It is not unusual, nor ludicrous, for a, any, 8 month pregnant woman to fly in a commercial airliner, even today. Ditto for an 18 year old married women to be flying on a commercial airliner.
You also do not seem to know that not all 8 month pregnant women are totally incapacitated and unable to do a normal thing like sit in a jet airliner seat.
My gosh!!! Do you think that the wagon trains accross America to California back in the 1850’s all come to a sudden halt whenever any of the women travelers entered late stage pregnancy?
Maybe sometime in the 1920’s and 1930’s there were flights only every 2 weeks, but by the 1960’s there were daily flights. I definitely remember African Safari hunt travel trips to Tanganyika, that left no less often than every week. I would most certainly wager that there were daily flights in the 1960’s.
"…Stanley Ann Dunham … spent her childhood in California, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas and her teenage years in Mercer Island, Washington, and much of her adult life in Hawaii and Indonesia…Friends in* Washington State** recall her visiting with her month-old baby in 1961. She took classes at the University of Washington from September 1961 to June 1962, and lived as a single mother in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle "*
It’s known that she traveled from Hawaii to Washington state in the fall of 1961 and then went back to Hawaii, and she moved to Indonesia in 1967. That’s not flying “often” by most definitions; it’s two round trips in six years. Are you aware of other trips? When her son moved back to Hawaii in the early 1970s, I don’t think she traveled back to Hawaii very often to see him, and that was a decade later.
I’m still waiting for an answer about the Stanley thing, too. It was her legal name but not the one she used most of the time. The wikipedia quote seems to be edited to make it appear otherwise.
Since he’s alive, and Ann Dunham died about 15 years ago, I’m pretty sure he’s not. However, by the end of 1961 he had travelled from Australia to England twice in his lifetime, and had still not travelled by plane. You are simply not understanding how rare air travel was then. When Ann Obama travelled from Hawaii to Washington State in 1961, I would think it likely that she travelled by ship and by train: it would have been cheaper and more comfortable for her and her new baby. Do you have any evidence that she did it by air?
Disregarding the fact that there’s an enormous difference in cost and complexity between flying from Hawaii to Seattle and flying from Hawaii to Kenya, do you have a cite that Stanley flew back and forth to Hawaii as opposed to taking a boat?
…and you sir, simply do not understand how rare it was for any Kansas born American to move to Indonesia in the 1960’s.
The OP question is not whether Stanley Ann Dunham did or did not go to Kenya in 1961, but rather, how do the older folks on Straight Dope remember long distance travel back in the 1960’s, and how arduous was travel in the 1960’s. And my answer is that I remember travel being not arduous at all, rather, it was fun, enjoyable, roomy, unfilled seats, good food, and comfortable traveling back then, totally unlike today. Also, in the 1960’s Pan Am Airlines, my favorite, had luxurious jet airliners that traveled at the same speeds as jet airliners do today.
Of course, if Stanley Ann Dunham traveled by ship or train, it would have been even more!!! comfortable and luxurious than the Pan Am jet, albeit much slower.
My point is, that traveling in the 1960’s, in my opinion, was not arduous at all, but rather was BETTER than traveling today, much better.
I was under the impression that most airlines would not accept a very late term pregnant woman for travel, especially for long flights. This is a risk they don’t want to have to deal with - of having to make an unscheduled stop or worse, being over an ocean and having no option. Not everyone is thrilled at the idea that a row of seats a few feet over is turned into a delivery room - assuming there’s even a doctor or nurse on the plane. Doctors have been sued for being good samaritans, so an airline I’m sure would also be wary of lawsuits over what happens on their plane.
Not sure if this is a relatively recent phenomenon due to nanny-state-lawsuit type concerns, or whether it’s a fairly long standing tradition. Obvously it didn’t stop Sarah Palin from flying from Texas to Anchorage after her water broke, (with a stopover in Seattle) but I suspect she didn’t tell the airline she was in labour.
You’re right, it wasn’t arduous. However,
(1) it cost more than now, relative to what people earned, and air travel cost a lot more.
(2) it took longer, especially if (like most people) you travelled by train or by ship.
And I remember my second long trip, at the age of 9, from England to Australia. (I don’t remember my first one, because I was only two.) It was fun, even though it took about four weeks, with lots of things to do on the ship, and visits to interesting foreign cities like Port Said, Suez, Aden, Bombay and Colombo.
But it seems unlikely to me, apart from the complete lack of evidence, that Ann Obama travelled to Kenya and back just to give birth to young Barack.
And I remember that a relatively major route like Vancouver to Mexico City was still DC6 prop planes in 1961. Once you got into the third world, South America was awful; DC3’s and plastic hose in the mouth instead of a mask for over-mountain flight.
Depends on your budget and how far you got from civilization, I guess. Kenya… hmmmm…
Originally Posted by Susanann
I remember traveling in the 1960’s, how enjoyable (not arduous) it was, and I am not going to change my memories.
I was going to quit, but one more comment, bc I just remembered my first summer in Paris in 1962.
I flew America to Paris via Air France, brand new Boeing 707, in June of 1962 for the summer. Is that close enough to September 1961 for comparison?
Arduous? Ha Ha Ha!!!
It was fast, comfy, roomy, luxurious, delicious food with silverware and china cups, the stewardesses were at my beck and call offerring me free playing cards, free cigarettes, free drinks, magazines, . I would definitely recommend that relaxing flight to any lady, pregnant or not. No searching, no metal detectors, no one (from TSA) groped me, no lines, plane was about half full like most flights in the 1960’s, etc.
You guys have no idea how beautiful flying used to be in the 1960’s
…mmmmmmmmmmmmmm and no, we did not stop to refuel in Gander to refuel, we filled up our tanks in NYC before we left, so we had plenty of gas from NYC to Paris non-stop! The Boeing 707 quite easily went from NYC to Paris on a tank of gas.
