When I was growing up, I never had the chance to sit like this with a pilot or get into an airplane until I had the chance to fly one. After I qualified as a pilot, I sat down and thought: ‘What can I do to give the upcoming generation, especially those who grew up in a village, like me, an opportunity to do that?’

At the time, as a girl in my community, the best you could do was be a nurse or a teacher. There was little inspiration to be a pilot. I had to rely on my own research and the little career guidance to learn more about aviation.

EVERY PILOT REMEMBERS his first flight. For me, it was in a Cessna 172 at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, in 1968.

I come from a family of pilots. Both my grandfathers flew s in the Second World War, and my uncle can fly a plane. And, so, about five years ago, I started learning for the huge pleasure of being above the world and being given a vision of the sweep of it.

Listening to the planes take off and land” as a youngster, combined with family air travel and road trips between posts, fueled her interest in aviation. “We moved every two years,

I always wondered how it would be to be in the sky like a bird, flying that huge machine.

You know what? I’m going to fly,” she said, “and that’s what motivated me my entire life, that idea I had as a young child.

It's so funny isn't it, when you suddenly have something to write about you find your voice, and it's amazing the opportunities. I'm petrified of flying, but I actually flew a plane myself.

I want to be the one flying that plane.

I had always wanted to be an ambassador and a pilot. When I finally started flying, I didn’t want to be anything close to being a pilot.

My life is forever connected with aviation. I cannot live without the sky. I continue to improve my flying skills on modern domestic aircraft, I dream that, perhaps, I will have to lift a peaceful aircraft into space.

The greatest thrill was the first time I ever flew with the Flying Tigers before I joined them. You see, they didn’t think much of us regular fliers. I had come in and gone to sleep under the mosquito netting, when a bunch of the Flying Tigers burst into my room. Not knowing what was happening, I grabbed the revolver I kept under my pillow and pointed it at them. They had come to ask if I would go on a mission with them, never thinking that I would. I readily agreed. They were really testing me out.

That’s almost like the daft things you believe when you’re really little, like I use to believe I could fly. I believed it for years, but it had to be kept secret. I knew if I ever told anyone or showed it off to anyone, I’d lose the power. And if I doubted it, and tried it out just to see, I’d lose the power — so I didn’t. I believed in it. I knew I would be able to fly when there really was a need. Which, fortunately for me, there never was.

"I grew up on a farm in a three-room shack. I was the oldest of eight children. We were very poor. We didn’t have running water. We didn’t have electricity, so we didn’t have TV or radio. No one had health care. There were no health facilities for miles and miles. The first time I saw a doctor was when I was a freshman in college. So I couldn’t grow up wanting to go into public health, or even wanting to be a doctor, because I’d never even heard of that. You can’t be what you can’t see".