Meeting Amelia Earhart
Meeting Amelia Earhart Meeting Amelia Earhart It was October, 1936, and I was nine years old. I was following my older brother, Tommy, up into the hills near our home in Oakland, California. Tommy was always ahead of me, doing things I couldn't do. I knew it was because I was younger, but he said it was because I was a girl. When I finally reached him at the top of the hill, he had hidden our lunch up in a tree. "Try and reach it!" he said. I couldn't reach our lunches. "You're such a baby
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Meeting Amelia Earhart
Meeting Amelia Earhart
It was October, 1936, and I was nine years old.I was following my older brother, Tommy, up into the hills near our home in Oakland, California.
Tommy was always ahead of me, doing things I couldn't do.I knew it was because I was younger, but he said it was because I was a girl.
When I finally reached him at the top of the hill, he had hidden our lunch up in a tree."Try and reach it!" he said. I couldn't reach our lunches.
"You're such a baby," he said, picking up a rock and throwing it against a redwood tree.Then both of us heard it: the loud buzz of an airplane!
There weren't many planes back then.No one we knew had ever even flown in one, and here was one right above us!It came to a bumpy landing not 500 feet away from us.The daring pilot climbed out in a brisk way and began fumbling with the engine.
"Come on!" Tommy said, running toward the plane."Maybe the pilot will let us sit in the cockpit!"
The pilot was wearing a leather jacket and a cap with a buckle.When the pilot heard us coming, he unbuckled the elegant cap and ran a quick hand through his short hair.
Then Tommy's mouth flew open. "You're a lady pilot!" he said.
The pilot laughed. "My friends and I have been called a lot of things," she said,"'ladybirds,' 'angels,' and 'sweethearts of the air.'We're still trying to be called just aviators."
"Are there lots of women who fly?" I asked. I had never heard of such a thing.
"Oh, yes," she answered. "There are hundreds, and I hope each year more will try it."
"Girls want to fly?" my brother asked."Sister Sally is brave for a girl, but I can't see her flying."
It's funny that I didn't hear the insult.I only heard that my brother thought I was brave! But our companion frowned.
"Girls can be just as daring as boys.They can try whatever boys try - and sometimes they try things boys haven't," said the outspoken stranger.
Tommy laughed, but the stranger looked at me closely."Do you want to hear a story?" she asked me.
"You're too young to remember when Charles Lindbergh flew his plane,The Spirit of Saint Louis, across the Atlantic all by himself in 1927," she said."But, he was the first person to do that, and it made all of us pilots want to do it too.A year later, an elegant woman in England paid to send me on a flight with Lindbergh as a passenger."
"That's not so brave," Tommy said, quite rudely. "You were just a passenger."
