AE walked the lonely upper deck and fussed with her thoughts. She stopped at the railing and looked down at Lady Heath’s Avian tied down on the fantail of the ship. Up the metal ladder from the deck below came the clatter of feet. It was her good friend and manager Captain Railey.
“Hilton,” she said to him, “I dread all the things coming up—the business I suspect GP has been promoting in New York in my behalf.” She paused. “I’m not the type.”
Railey smiled half-seriously. “Ticker tape, receptions, dinners,” he said. “At least that.”
“You don’t have to tell me what’s in store for me,” she answered. “I know.” Her forehead wrinkled; she continued: “But why? All I contributed to the Friendship flight—apart from the fact that accidentally I happen to be the first woman to fly across, or rather to be flown across, the North Atlantic—was to lie on the floor of the fuselage like a sack of potatoes and admire the lovely clouds we were flying over. That’s all I did, Hilton.”
Captain Railey did not interrupt Amelia, now fierce in working out her own thoughts. He watched her long fingers grip the railing and turn white as they tightly turned back and forth around the wood.
Amelia looked out over the waves; then she swung around quickly. “But someday,” she said strongly, “I will have to do it alone, if only to vindicate myself. I’m a false heroine now, and that makes me feel very guilty. Someday I will redeem my self-respect. I can’t live without it.”
Hilton Railey understood. She did not want to be the symbol of something she was not. Now she would have to spend the next few years becoming what she was already in the eyes of the press and the public—a woman flier who deserved the acclaim she had received.
Amelia looked again at the Avro Avian below. The fuselage was covered with medals and mementoes to which was added: “To Amelia Earhart from Mary Heath. Always think with your stick forward.”
She had bent her thoughts forward and they had carried her to a resolute conclusion: she had to become a recognized flier in her own right.