This collection consists of the records of the Pan Am Historical Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving the history of Pan American World Airways, Inc.
The Arnold Reiner collection contains materials related to flight safety operations for Pan American World Airways. The collection includes issues of Flight Ops, a publication of Pan Am's Flight Safety Department; a copy of Pan Am's accident summary from 1959-1991; a 1974 report relating to Pan Am safety and operational concerns.
This collection consists of the technical files and papers of John G. Borger (1913-2011), who served as Pan American World Airways, Inc.'s Vice President and Chief Engineer. His materials document the development and acquisition of: Boeing aircrafts, including the 377 Stratocruiser, B-707 and B-747; the Douglas DC-6B, DC-7B, and DC-7C, the DC-8 jet; the Lockheed Constellation and the L-1011; the Convair CV-240; the Dassault Falcon 20, 10, and 50; the Pratt and Whitney and Rolls Royce engines, including the JT9D; and the Supersonic Transport (SST) aircraft.
Types of materials retained in the collection include: pamphlets, programs, engineering information, studies, evaluation reports, manuals, personal notes taken by John G. Borger, lectures, typescripts, correspondence, diagrams, flight path drawings, periodicals, research, articles, ephemera, newsclippings, and 3D material objects.
Ione Wright, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Miami, researched the development of Pan American Airlines' Transpacific service. The Ione Wright papers contain documents, oral histories, photographs, operations manuals, maps, and other materials related to the history of Pan American Airlines, including materials related to Victor Wright and materials documenting the establishment of routes in the Pacific.
The topical files document a variety of subjects related to Pan American Airlines, dating from 1920-1986. Ione Wright compiled many of the files during her research on the airline’s activities in the Pacific, including correspondence with former Pan Am employees and oral history transcripts. Also included are photographs, files related to the China Clipper, and a variety of Pan Am publications.
The collection also contains navigation manuals and operations manuals for Pan Am airplanes, including the B-727, the DC-4, the DC-6, and the DC-7, as well as operations manuals for Pan American Airlines’ Latin American Division.
Also included a variety of maps and aviation charts for parts of the United States, South America, and the Caribbean, as well as route maps for Pan American Airlines, and a map of the United States by John Melish from 1816.
R. A. Seymour was a Wing Commander from the Royal Air Force. The collection contains photographs and memoirs Seymour's training at the Pan American Training Academy at the University of Miami during World War II.
Sidney Serebreny was a technical supervisor from 1941 to 1960 for the Pacific Alaska Division for the Pan American World Airways, Inc. The Sidney Serebreny Papers contains a typescript by Serebreny titled "Tailwind."
Formed in 1959, World Wings International is an association of former Pan Am flight attendants that now dedicates itself to charitable activities. This collection includes the administrative records of the organization as well as scrapbooks, photographs, membership and annual meetings files, correspondence and financial records.
This collection contains Pan Am materials generously donated by former Pan American World Airways stewardess, Daniele Desmoulins Perez-Venero, who worked for the company in the 1960s. She arrived at the United States in 1964 where she worked as a secretary for Cultural Department of the French embassy before applying to work for Pan Am. Her charisma and knowledge of multiple languages lead to her being hired on the spot, which was against company procedures at the time, and she was granted her first choice in flying the New York-Paris-Monrovia route as her training flight. She later received a permanent placement in San Francisco, flying on a Boeing 707 on the San Francisco to Guatemala and Panama routes. As her career progressed, she was granted the opportunity to fly all over the world, including exotic locations such as Japan, Thailand, Guam, England, Australia, and Tahiti. Her career ended with a brief position as a purser before she got married and quit her job as a stewardess. Materials in the collection include ephemera, clippings, photographs, and clothing collected during her time of employment.
The F. Charles Ruegg Papers consists primarily of correspondence, photographs, and notes from Ruegg’s employment with Pan American World Airways from 1940 to 1951. These materials primarily document his experience with Pan Am in Africa (PAA Africa) during World War II.
The Dorothy E. Mills Flight Attendant papers contains materials related to her tenure as a stewardess of the Latin American Division and later chief stewardess of the Atlantic Division for the Pan American World Airways in the 1940s. Held in the collection are the following items:
Four letters by Mills to William Brown, Head of Special Collections in 1997, discussing the materials donated to the collection and her history with the Pan American World Airways.
An acceptance letter, an award letter (written and signed by founder Juan Trippe), and a resignation letter from Pan American World Airways.
23 8" x 10" photographs of Pan American World Airways flight attendants, with accompanying descriptions.
A scrapbook of clippings, photographs, and other materials by Mills about her life as a Pan American World Airways flight attendant
Two issues (including two duplicates) of Clipper Magazine, both containing articles about Mills.
Six newspaper clippings about Pan American World Airways.
The William C. House Papers includes Pan American World Airways, Inc. posters, personal correspondence with Norman Rockwell, photographs of House and Rockwell from their around the world trip aboard Pan American World Airways, Inc., and World War II (WWII, WW2) propaganda material. William House was an executive with the advertising firm, J. Walter Thompson.
Roy Keeler was a Miami-based long-term captain and pioneering flying boat pilot with the Pan American World Airways. The Roy Keeler Collection consists of documents from or pertaining to his time with the Pan American World Airways, in the form of correspondence, notes, telegrams, bulletins, passenger manifests, clippings, photos, receipts, handbooks, manuals, maps, charts, plans, certificates, and identification cards (including ones from Canada and Cuba).
This collection includes documents, photographs, correspondence, clippings and other materials related to Toomey's employment with the New York, Rio and Buenos Aires Airline, Panair do Brasil, and Pan American World Airways from 1929-1961.
William J. McEvoy worked as a government liaison for Pan American Airlines for over thirty years. The William McEvoy Papers include his unpublished memoir, Presidents Who Have Flown with Me, which focuses on President Truman’s trip to Wake Island in 1950. The collection also contains photographs from President Roosevelt’s trip to South America in 1936 and Vice President Henry Wallace’s trip to South America in 1943, as well as approximately 1200 slides from McEvoy’s travels around the world in the 1950s.
This collection contains the personal papers of Dr. Eileen Ramsaran, a medical doctor who, from 2000 to the present, has been working as the Chief Executive Officer and Medical Director at the North Miami Beach Medical Center, a facility which provides quality medical services at no cost to adults and children from low-income backgrounds and who have no health insurance. The facility primarily serves as a cost-effective alternative to hospitals, and Dr. Ramsaran's papers detail much of her research and initiatives when it comes to providing good health care to those who cannot afford it. To honor her work and dedication to those of the community, she was awarded various accolades, including the "Physician of the Year" Award for 2006-2007 and the "President's Call to Service" Award in 2014, and her clinic also received the "Health Service Provider of the Year" Award from the State of Florida in 2005.
Dr. Eileen Ramsaran was a Pan American World Airway (Pan Am) flight attendant from 1978 to 1991. She completed her premedical studies while still flying for Pan Am.