The Pan Am Podcast

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The Pan Am Podcast enters an exciting new chapter as we welcome Ken Andersen as the new host of the program.
Since its launch, the Pan Am Podcast has become one of the Pan Am Museum Foundation's most successful educational initiatives, sharing the remarkable stories of the people, aircraft, destinations, and historic events that made Pan American World Airways one of the most influential companies of the twentieth century. With listeners in more than 170 countries, the podcast continues to preserve and share the extraordinary legacy of the World's Most Experienced Airline.
Ken Andersen is the newest member of the Pan Am Museum Foundation's Board of Directors and brings to the microphone a lifelong appreciation for aviation, storytelling, and the enduring legacy of Pan Am. Ken grew up with a special connection to Pan Am and developed an early fascination with commercial aviation and the people who made it possible. That fascination evolved into a genuine passion for the history of Pan American World Airways and the pioneering spirit that connected nations, cultures, and people across the globe.
As the newest member of the Board of the Pan Am Museum Foundation, Ken joins us after spending years collecting Pan Am artifacts and researching Pan Am's history. He is committed to preserving the personal stories of the pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, engineers, dispatchers, managers, and countless others whose dedication built one of the world's most admired airlines.
In this introductory episode, you'll get to know Ken, learn about his journey to the Pan Am Museum Foundation, hear why preserving Pan Am's history is so important to him, and discover what's ahead for the Pan Am Podcast. Future episodes will continue to feature firsthand interviews with Pan Am alumni, historians, and aviation experts while exploring the airline's unparalleled contributions to aviation, international travel, innovation, and world history.
Whether you've been listening from the beginning or are discovering the podcast for the first time, we invite you to join us as we continue sharing the incredible stories that ensure the Pan Am legacy inspires future generations.
Welcome aboard, Ken—and welcome to the next chapter of the Pan Am Podcast.
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A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and  Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support!

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In this final episode of Season Five, host and producer Tom Betti reflects on five years of preserving the stories of Pan Am, answers the question he has asked guests since the very first episode, and says farewell to the listeners who made this program what it became.
After five years, 66 episodes, more than 95 hours of history and humanities content, and over 200,000 downloads in more than 180 countries, this is Tom's final episode.
This special retrospective features six guests across three segments, including returning voices Becky Sprecher, Wendy Knecht, Phillip Keene, and Jennifer Coutts Clay, along with Kenn Yazzie of the SFO Museum at San Francisco International Airport and longtime listener Maddex Henry.
"This program has been the flight of a lifetime." -Tom Betti
Read Tom's recent LinkedIn article: "I Beat Multi-Million Dollar Companies With a Microphone and Zero Budget. Here's What They Got Wrong"
To learn more about the SFO Museum, visit: www.sfomuseum.org. 
Read the article written by Ken Yazzie: "Destination SFO: A Labor of Love"
Visit Jennifer Coutts Clay's website, Jetliner Cabins.

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Visit The Hangar online store for Pan Am gear!
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A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and  Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support!

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In this episode, we are joined by Admiral William O. Studeman, United States Navy, retired, and his wife Diane, former Pan Am stewardess and one of the most gracious ambassadors the airline ever had.
Their connection to Pan Am runs deeper than most. Diane grew up in Milford-on-Sea in Hampshire, England. The navy and aviation were not just a backdrop to her childhood but its very fabric. She joined Pan Am as a stewardess in the early 1960s, at what many would argue was the cultural apex of the Jet Age, when the uniform was a statement and the Clipper was a promise of something larger than the ordinary.
Bill is, in the truest sense, a Pan Am kid. His father, Oliver J. Studeman, joined Pan Am's Western Division at Brownsville, Texas in 1933, flying mail-carrying tri-motored Fokkers from Texas through Mexico to Panama and across the north coast of South America. He was known professionally as O.J. and had the nickname of "Stude" by his friends and colleagues. Over four decades, O.J. rose from Chief Pilot of the Western Division to Operations Manager of the Alaska, Pacific, and Latin American divisions, to Assistant Vice President of Pan Am's Guided Missile Range Division at Cape Canaveral, to Vice President of the Metropolitan Air Facilities Division at Teterboro, New Jersey, where he retired in 1972. His uncle, on his mother's side, also worked for the airline. Bill was born in Brownsville in January 1940. Pan Am, for him, was not just a company. It was a family inheritance.
Bill and Diane met in the summer of 1962 at London's Heathrow Airport, where Bill was working the Pan Am ticket counter and Diane was working the TWA desk. She joined Pan Am shortly after. He entered Officer Candidate School in 1963 and spent the next 32 years in the United States Navy as a naval intelligence officer. At his Senate confirmation hearing, Senator Frank Murkowski said Bill had "mastered, as few others have, the intricate and arcane world of signals intelligence." He served as Director of Naval Intelligence, Director of the National Security Agency, and Deputy Director of Central at CIA, twice serving as its acting director of the agency across two presidential administrations. Diane hung up her wings to become a Navy wife and mother. They settled eventually in Annapolis.
Before the interview, this episode explores three places that rarely appear in the standard Pan Am narrative: Brownsville, Texas, where the airline learned to fly in the clouds and where O.J. "Stude" Studeman first fell in love with the sky; Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, the man-made island built to launch the Boeing B-314 Flying Boats toward Asia, whose art deco terminal still stands today; and Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, the oldest operating commercial airport in the New York metropolitan area, and the place where O.J. Studeman's remarkable Pan Am career came to a close.
Bill and Diane's son, Rear Admiral Mike Studeman (ret.), recently published a book on leadership called Might of the Chain: Forging Leaders of Iron Integrity now available in bookstores and as an audiobook. 
This is Episode 65 of The Pan Am Podcast, and the final full episode with Tom Betti as host in the history and humanities format that has defined this program since its first season. Episode 66, the season finale and Tom's final episode, will be a five-year retrospective with special guests.
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Visit The Hangar online store for Pan Am gear!
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A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and  Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support!

