Flying with Presidents with Wanda Joell
The Preamble
Sharon McMahon
4.9 • 15.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 August 2021
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Sharon is joined by Senior Master Sergeant Wanda Joell, the first African-American woman to serve as a flight attendant on Air Force One. Wanda gives an insider’s look into the most exclusive plane in the world - describing what the inside of Air Force One looks like and sharing stories about the various U.S presidents she served. Throughout her 24 years of service, Wanda welcomed four presidents - George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama - aboard Air Force One. Wanda explains her unique responsibilities as a flight attendant, such as cooking the presidents’ favorite meals from scratch, and describes what it was like to be in close quarters with presidents during important moments in history.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey friends, thank you so much for being here. If you have been following me for a while, you know that I am fascinated by people with interesting jobs. That has always been a fascination of mine. |
| 0:14.0 | Like, how do you get to be the fire marshal? |
| 0:17.1 | How does one even become the director of an estuary? |
| 0:21.0 | I don't know why it's so interesting to me but it really is. So today I am |
| 0:25.3 | chatting with Wanda Joel. She for over 20 years was a flight attendant on Air Force |
| 0:32.0 | One. Air Force One. |
| 0:33.3 | Air Force One! |
| 0:34.3 | Like where you are the flight attendant for the actual president. |
| 0:38.5 | And that to me I'm just like, n-mm, nope, that is too interesting. |
| 0:41.5 | I gotta find out more. So enjoy this conversation as we do not dive. We're not diving in an airplane. That is bad news. As we ascend into this episode, I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So |
| 0:56.7 | podcast. Wanda, I am so excited to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming today. Why don't you tell everybody who you are, what your role was? I know they're going to be very interested to hear from you. |
| 1:09.4 | Oh, absolutely. Good afternoon everyone. My official title when I was active duty Air Force is |
| 1:15.6 | Senior Master Sergeant Wanda Joel and my job title while I was active duty was |
| 1:21.8 | the deputy superintendent on Air Force One and that's the airplane of |
| 1:25.7 | course the transport the presidents of the United States. |
| 1:28.0 | Okay I'm fascinated by aviation. I'm also fascinated by Air Force One just in general. I'm also terrified of flying. So that makes it like more interesting to me because I'm so terrified of it. I'm also just very interested in government and love to hear about all the little inner workings of how that kind of stuff goes down. So I have a ton of questions. |
| 1:48.5 | First of all, what made you want to go into the Air Force to begin with? I always had an interest in aviation. So after high school I applied for quite a few commercial |
| 1:59.1 | airlines and back in the late 80s a lot lot was going under, a lot laying off, a lot of airlines |
| 2:05.2 | was closing. |
| 2:06.7 | So basically I just put it together, Air Force, airplanes, maybe it's related, I'll |
| 2:11.8 | try the Air Force, but to backtrack a little related, I'll fire the Air Force. |
| 2:12.7 | But to backtrack a little bit, |
... |
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