All in a Day's Work

By TAD BARTIMUS

When I was growing up I accepted as gospel that girls couldn't do certain things. When you're a kid you believe what you're taught because you don't know any better.

How could I possibly have accepted the edicts handed down by my fighter pilot father and his flying friends that girls couldn't fly an Air Force jet or become an astronaut? My only excuse is that I never doubted that they sincerely believed women weren't strong enough, tough enough, "anything" enough to fly for a living. I wasn't old enough to prove them wrong.

Of course, they were. On July 24th, the 102ND anniversary of aviatrix Amelia Earhart's birth, the last, lingering doubts that women can't cut it in the cockpit evaporated when U.S. Air Force Col. Eileen Collins commanded Columbia on America's 95th space shuttle mission.

Eileen Collins is not an anomaly. Neither are the 28 women in NASA's current corps of 117 astronauts, the 609 women flying for United Airlines, the 337 women pilots at American Airlines, and the thousands of women in commercial and civilian aviation.

Earhart, who said she flew "for the fun of it," set many of the early "firsts" for women pilots. But hanging around her legend, and by extension around all women who fly, has been a whiff of failure because she disappeared at the controls. She and navigator Fred Noonan were lost on July 1, 1937 between New Guinea and Howland Island in the Pacific while attempting a record-setting round-the-world flight in a Lockheed Electra 10E.

Earhart and Jackie Cochran -- the first woman to break the sound barrier, in 1953 -- were my childhood heroines. I dreamed of being like them until my father told me, with absolute authority, I could never do it because I was a girl. We had the same conversation when I wanted to attend the Air Force Academy. "They don't take women, and they never will," he said.

I was taught that my aviatrix idols were anomalies. I learned that nearly all women pilots, such as the 1,000 who served as WASPs -- Women's Air Force Service Pilots -- during World War II, and those who sought steady work as corporate, bush and crop-dusting pilots, had a very tough time of it. I was an obedient girl, not yet independent enough to pursue my own goals. I believed authority figures whole cloth.

I put away my Earhart scrapbooks and flying dreams in 1962 when Congress told 13 women who'd passed rigorous physical and mental tests they couldn't join the all-male astronaut corps because they lacked military jet test pilot experience -- a field closed to them. My dad said, "I told you so."

It took 21 more years for Sally Ride to become the first American woman in space. My father was alive to see it. By then women were flying Air Force jets and going to the Air Force Academy, too. I didn't have to say anything; their actions spoke louder than my words.

I'm sorry dad wasn't able to celebrate with me on Feb. 3, 1995, when then-Lt. Col. Collins piloted the shuttle Discovery into orbit, carrying with her a scarf that had belonged to Amelia Earhart, silver wings of the WASP corps, and talismans from some of the first 13 female astronaut candidates denied their chance because of their sex.

Collins piloted a shuttle flight again in March 1997, and now has given us another stellar performance at the controls. Within seconds of liftoff on July 23, Columbia lost two computers that regulate the main engine nozzles; Collins handled the potential emergency with skill and aplomb, and at the end of the mission brought her ship and four crew members home safely.

Eileen Collins is not an anomaly. Neither are the 28 women in NASA's current corps of 117 astronauts, the 609 women flying for United Airlines, the 337 women pilots at American Airlines, and the thousands of women in commercial and civilian aviation. Never again will a little girl who wants to fly be told "you can't " just because of her gender.

"I knew that if our generation of women did our jobs right, eventually we'd get there," said Col. Collins, who's finally, irrevocably, once-and-for-all proved it.

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