"I needed a drastic change in my life, to give it more meaning than just being a mother. I prayed that would be enough, but it just wasn't. I had to be flying again, some way. I'd heard that Pan American Airways had begun making passenger flights to Europe. I thought the adventure of being a stewardess on their flying boat, the Dixie Clipper, from New York to Lisbon, Portugal, would help snap me out of myself. Before I could even be accepted, flights were added to London.
"I'm assigned to a New York-to-London schedule that makes the Atlantic crossing almost round-trip. I've left Tommy in the care of the sitter-nurse. I miss him terribly. But Barbara, the new work and the excitement of being over here has probably saved my sanity, if not my life. It may sound strange to say that, as London prepares for what they fear will be invasion from Germany, and Nazi planes may fly over the city at any time and drop bombs, but that's how I feel. I just wish you were here with me. Pan Am needs more stewardesses. Think about it? Love, Gail."
Think about it? The letter virtually consumed Barbara for weeks afterward. She thought she had been leading an exciting life, running her airport, staging and flying in air shows there, operating a growing air delivery service, and even obtaining a US Postal contract to fly mail to several Midwest cities. For that, she hired two male pilots while she and Leila concentrated on continuing the air shows.
Gail's new life sounded even more exciting. But Barbara didn't want to be a stewardess; she wanted to fly, and she was doing that.
However, Barbara began to wonder how much longer she would be able to put on her air shows. No matter what new thrills she came up with, attendance kept falling off. Nothing kept the public's attention for long, with new fads taking their free time and dollars each month. Air shows were becoming as old-fashioned as horse and buggy races.
Barbara also was growing tired of the much longer hours she had to spend in her airport office, just managing the business and all the paperwork that came with it. Even with flying in her air shows, she thought Gail was clocking more hours in the air than she was.
She had been even too busy with her expanding business to care much when she read in the Mohave weekly newspaper that Ken Knowland had gotten married to the San Francisco heiress. She tried not to look at him, so handsome in striped trousers and cutaway coat in his wedding photo.