R.I.P., Sally Ride

---

---

Sally Ride.

Twenty–nine years ago, it seemed like the ideal name for America's first woman in space. Well, it seemed that way to me, anyway.

And I didn't even realize it had already been immortalized in a song, "Mustang Sally."

---

"All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride.
All you want to do is ride around Sally, ride, Sally, ride."

---

(I'll admit, it doesn't seem like much without the music.)

She joined NASA in 1978 and, in 1983, she rode on the space shuttle Challenger, becoming America's first woman in space.

She wasn't the first woman of any nationality to travel in space. That distinction belonged to Valentina Tereshkova of Russia, who flew in space 20 years before Ride.

But she was a pioneer — an American pioneer.

It would be a perfect narrative, I suppose, if it could be demonstrated that Ride's parents named her after the song. But that isn't possible. Ride was born in 1951. The song was first recorded in the mid–1960s.

Ironically, Ride's historic trip into space came almost 20 years to the day after Tereshkova's.

And Tereshkova and Ride had something else in common. As young adults, neither woman seemed destined for space travel. Tereshkova worked in a factory; Ride was an aspiring tennis player.

But Tereshkova was recruited for the Soviet Union's space program. Ride was among thousands of people who answered an advertisement seeking applicants for NASA.

So their groundbreaking stories, while similar, were not identical.

In fact, there were times back in the 1980s when I thought Ride's achievement was overshadowed by other, higher–profile advances for females — almost two years before Ride went into space, Sandra Day O'Connor became the first female Supreme Court justice. And the year after her trip into space, Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman to be on a major party's national ticket as Walter Mondale's running mate.

There are certain ironies connected with Ride's death at this particular time. Ride died of pancreatic cancer yesterday at the age of 61.

For one thing, it is ironic that she should die less than a year before the 30th anniversary of her first space trip. What a tragedy it is that she will not be here for that.

It is also ironic that Ride's death should coincide with the renewed search for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's plane. That search, incidentally, ended recently with more new questions than answers.

Ride's death came the day before the 115th anniversary of Earhart's birth. Another irony. Both women were pioneers in aviation.

It is even more ironic, I think, that Ride's death and the search for Earhart's plane should happen at a time when the national conversation has been centered on Barack Obama's remark about how entrepreneurs did not build their businesses alone.

No man is an island, the president and his supporters contend.

But, if anything, Ride and Earhart did the things they did in spite of the resistance they encountered. It was probably more pronounced in Earhart's day because few women attempted to succeed in any field that was regarded as the domain of men — but little had really changed in 50 years.

I have a vivid memory of the men in the central Arkansas community where I was working at the time dismissing Ride's accomplishment and earnestly wondering why she would want to do what men had been doing since the dawn of America's space program.

So I know that misogynistic attitudes were alive and well when Ride flew in space.

It may not fit with the president's election–year narrative, but that entrepreneurial, risk–taking spirit isn't limited to the business world.

And, while Ride got her opportunity with the help she received along the way, as we all do, her success as an astronaut was entirely her own doing.

Rest in peace, Sally Ride.

A Name on a Suitcase

I recall one occasion when my grandmother — my father's mother — visited my family when I was a child.

My memory is that my grandmother's visits were rare.

Both sets of my grandparents lived in Dallas, Texas, when I was a child. That made sense. My parents grew up in Dallas.

But, when I was growing up, we lived in central Arkansas, which was more than 300 miles from Dallas. I would have loved to have seen my grandparents more frequently than I did, but distance was a factor.

I lost both of my grandfathers before I was 10 years old, and, by that time, my father's mother was well into her 70s. As a younger woman, she had accompanied my grandfather to places in the U.S. where he taught religion and philosophy — as well as to the Philippines, where they were missionaries for a time — but I guess she didn't have much stamina for road trips after my grandfather died.

Typically, when I was growing up, we visited her in Dallas. We stayed with my mother's mother — she had a house with room for guests whereas my father's mother lived in a one–bedroom apartment that was too small to accommodate a family of four — but we always made time to spend with my father's mother, took her out to eat and stuff like that.

Ordinarily, we made about three or four trips to Dallas each year. My mother's mother often came to visit us, but, as I say, my father's mother rarely did.

It is primarily for that reason, I guess, that I remember her visit.

Another reason I remember that visit is because I had just started taking piano lessons, and my grandmother brought me a music box that was shaped like a bust of Beethoven. When you wound it up, it played Beethoven's Minuet in G.

(I've still got that music box, too. And it still works. It's a little banged up. The paint is missing in places, but Grandmother gave it to me to encourage me, and it still does, all these years later.)

I also remember that visit because I recall, quite vividly, being with Grandmother in the guest room and watching her unpack her suitcase. I noticed the name on the suitcase was Amelia Earhart.

I knew that wasn't my grandmother's name so I asked her, "Who is Amelia Earhart?"

Grandmother replied, "She was a very brave woman," and she proceeded to tell me, in words that would make sense to a child, how Amelia Earhart had been a pioneer for women in aviation.

No one knew what became of her, Grandmother told me. She disappeared while trying to fly around the world.

Maybe her plane went off course and crashed into the ocean. Maybe she managed to land the plane safely but was captured and then executed — perhaps by natives, perhaps by Japanese soldiers. Possibly the plane crashed, but she and/or her navigator survived for awhile. Nobody knew.

I was too young to understand the details of the case, but I have studied it from time to time since then. It continues to intrigue me, as it intrigues others.

