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I agree.Part of an interview with Gertrude Toston by Claytee White on July 21, 2006. Toston discusses going to work for Western Airlines, at first as a customer service agent in 1967, and then as a flight attendant, while going to school.
Gertrude Toston oral history interview, 2006 July 21. OH-01838. [Audio recording] Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevad
English
And tell me who were some of the community leaders that worked with you on the Human Relations — Committee? Um-h'm. Well, it was mostly Dr. Barbaro and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. Barbaro. And the rest of us were students. Ms. G worked with us. She was an older student, but more or less as you say an alternative student because she had returned to school later. Just a group of students, really. But we plugged into people like Joe Neal in the community, Woodrow Wilson at the state level, just different people. So they sort of tapped into us. Well, Dr. Barbaro gave Jean Dunn and me an Equal Rights Commission card and said, "This Western Airlines is hiring. They have no African-Americans at all. And they say you need two years of college. Why don't you guys go and apply? It will make a good job. Maybe they'll hire you part time. I know they hire part time." So we did. We went. Jean decided she wouldn't go. She either got something better or didn't want to commit to it. But I did and I took my first flight on Western Airlines. What was your position? Customer service agent. I was too young to be a flight attendant yet. Plus, I really didn't want to be in the air. I did want to continue school. And I started and they hired me full time. They trained me. They sent me to Los Angeles for three weeks. So I quit Head Start. I worked in reservations is how I started. We did things like Cardex, which was filing. We did things like on an old-fashion machine called a Resitron where it would signal yellow if a flight was booked part of the way and green if the flight was open all the way and red if it was full, you know, and this kind of thing. So it was just old-fashion material with the very beginning of the airline here. That was 1967 that I started at Western Airlines. So I was going to school all the time while I was doing that. I'd work swing shift or graveyard and I'd go to school during the day. That's how I got through and that's how I paid my way through school.