Guy Lochhead, 20/05/10
The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and the first person to fly solo from Honolulu to Oakland. She was an adventurous child whose earliest experience of flight was in a wooden box, off a homemade ramp tied to the top of a shed. She was an unhappy student, but compiled a scrapbook of successful women in male-dominated fields. She flew a Lockheed Vega called ‘Old Bessie, the fire horse’. She married a domineering husband who groomed her celebrity. She endorsed various brands, and had a clothing line. She disappeared over Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean in mysterious circumstances on an attempted world flight. What most interested me about the Earhart story is her childhood. She moved around a lot (due to her alcoholic father), and never felt settled. She described herself as ‘the girl in brown who walks alone’ in a school yearbook. Perhaps reference this. The fact that others so often used her as a tool dissuades me from including more of her.