Inspired to Take Spiritual Flight

By Mary Ann O'Roark

As appeared in

Growing up in a small town in West Virginia, I'd always dreamed of the adventures I would have when I went out into the world. It was 1963, the spring of my senior year at the University of Pittsburgh, when I saw a movie called Come Fly With Me, about three young stewardesses and their adventures.

One stewardess was always in a predicament of some sort; another was shy, demure and reserved. But it was the third who captured my imagination. She was so elegant, with a serene face and a voice like warm honey.

Who was this woman? I wanted to be like her—young and vibrant, in what felt like the most exciting time in history to be young and vibrant.

I read a review of the movie and learned that the actress who had made such an impression on me was Dolores Hart. One critic deemed her the next Grace Kelly.

Close to my age, she had already gotten a Tony nomination for a performance on Broadway, and had appeared in a range of movies from Where the Boys Are to a co-starring role with Elvis Presley in King Creole.

Dolores Hart—forever linked in my mind to her stewardess character—was everything I wanted to be: attractive, confident, adventurous.

The next week, on my way to class, I noticed a poster in a travel-agency window: Be a Stewardess, Wing Your Way to Adventure. Ever since I'd been a little girl, I'd prayed to discover the right path for my life.

As I saw it, that included travel and adventure, with a marriage and family somewhere along the way. Come Fly With Me made me think a stint as a stewardess was the ideal launching point. I went through a series of interviews with TWA, and was hired.

After college I went off to “hostess training,” a whirlwind combination of flight academy and charm school. Then from my base in San Francisco, I flew all around the country. I tied my scarf the same way Dolores Hart did in the movie, and tried to be as gracious and self-possessed as she was.

It was hard to imagine that just a few years before, I'd been living with my parents in a West Virginia steel town.

One day while waiting for passengers to board, a startling headline on a newspaper caught my eye: Actress Leaves Career to Join Convent. Dolores Hart was abandoning her Hollywood life to become a cloistered nun. Is this a publicity stunt?

I scanned the article but there weren’t any specifics about where she was going, just a quote to the effect that she felt this was where God was leading her. I couldn’t help thinking, Why would an attractive young woman give up a glamorous life to join a convent?

In the meantime, I was ready for a change of my own. While I loved flying—the roaring shudder as the jet lifted off the runway, the sweep of clouds struck golden by slanting rays of sun, the glitter of stars as I stared out the galley window at night—I hadn’t counted on being so jet-lagged and footsore.

After a year I turned in my airline wings.

When I was about 10, I'd put out a neighborhood newspaper from our backyard in West Virginia. In college, I'd majored in writing. I was ready to widen my horizons in journalism. I moved to Manhattan and got a job at the Saturday Evening Post.

Eventually I moved on to Seventeen and McCall’s, my love for my work and for the rhythm and color of city life cradling me as surely as the embrace of a small town. Yes, I was living out my dreams, having a grand adventure. Even in my 40s, when I came to work at Guideposts, I still felt brave and frisky and...young.