Interviewer(s): D. Austin. Patterson, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

Valina Mullen was referred to me by several people. She is an active member of Morgan City's Desk and Derrick Club and has worked for Perry Flying Service for 18 years. I met her went I went out to interview Ken Perry, and she agreed to an interview. We were scheduled to talk at the end of February, but one of the few female pilots working in the Gulf happened to be at the Center that day waiting for the weather to clear and I took that opportunity to interview her (see Sharon Moore). Val and I agreed to reschedule the interview after Mardi Gras. We sat in her office and talked for a couple of hours.

Val got her first job related to the offshore oil and gas industry in 1967 when she was still in high school. She worked for an answering service that had a contract with a company working offshore, and she would take calls from people needing to talk to someone offshore. At that time, the companies only had radios, and she would take the phone call, contact the recipient over the radio, and then alternate holding the radio receiver between the mouthpiece and earpiece so the two people could talk to each other. When she finished high school, Val married and moved to New York for a couple of years. She and her husband moved to Houston and then she moved back to Morgan City. She worked for several companies that provided services to the offshore oil and gas industry and ended up in 1985 at Perry Flying Center, where she was still working at the time of the interview. While working at Perry, Val became involved in the Desk and Derrick Club (see DA 014, DA100).