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In this episode, we are joined by two women who gave the best years of their careers to Pan American World Airways, and who have remained close friends for more than four decades since the airline closed its doors.
Florette H. Vassall was born in New York City, the daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Panama. Aviation was a constant in her life from the very beginning. Her father was passionate about flight, and as a young girl, Florette watched Pan Am's famous flying boats cross the sky above New York City, an impression that would last a lifetime. Then the war came. Her father was drafted into the Army and assigned as an air traffic controller because of his background in radio, while her mother served as an officially designated air raid warden. Those years brought challenges that went well beyond the war itself.
In 1967, Florette was looking for a job that came with travel benefits so she could visit friends she had made while living in Acapulco, Mexico. Pan American World Airways hired her. Perhaps it was not entirely a coincidence. What started as a practical decision became a 24-year career. Florette worked as a ticket agent, trainer, and supervisor at the Pan Am Building in the heart of midtown Manhattan, right up until the airline shut down in Miami in December 1991. For more than two decades, she was a fixture at Counter Vanderbilt, the largest ticket counter in the world at the time. Customers, employees, company visitors, special guests, and board members all knew her by name.
The 59-story Pan Am Building, constructed between 1960 and 1963 above Grand Central Station, was the largest commercial office space in the world by square footage when it opened on March 7, 1963. Pan Am founder Juan Trippe had signed a 25-year lease for 613,000 square feet, and the airline occupied 15 floors. Listeners who heard Episode 10 will recall the late Richard Roth Jr., whose family firm Emery Roth & Sons worked alongside Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi to bring the building to life. Richard passed away in late 2022 at the age of 89, just one year after sharing his remarkable firsthand account with this program.
Florette is a retired teacher, a former model, and an actress. For more than 40 years she has produced multicultural arts and culture programming for television in New York City. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Fordham University and is the author of the chapter titled "The Pan Am Building" in the book Pan Am: Personal Tributes to a Global Aviation Pioneer, compiled by Jeff Kriendler and James Patrick Baldwin. At 91 years young, she has never stopped.
Diane Krumholtz Lyras began her Pan Am career on January 24, 1977, hired as a Clerk Stenographer in Labor Relations. She went on to work in Reservations as a Sales Agent, then as a Sales Account Manager serving the White Plains and Long Island markets, before returning to the Pan Am Building as Manager of Administration for the Northeast Division, and ultimately as Manager of Administration for the United States Division. Like Florette, she was there until the end, leaving in August 1991.
Listeners who heard Episode 27 will remember Diane from one of the most difficult chapters in Pan Am's history. On September 5, 1986, Pan Am Flight 73 was hijacked on the ground in Karachi, Pakistan, in an act of senseless violence that left 20 people dead and more than 100 injured. Diane Krumholtz Lyras, then of the White Plains Pan Am sales office, was sent to Karachi as part of the company's crisis response team to assist staff and families in the aftermath. Diane also serves on the board of the Pan Am Museum Foundation.
Florette and Diane met inside the Pan Am Building in 1980 and became fast friends. They are still friends today.
Support the show
Visit Us for more Pan Am History! 
Support the Podcast!
Donate to the Museum!
Visit The Hangar online store for Pan Am gear!
Become a Member! 
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A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and  Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support!

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In this episode, host Tom Betti is joined by three special guests - Pan Am flight attendant Karen Walker Ryan and adoptees Carol Mason and Dr. Matt Steiner - to mark the 51st anniversary of Operation Babylift, the frantic evacuation ordered by U.S. President Gerald R. Ford of Vietnamese war orphans in the final days of Saigon in 1975.
But this episode is about more than history. It is about what happens to people after history moves through them. It is about memory, identity, and the bonds that form in the most unlikely of circumstances. It is about three people whose lives were bound together by a single flight fifty years ago - and who have never let go of each other since.
Karen Walker Ryan served as a Pan Am flight attendant from 1969 to 1978. She volunteered to fly into Saigon in the final days of the war, and her photograph holding baby Carol Mason was later published on the cover of Reader's Digest. Karen has stayed in close contact with several of the children from that flight ever since. Her story, and her decades-long bond with Carol and Matt, was featured on ABC's Good Morning America and ABC's 20/20.
Carol Mason was five months old when she was airlifted out of Vietnam on the second Operation Babylift flight. She grew up in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and learned about her own story at age 25 when her mother spotted Karen's photograph in a magazine. Hers is a story about what it means to search for yourself - and what you find when you finally do.
Dr. Matthew Steiner was born in Vientiane, Laos in 1966 and raised in a Saigon orphanage before being evacuated to the United States at age nine through Operation Babylift. He went on to become a high school valedictorian, and today serves as an emergency physician helping patients facing life-threatening conditions. The boy who once needed saving, now doing the saving. 
This episode also features an original song, "Waking Up American," performed by Jared Rehberg - himself a Babylift adoptee - at the Pan Am Museum's 50th Anniversary event in Garden City, New York. Jared composed the song years earlier as a meditation on growing up between two worlds, and it is the only way this episode could end.
Please watch the 13-minute documentary Operation Babylift: A Celebration of the Human Spirit.
Support the show
Visit Us for more Pan Am History! 
Support the Podcast!
Donate to the Museum!
Visit The Hangar online store for Pan Am gear!
Become a Member! 
Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!

A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and  Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support!