7. NR16020

I didn’t write yesterday. I mourned.

July 2, 1937 – 71 years ago, at 08:43 (Central Pacific time) Amelia Earhart left by radio a last message, then disappeared forever, along with Noonan, her co-pilot.

Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic (1928); she soloed the trip in 1932.

And she was Shirley Temple’s heroine, did you know that?

The fate of Earhart’s plane is still a mystery. On its last stretch during a flight around the world, the plane was unable to touch base with its rendez-vous point, probably fell short of fuel and sank to the bottom of the ocean. Or, less plausible, Earhart was captured by the Japanese and eventually became Tokyo Rose…

It is now believed she could have succeeded in landing her Lockheed Electra (designation NR16020) where, almost a decade earlier, a ship had ran aground. Signs indicate that she could have survived on that flat reef, at least for a while. The hypothesis has been advanced, after years of research, by TIGHAR, a group working on historic aircraft recovery.

But I must live with the idea that we might never know for sure.

As a kid, I loved Amelia Earhart. Every story about her. Every picture of her. Every letter composing her name. Each of her smiles in front of her plane. The fact she wore pants. Leather clothes. Her free, short haircut, wicks of hair disheveled by the wind or by the pilot helmet she had probably just removed before photographers went click-click-click. For they loved her so, too.

A look of determination in this long, thin – almost frail – body of hers. Something simple, kind also about her face.

It all helped me better accept Shirley Temple.

My paternal grand-mother and Amelia Earhart were from the same generation. Both reaching womanhood during the Great Depression. Both taking risks few women dared accept at the time.

I used to tell myself there was a link that went straight from Earhart to me. It passed through my grand-mother, who had two sons, my father of course, and my uncle, who became a pilot.

I often sat behind him as he flew a DC-3, a short burgundy curtain separating me from the cockpit, air pockets rocking us like mad, the wings on both sides beating as if we were a bird.

Every time, every time, I felt the profound joy of escape. I was the child nobody could handle, except my grand-mother, who lived almost at the North Pole, did I then think. And my uncle simply flew me there, all by myself with my suitcase.

This is how I started to dream of Earhart, far above the ground, totally in the clouds, not much older than Shirley Temple when she took her first tap dance lesson.

Laolao