And tomorrow, as the search for the wreckage of Earhart's plane resumes in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, I wish the searchers well.

I don't know if they'll find anything, but it would be great if they could. Miraculous even. As I say, it was 75 years ago today that Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared.

After all this time, no one thinks the remains of either can be found and brought back to the United States for burial.

But it is possible that the searchers will find wreckage from the plane. If they do, it might bring us closer to solving the mystery.

Grainy photographs taken decades ago have prompted some researchers to believe they have seen evidence of a plane in the waters off a coral atoll called Nikumaroro. That — and today's anniversary — prompted the search.

Originally, that search was going to begin today, but it was postponed until tomorrow.

There have been a handful of truly enduring mysteries, and the Earhart disappearance is one of the greatest of them.

Searchers found the Titanic, and Mark Felt revealed that he had been the Deep Throat who kept the Watergate investigation focused.

Perhaps now we will find out what really happened to Amelia Earhart.

A Mystery That Remains Unsolved

I had high hopes for the movie "Amelia" that opens today in theaters across the country.

I've always enjoyed a good "biopic," as such films are called — as long as they have something meaningful to say or to contribute to discussions about their subjects. And Amelia Earhart was probably one of the first historical figures I heard anything about. But I never learned as much about her as I would have liked.

I have a vague memory from my childhood of luggage that belonged to my grandmother that bore Earhart's name. In hindsight, I suppose the luggage was some sort of line that was marketed for women. In my grandparents' day, that may have been what luggage makers did — perhaps there were other luggage lines that were named after pioneering pilots.

For all I know, Granddaddy may have had luggage that was named for Charles Lindbergh. Or the Wright Brothers. I don't know. I don't recall looking at his luggage. I might have more of a memory of that if he hadn't died when I was in first grade.

But my vague memory includes a brief conversation I had with my grandmother. I was about 8 or 9, I guess, and she had come to visit us. I remember looking at the label on her suitcase, and I asked her who Amelia Earhart was. I probably thought it was the name of the person who designed the luggage.

Grandmother simply replied, "She was a pilot." Nothing else was said because, at about that moment, my mother appeared in the doorway to tell us that dinner was ready. And I don't recall ever discussing it with her again.

When I got older, the name came up in history class but only briefly. And I was never able to get any of my teachers — whether in high school or college — to say much more than Earhart disappeared while flying around the world. It's been 72 years now, and Earhart's disappearance is still a mystery.

Anyway, when I heard that a film about Earhart was going to be released this fall, my curiosity was aroused again. But I realized that anything that the movie had to say would be speculative in nature. I'm certain that, if the filmmaker had uncovered some information that could answer the enduring question of what happened, it would have been the subject of numerous articles and documentaries. But nothing like that has happened.

Speculation is OK with me, though. If it makes people think about what may have happened and they start asking questions, that's fine. "JFK," after all, didn't definitively answer the questions that have swirled around the Kennedy assassination for decades, but it prompted people to ask them.

Unfortunately, from what I've been reading, "Amelia" doesn't seem to contribute anything to the discussion of what happened when she disappeared in July 1937.

Earhart's destination on July 2, 1937, was a sliver of an island in the Pacific Ocean called Howland Island. There are plenty of theories about what happened:

• One theory, which has been popular with quite a few researchers, is that Earhart's plane ran out of fuel and was ditched at sea. The "crash and sink" theory certainly would explain why no wreckage has ever been found, although many deep sea expeditions have tried to locate the plane.


• Another theory holds that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, landed on another island and eventually died. Searchers on the island never found any plane wreckage, but they did discover some items, like improvised tools, an aluminum panel and a piece of plexiglas, that encouraged none other than Earhart's stepson to believe the mystery of her disappearance had been solved.


• Other theories, which have been mentioned in documentaries, have suggested that Earhart was a spy who was captured by the Japanese and either executed or forced to make propaganda broadcasts as "Tokyo Rose." It has even been suggested that Earhart survived, returned to the United States and assumed a new identity, but that claim, which originated in a book titled "Amelia Earhart Lives," was refuted.

An exploration of an existing theory — or, perhaps, the presentation of a new theory supported by new technology — would have been an acceptable reason for a film about Earhart.

Lisa Schwarzbaum of EW.com writes that "Amelia" is a "frustratingly old–school, Hollywood–style, inspirational biopic."

"The mystery we ought to be paying attention to is: What really happened on the legendary American aviator's final, fatal flight in 1937?" Schwarzbaum writes. "But the question audiences are left with is this: How could so tradition–busting a role model have resulted in so square, stiff, and earthbound a movie? Why present such a modern woman in such a fusty format?"

Similarly, Manohla Dargis writes, in the New York Times, that the movie is an "exasperatingly dull production."

And Claudia Puig writes, in USA Today, that "it's too bad that a film about a daring and audacious woman taking on staggering challenges plays it so safe."

Of course, those are critics' opinions. And I'm usually the first to say that people should form their own opinions and not take a critic's word for it.

It may well be an entertaining film. Hilary Swank certainly bears a striking resemblance to Earhart. So perhaps there are worse ways to spend a few hours.

But I think I'll pass on it. If The History Channel chooses to take this opportunity to show some documentaries on Earhart, I'd like to see some genuine footage of her achievements.

She was certainly a remarkable figure, and her accomplishments are worth retelling — even if we don't know what became of her.