“Alone With the Stars” (An Open Letter to Canadian Veteran Vern Flatekval About Female American Pilot and Pioneer Amelia Earhart (1897-1937)

“Dear Vern, how are you doing, our friend? Recently we came from Hawaii where we visited Pearl Harbor Museum. We had great impressions about that and remembered you in regards to the aviation show which took place nearby in Honolulu.

The touching story about your life rescuers, Russian female pilots during WWII, came to my mind when the hawaiian people mentioned the name of female American pilot and pioneer Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) who took off on last airplane trip on June 1, 1937 and disappeared somewhere in the Pacific.

The Hawaiians respect highly Amelia who became the first person in 1935 to fly solo from Hawaii to the mainland.

Amelia Earhart was determined to fly around the world. Replacing her first navigator with Fred Noonan and after several false starts, she began her round-the world-flight. Near the end of the trip, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan missed their expected landing on Howland Island in the Pacific and their fate is still uncertain.

Theories include crashing over the ocean, crashing on Howland Island or a nearby island without the ability to contact help, being shot down by the Japanese, or being captured or killed by the Japanese.

Vern, I remember in your story you said, that you saw the lady’s long hear flying in the Dresden war sky. This image was stuck in my mind. Look at the photo gallery below “Amelia Earhart”.

Amelia did not wear such a hair-do, did she? However, she is beautiful too, representing a woman willing to break out of traditional roles.

In the last letter to her husband she wrote:

“Please know that I am quite aware of the hazards. Women must try to da things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”

You see, Vern, she was a very brave woman, indeed. This is her reasoning of doing flights:

After midnight the moon set and I was alone with the stars . I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, and I need no other flight to convince me that the reason flyers  fly, whether they know it or not, is the esthetic appeal of flying”.

At the end of my writing about this renown pilot is the poem by Amelia Earhart:

“Courage is the price that

Life exacts for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not

Knows no release from little things:

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,                                                                                                                                                

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy

Can hear the sound of wings.

Nor can life grant us boon of living, compensate

For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate,

Unless we dare

The soul’s dominion

Each time we make a choice, we pay

With courage to behold the resistless day,

And count it fair.”

We wish you, Vern, good health and holding on as long as possible in this life.

Sincerely yours,

Valentina and Janko”