Co-creator of flight-attendant union

WASHINGTON — Edith Lauterbach, the last survivor among the quintet of female flight attendants who in the 1940s organized the first union to fight for equal rights in the sky, has died. She was 91.

She died Monday, according to the Washington-based Association of Flight Attendantsthe successor of that early union. She lived in San Francisco and was a United Airlines flight attendant for more than four decades until her retirement in 1986.

When Lauterbach joined United in 1944, female flight attendants were called “coeds” and were subject to dismissal if they got married, were deemed overweight or reached their early to mid-30s. With a monthly salary of $125 — about $1,630 today, or less than $20,000 a year — Lauterbach roomed with other “stewardesses” to get by, she told Knight-Ridder in a 1985 article.

Lauterbach and three colleagues — Frances Hall, Sally Thometz and Sally Watt — backed Ada Brown, United’s chief stewardess, when she began organizing in 1944. The world’s first union for flight attendants, the Air Line Stewardesses Association, was founded on Aug. 22, 1945, with Lauterbach as treasurer.

It grew into today’s Association of Flight AttendantsCWA, the world’s largest union “organized by flight attendants for flight attendants,” according to its website. The group, part of the Communications Workers of America, represents almost 60,000 cabin-service personnel at 21 airlines.

Over the next few decades, airlines dropped their employment restrictions based on age, marital status and, except in rare circumstances, weight. Even the word “stewardess” gave way to the gender-neutral “flight attendant,” and high heels disappeared as part of the uniform.

Edith Edna Lauterbach was born Oct. 1, 1921, in Oxnard, Calif.