First Woman

Into a $25,000-a-year vice-presidency at American Airlines last week stepped Carlene Roberts, 37, a pretty Midwesterner who joined the company as a $150-a-month secretary fourteen years ago. She is the first woman in airline history to hold such a top job.

A graduate of the University of Oklahoma (she worked her way through with odd secretarial jobs) Miss Roberts put in a year and a half as a social worker with the New Deal's Federal Emergency Relief Administration, learned stenotyping at night school, and went to work as a secretary for Oklahoma City's Chamber of Commerce. There her quick mind and talent for getting along with people were spotted by Braniff Airways Vice President O. M. Mosier. When he went to American Airlines as a vice president, he took Carlene with him.

She soon graduated from secretary to personnel work. When American switched its headquarters from Chicago to New York's La Guardia Airport, it sent her ahead to survey housing, recreation facilities, churches, etc., in the area. She wrote a pamphlet giving all the answers, bossed the move of 700 employees, with scarcely a hitch. When American opened an administrative office in Washington in 1942, she was picked to help run it. She dealt expertly with government agencies, got to know important people in & out of Congress, became an accomplished lobbyist for the airline's projects.

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