Jump to full article: Dallas Morning News, 2007-03-04
Intro: Patty Young of Dallas was a flight attendant for 36 years with American Airlines. In the 1980s, her testimony before Congress helped persuade lawmakers to ban smoking on flights, and she helped spearhead a major class-action lawsuit on the part of flight attendants. She spoke last month with assistant editorial page editor Michael Landauer:
You were a leader in the fight to get smoking banned on flights, and you have made the anti-smoking crusade your life's work. Looking back, was there one moment when you decided you were going to commit yourself to this fight?
The moment that my fight started was at the very start of my career in the summer of 1966 when nonsmoking flight attendants - we were called stewardesses then - told me that they were told by their doctors that they had the lungs of smokers. I often became extremely sick with severe headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, blocked ears and constant coughing - often with flulike symptoms. I grew up in a home where my mother and father smoked - sadly, they have both died from lung cancer - and I was never sick like I was as a new flight attendant. . . .
If someone wanted to get involved, where should they target their energy?
People should refuse to go to places that allow smoking and also get involved in making their cities smoke-free by calling city hall and insisting on change. They should realize that when they go to places that allow smoking, they are putting themselves and their loved ones in grave danger for sickness and disease.
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