"Through her headset as they were setting up to do a barrel roll, she heard her husband say, 'I came home early yesterday.'

"Peggy wasn’t comfortable doing aerobatics even though she was comfortable flying. She had to be. She was a flight attendant. She had spent more than nine thousand hours in the air during her twelve-year career as a Pan Am flight attendant, and she knew enough about safety in the air to trust airplanes.

"She trusted the Pitts Special they were flying just as much as she trusted the Boeings Pan Am flew, and she trusted Shep’s skill as a pilot, too. Her head knew that they would come back to earth alive, but her stomach was getting ready to rebel anyway. She was tightening her five-point safety harness and steeling herself for the maneuvers to come when he spoke..."