Last month, the Belle of Louisville Riverboats began recording a new oral history collection from long-standing staff members and veterans of the boats. You may know Kadie Engstrom from her fantastic narration on history cruises, or perhaps you remember her from a school visit as an educator! Kadie has worked with the Belle of Louisville for over 50 years. 

What was it like to start working at the Belle in the 1970’s, when women were prohibited from working certain positions?

I’m Katie Engstrom. I am a 54-year veteran.

Just to say that, really, I’m a 54-year veteran of working with the Belle of Louisville. I started in 1972….fully believing that I would be working for a month for the Belle of Louisville, and then I’d start my career, which was going to be professional girl scouting. So, I was just mentioning that I was intending to work a month for the Belle of Louisville, and actually that’s how I got started. I’m not a water girl. I’m a land girl, and I was a camp counselor for the Girl Scout camp out of Louisville for six summers….

So, that last summer, one of the camp counselors was the daughter of Captain Charles Brazier, the master of the Belle of Louisville at the time, and I had met him over the summer, and he saw me on the boat, and he said, you want a job. And I said, Oh, sure, I’ll work for you for a month before I start my real job. And I did both jobs for almost 35 years. And I still do work for the Belle of Louisville, with a great deal of joy connected to that employment. 

…

So Captain Brazier was actually the impetus that got me on the boat as a worker. But it was the boat itself that kept me working. At first, I started as a seasonal employee, as you would imagine, because the boat doesn’t run all year long. But as a seasonal employee, I became well versed in the needs of the passengers, which allowed me to be well versed in the operation of the concession stand.

And it wasn’t my first concession stand type of work. In fact, my first day, I got right into it. We had 1040 people on the boat that day, our capacity was 1042 plus crew. We had 1040 people on the boat that afternoon. And I leapt in, one of the concession workers who was very experienced, her name was Ann, kind of looked at me and said, “So you’ve done this before?” And I said, “Well, time or two.” My next cruise was that night: we had a chartered cruise, and we had almost 800 people. And I was there, leaping in. And at the end of that cruise, Ann said to me, “I can’t believe you’re still here.” And when I showed up the next day for my next cruise, she says, “You’re a keeper.” So, that was my beginning to working on the Belle of Louisville, with a whole lot of passengers on a very hot night and day – it was August 18. And yet, here I still am.

So, you started out as a concession worker?

Yes, concession worker. There were two jobs in the money field on the Belle of Louisville at the time. Concession worker, souvenir worker – and purser. Purser, of course, is the person responsible. Now, since the boat had been the Idlewild starting in 1914, that was a “man’s job.” The purser was always a man, always. That changed. But when I first started work, that was considered a man’s job, and women were not even considered to be hired for that position.

But we could be concession workers, we could be souvenir workers, and we could be maids on the boat as women. Those were the jobs available to us. Nothing else was available. So I started as Concessionaire and eventually became Lead Concessionaire. I was paid an additional 25 cents per hour because I was now Lead Concessionaire. Isn’t that cute? 25 cents an hour more. I went up to $1.65 for my work with the Belle. 

But Lead Concessionaire gave me additional responsibilities, and I learned the Purser’s job through that process. And as it turned out, when new Pursers were hired, I oftentimes was their trainer, even though I couldn’t be hired for that position.

And then here came Cabby Ratterman. She was an exceptional woman. She followed the secretary assistant that was handling the office at the time I started. Her name was Judy. And when Judy retired, Cabby took her place and became the secretary assistant for the Master of the boat. And Cabby said to the Captain at that time – his name was Captain Charles Larkin – you need to hire Kadie as a purser. She’s doing that work and she’s training the pursers. You have to hire her. And he said, no, that’s a man’s job. And she took issue with him. And eventually he decided he should hire me.

But of course, he was very skeptical about my ability to do the job. So most of what I did my first few weeks as Purser on the Belle of Louisville was proving to the guys: all of the deckhands were male, all the captains were male, everybody was male, except the concession and souvenir workers and the maids. So proving to them that I would be able to do this job because he had always been done by a man before. 

And here I was just this little girl – tough as nails, I’ll admit – but just a girl. But it didn’t take long before they realized I wasn’t going to ask them to do my job for me. I was going to do my job for myself. And from that point on, we became co-workers as opposed to ‘you’re the girl and I’m the person who knows everything’, the differences, you know. So I became the Belle’s first female Purser ever from the time she was the Idlewild until 1981. And then in 1986, I became the Belle’s first female Chief Purser and did that job as a full-time job along with my Girl Scout full-time job until 1992.