When I first embarked on our project to collect information about women in air traffic control in general and then about the first women air traffic controllers in the US, I did not think about a fact of life that is the other inevitable thing besides taxes… Many of those first pioneering ladies have flown West now and I am almost too late for collecting their stories to share with you for the enjoyment and education of us all. Luckily there are still many controllers who have worked with them or met them later in life and I am getting a lot of support from them in the form of written accounts and relics of all kinds.
This time I am bringing you the story of Margaret Sanders as told by our contributor Virginia. She in turn used Margaret’s obituary for some of the detail. Margaret passed away in June 2009 but if you read her story you will see just how resilient and flexible controllers really are.
Margaret Arlene Sanders was born in Canton, Kan., to parents Laura and Joe Anderson on Nov. 16, 1910. As her older brother, Curtis, used to say, “She is much smarter than I am, so she too must go to college.” Her father relented and Margaret graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in journalism.
After graduation she began a series of careers writing. She wrote a column for a newspaper under a man’s name, wrote advertising for department stores and the newspaper. She wrote a national award-winning ad campaign for the Kansas State Fair in the early ’30s, but when it came time for the award to be presented in Washington, D.C., her boss, a man, was sent to receive it. Margaret was the first woman to work as a “utilization specialist” for the Rural Electrification Administration, “selling” farms on the idea of using electric appliances in their homes.
Part of this job required her to do cooking demonstrations, which she always found ironic, since she didn’t cook. She did, however, write and publish a cookbook of her mother’s recipes.
When World War II broke out she was in the first class of women to graduate from air traffic control school because her father wouldn’t let her become a pilot. She worked until the end of the war when the men came back to the towers. She was, on paper, laid off to make room for the returning men, but in fact never missed a shift because she scored higher than all the men in the mandatory tests and was the best controller. She rose to the head of the Atlantic seaboard at Logan International Airport in Boston.
She resigned from air traffic control in 1959 after 17 years to accompany her Air Force officer husband to Italy. When the marriage ended she had been bitten by the “international” bug, so after a brief return to the U.S. moved to Germany to begin her final career selling yearbooks to international and American schools in Europe. Her most productive years were when she was in her late 60s and early 70s. By the time she retired after 31 years she had expanded her territory all over the world. She traveled in over 100 countries, making friends everywhere she went. Her friends ranged in ages from 19 to 100+ years of age.
Margaret returned to the U.S. in 1992 and made her home in Sarasota. After her move to Sarasota, when she was in her mid 80s, she joined a local women’s arts group, and within a few months was elected president. When asked by an old friend to explain how that all came about, Margaret responded, “They just needed some young blood, I guess.”
She retired from the yearbook business in 1995. She was an amazing woman with many stories. One of her favorites happened after 9/11 when she was invited to Alaska to speak to the Women’s International Air Traffic Control Association. After her speech Margaret was given a tour of the tower. No civilian had been allowed in the tower since 9/11. Her speech and her stories of the early days were so enlightening the working controllers kept her in the tower for over three hours.
Like her father, she believed in helping those less fortunate and became involved with United Way along with several other worthwhile causes. Although she lived simply and frugally, she gave away more than $2 million in the last decades of her life. Probably her proudest accomplishment would be the Margaret Sanders Foundation Scholarship awards which gives four $5,000 scholarships annually to graduates of American International schools abroad. It is established in perpetuity through United Way of Sarasota.