Ninety-Nines Magic (Ninety-Nines Magazine May/June 2023)
by Liz Booker
This article was published in the May/June 2023 issue of The Ninety-Nines Magazine.
Gold Coast Chapter
Retired Coast Guard helicopter pilot and Literary Aviatrix on social media where she promotes books featuring women in aviation along with the Literary Aviatrix website and author interview podcast.
I experienced Ninety-Nines magic at Sun’n’Fun 2022 in Lakeland, Florida, and witnessed the effect its spell cast on Amanda Barker. Last April, I arrived the Ninety-Nines clubhouse as a local chapter meeting was in progress. It was a full house, so I pulled up a chair from the porch and sat outside the doorway. As they finished chapter business and went around the room for introductions, there were footsteps on the stairs behind me. The greeter on watch asked, “Are you interested in the Ninety-Nines?”
“I don’t know,” was the response I heard, and I turned to see Amanda, wide-eyed and timid.
My networking impulse kicked into overdrive. What better way to get to know the Ninety-Nines than to hear them introduce themselves? I pulled her up onto the porch and offered my chair so she could listen. She reluctantly accepted, but the moment she sat down, Donna Miller, who was sitting next to me inside the threshold, got up and pulled Amanda into the room to her seat.
The ladies introduced themselves. There was one in her eighties and had flown the length of the North and South American continents, another who was 15, who had just soloed a glider, and everything in between. Amanda’s eyes were already red and welling before it was her turn. She shared that she was in her mid-thirties, a single mom, had always wanted to fly, but it seemed out of reach. Something told her that now was the time to start. She needed a change, but it was overwhelming. How could she ever afford it?
As she spoke, she choked on tears, and the rest of us did with her. When she finished speaking, the room chimed in with their stories; others who had reached that moment in their lives when they knew it was time—the single moms, the ones who scraped and scrimped to afford lessons—and how the experience had changed them. We argued over who would pay her chapter dues. The room embraced her in a metaphorical and literal hug. Almost a year later, this image still hangs vividly in my mind.
I was back in Lakeland in June to volunteer for the Air Race Classic and set up a table of books at the Girls’ Aviation STEM event at the Florida Air Museum. I looked up from the table and there was Amanda. In the ten short weeks since she had walked into that clubhouse at Sun’n’Fun, she had sold her house (for a tidy profit), found a job at an FBO, parleyed herself into the Co-Vice Chair position for the Suncoast Ninety-Nines, and had done a discovery flight and two instructional flights with 2.4 hours in her logbook. She wasn’t timid anymore. She sat with me and another helper, Kelli Martin, in her twenties, while the kids were off doing other activities. Amanda mentored Kelli and gave her advice on scholarships and jobs, and how to navigate toward her aviation dreams. When she invited me to speak at the Suncoast Chapter’s meeting in October, I walked in to find her at the head of the table, leading the meeting.
Today, Amanda is one cross-country away from her Private rating, she’s created a local study group that meets once a month and features CFIs who volunteer their time, she’s on the board of both Suncoast Ninety-Nines and Lakeland WAI and has increased both chapters’ membership, and she plans to volunteer at this year’s Sun’n’Fun and Air Race Classic. Kelli Martin, the young woman she mentored last summer, is in her study group and hopes to start flight training soon.
There is incomparable power in the sisterhood of organizations like The Ninety-Nines—women lifting each other to their potential. And it isn’t lost on me, as I navigate the diverse stories of women in aviation throughout our history, that our sisters from the past embraced that very same power. They led the way, and we pay it forward.
