts with her reflecting on her career in the sky while being loaded into the back of an ambulance on the day that she fell. From there, it flashes back to how she became Poole’s secretary despite only having experience in banking.
The book intertwines her career as a flight attendant with her faith, which she says was important for her to have considering the dangers that sometimes come with air travel.
“I believe nothing happens by chance. God will put you in places and put people around you who will help you achieve what he wants you to do. I believe God is the inner pilot in our lives,” she says.
One example of how her faith helped her on the job was when the landing gear wasn’t coming down on a plane that she was on while it was attempting to land in Roanoke. The plane eventually landed on a foam path, which was used at the time for emergency landings. “We didn’t know if the plane would catch on fire,” she remembers.
One chapter in the book specifically talks about fear. She uses the example of a passenger who was on a flight to Los Angeles. He was anxious about the flight from the minute he first stepped onto the plane. After requesting an alcoholic beverage, he dozed off for a while. Later in the flight, Williams heard a loud banging noise coming from the cabin. She looked back to find the man hitting his head against the wall. He was yelling, “I want out of here.” She informed him that the plane was over Las Vegas and would not be making an emergency landing.
“In the chapter, I talk about how the fear of flying is so real for some people,” she explains. She ended up asking the man to go with her to the back of the plane to calm down. “He told me that his problem was with the woman beside him. If it was her time to go, he said, then he would have to go with her. Life would end because of her.” She kept him talking throughout the remainder of the flight, which kept his mind off his fear.
Fear also factored into how passengers reacted to pilots. One of the first questions she received from many passengers as they boarded the plane was whether the pilot was a man or a woman. “During the 80s and 90s, Piedmont and US Airways were some of the first airlines to hire women pilots. People would see the female pilots and get afraid,” she remembers. “People didn’t react that way as much later on. Thank goodness times have changed.”
While the book recounts many serious times throughout her career, it doesn’t shy away from the more comical incidents Williams experienced. She was working first class on a flight to Seattle when an older man insisted his headset didn’t work. She leaned in to check it and accidentally pulled off his hairpiece.
“I was standing in the aisle with his headset and hair in my hands,” she laughs. He immediately started yelling at her, so she plopped his hair back on his head. “It was crooked. Everyone started laughing. He winked at me and said he was going to tell his buddies that a flight attendant messed up his hair on a red-eye.”
She included another story about how she stepped on an upper denture. With a flashlight in hand, she checked the mouths of all of the older passengers while they were sleeping. She eventually found a man whose mouth was hanging open. She politely woke him and returned the denture. The man’s wife immediately started scolding him for not using enough denture adhesive, which woke up the entire plane.
Back during the '80s, Williams says, celebrities still largely traveled on commercial planes instead of on private planes the way many of them do today. She nearly had a heart-attack when Richard Gere, one of her favorite actors, was on one of her flights shortly after the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman had come out.
The back of the book includes a timeline of the three airlines she worked for, Piedmont Airlines, US Airways and American Airlines. Following a merger and a base closure in Roanoke, she started commuting to Charlotte.
For those who are considering a career as a flight attendant, she stresses that it isn’t a job but rather a lifestyle. “It affects your whole life because you're gone for three, four or five days at a time,” she explains. “You sacrifice a lot for the job.”
Williams will be holding a book signing at the Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport on April 30 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and May 1 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The book can be found on Amazon.com.
About the Author:
Aila Boyd is an educator and journalist who resides in Roanoke. She holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University.