Acknowledgments

Composing this book has been a labor of love. It traces an intellectual path through people and places that have captivated me. As an often-bored kid growing up in the American Midwest, I always wondered where airplanes flying over my backyard might take me. The wanderlust in me spurred my desire to journey far away, especially overseas. It still does. Thus, aviation for me, like for the various historical personalities I chronicle in this book, has always signaled freedom, adventure, and discovery. The kid in me has been overindulged while working on this book, especially by opening me up to faraway places that have brought me so much intellectual and personal satisfaction. I have plenty of people to thank for their companionship while writing this book, especially those in Kingston and in Belgrade.

At my home bases in Kansas and Washington, DC, I owe my gratitude to a scholarly community that has nurtured this book into existence. Kansas State University’s History Department has provided me with a wonderful academic home. My colleagues have supported me and my work, and my students have kept me passionate about teaching and learning, laughing with me at key points along the way. This book owes its existence to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) and its Verville Fellowship program, which supported me for a year as I struggled to get it off the ground. I am particularly grateful for the support and friendship of Dominick Pisano in this process. And I’m also grateful for the laughs and love that Collette Williams shared with me at NASM. Rest in peace, Collette.

My work in Kingston has been nurtured by both fellow scholars and by archivists who have made my research on Air Jamaica possible. I owe a special thanks to Kathleen Monteith, who took an interest in my book from the moment we met at the Association of Caribbean Historians conference long ago. She also opened doors to the Air Jamaica papers at the Jamaican Ministry of Finance and Public Service, where I owe Helen Rumbolt and her team much gratitude for their assistance. I am also grateful for the help provided by archivists at the University of the West Indies and the Jamaica National Library.

I am deeply indebted to the Fulbright Fellowship Program, which sponsored my semester-long stay in Belgrade in 2018. Without this financial support, completing this book would have been impossible. The fellowship gave me a teaching home at the Faculty of Political Sciences, where Dragan Živojinović was a generous host, and the students in my weekly seminar taught me much about life in Serbia, and even a few things about aviation. The fellowship also opened doors to the Archives of Yugoslavia, Serbia’s Diplomatic Archives, and the National Library of Serbia’s holdings. I am grateful to the archivists at these places who facilitated my research, all the while tolerating my weak spoken Serbian with a smile, and never a laugh. At the US embassy in Belgrade, Vukica Stanković and Tanja Bakraclić not only supported my work but became friends as well. They also alerted me to the reality that many Belgrade families have links with JAT and aviation. Tanja even gets credit for setting me up with my first interview with a JAT flight attendant, her husband, whose words sparked the realization that a fascinating history lay ahead to discover, and that former flight attendants held the key to unlocking it.

A project this intellectually vast needs so much support to take shape. I am therefore exceptionally grateful to colleagues who helped me in crucial moments with poignant conversations and, quite often, by reading early drafts of this work. I am especially indebted to Vladimir Petrović for his critique of several early chapters, not to mention for his personal kindness—as landlord, as friend, as fellow fan of smoky Negronis. I also am thankful for provocative and laughter-filled conversations with Velimir and Sandra Isaković, both of whom share my affection for aviation and for Judith Butler. My conversations with ex-Yugoslavia’s most knowledgeable aviation aficionado, Luka Popović, have also been wonderfully enriching and always fun. The other scholars and friends who so generously critiqued my work through the years include Jane Ferguson, Kelsey Gilbert, Michael Krysko, Eva-Maria Muschik, Anke Ortlepp, Ale Pålsson, and Kaori Takada. I’m also grateful to my late colleague at KSU and fellow Philadelphia Eagles fan, Al Hamscher, who reviewed an early draft of this document with a fine-toothed comb, as he’s done for so many of our K-State history graduates through the decades. Thanks also to anonymous readers who offered exceptionally helpful feedback to my book editor, Sarah Grossman. Their work, and Sarah’s, have made this book vastly better.

What nurtured me the most through this very long research and writing process have been the people at its heart: the former flight attendants who worked at Air Jamaica and JAT Airways. Their stories were personally captivating for me, and I hope the tidbits included in this book captivate others as well. These women and men exhibit how flight attendant skills never age: they remain charming, intelligent, witty, curious, humorous, and so much fun to talk with. And their love for flying is still as alive as during the glory days of JAT or Air Jamaica. It was a pleasure to meet them one-on-one, and it was an even bigger joy to share in their fellowship when they met as a group. As such I am particularly grateful to the JAT alumnae and alumni who welcomed me into their circle at Belgrade’s Aeroklub. I always left these gatherings with a full heart and a head full of new ideas to add to this book. I also want to thank my friend Gavrilo Burković for helping with my conversations with flight attendants that took place in Serbian. He served as more than a top-notch translator, he’s also a charming conversationalist who primed our interviews for success. Gavrilo is also personally responsible for my forever-to-remain fondness for the city of Belgrade and its nightlife. Hvala ti, Gašo! A huge thanks also to my friend Srđan Krivošić in Belgrade for helping with the very last work before this book launched: securing copyright permissions for the various photos that came from Serbian sources.

Last but not least, I have to mention Shaun, who had no idea what he was getting into when we first met. A man without a passport with an amazing life grounded in DC meets a man with a chronic case of wanderlust who finds the vastness of the United States too confining. And yet, from DC to Kansas to Belgrade and points beyond, Shaun continues to follow me with open eyes and open heart, leading me in new directions and loving me throughout. No lie, we’ve both also benefited from the best emotional support dog of all times. Sisi has learned to cope with jet lag and speak foreign languages as well as her dads, a gift that has made our travels together all the richer. Shaun, in my life that operates on a route network as large as any medium-sized airline’s, you are my hub.