Taking the High Road : Ce Ce Boyer, 60, Lomita

I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I’m sure having fun exploring my options. My first job, for example, was with the CIA. While I was stationed in Paris, I met and married my now ex-husband, a NATO helicopter pilot and later one of the president’s pilots. When we divorced, I began working for a man whose uncle owned a vineyard in Bordeaux. Having learned the ropes by helping him sell his wine in the U.S., I established my own wine import and wholesale business here in Los Angeles.

After the worsening economy forced me to close my doors 10 years later, I was at loose ends until I met a delightful flight attendant named Carol--a seasoned veteran of 10 or 15 years, or so I thought. When I asked her how long she’d been flying, she told me that she’d only been flying for 3 1/2 months. Even more astonishing, she told me that she was 51!

Although flying had always been one of those impossible dreams for me--I’m 5 feet, 9 inches tall and the height limit was 5 feet, 7 inches until the introduction of wide-bodies--I was so inspired by Carol’s example that I applied, hung in through five weeks of flight training, and have been happily flying the very special skies of American Airlines ever since.

As far as the future is concerned, I see myself flying for another 10 or 15 years and then going on to something else, maybe the Peace Corps. Oh, I forgot to mention--I was 56 when I was hired and I just turned 60 last summer.