“Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.”
Amelia Earhart (07/24/1898 – 07/02/1937) US pilot (went missing 07/02/1937; declared deceased 01/05/1939)
She had been one of the first to fly the Atlantic in 1928 and then flew solo from Newfoundland to Ireland in 1932. In 1935 she became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific from Honolulu to Oakland, California, and that trip was the subject of much of her talk in Derby.
In 1937, as Earhart decided to take on one last challenge – She wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world! She completed more than 20,000 miles of the journey before she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared on a particularly challenging and dangerous leg of their trip over the Pacific Ocean.
Her exploits helped open aviation up to women such as Eileen Collins, who on separate flights in the 1990s became the first female to pilot and to command the space shuttle.
What an amazing woman! I’m sure she would have been very happy to know that a woman commanded the space shuttle and that there are women out there who followed the rough path she had making it smoother and smoother for future women.