Chicago, 1936
For Barbara Markey, life began at Fairmount, a small private college in a west suburb of Chicago. Not that she and her widowed mother could afford for her to go to the exclusive school, mainly for the daughters of wealthy North Shore families. She had been granted a small scholarship for needy students, earned extra money by waiting on tables at a sorority house on campus, and lived with her mother in a small apartment in the city.
She liked college, but her real passion was flying, ever since she was a little girl and had read about the adventures of pioneer women aviators. When she learned there was a small airport not far from Fairmount, she got extra work there on Sunday afternoons, hoping to earn enough to pay for flying lessons.
Red Olafson, the airport's owner and chief mechanic, a short, stocky, balding Swede, studied her. "Do you know how to sew? Or better yet, how to use a sewing machine?"
"Yes, but what's there to sew around airplanes?"
Olafson took her to a hangar where he showed her the tears in the wings of a biplane. "Planes get pretty beat-up, by the wind and weather. The wings are covered with cloth and they tear, so they need to be patched. I've got some linen bed sheets you can sew them back up with."
Barbara agreed to be an airport seamstress, on the condition she be paid in flying lessons.
"Oh, we've got another Amelia Earhart on our hands, have we?" But he agreed. Though very busy, time was less precious to him than money, as it was with Barbara.
One Sunday afternoon at the airport, after waiting on tables at breakfast in the sorority house, Barbara saw the most beautiful girl she had ever seen. Slender and of medium height, with dark brown hair like hers, the girl wore an expensive tan sweater and sporty plaid pleated skirt.
As the beautiful girl stood in the entrance to the hangar where Barbara was sewing a patch for an airplane's wing, she recognized her. She was one of the girls on whom she waited in the sorority house cafeteria. From head to brown penny loafers, she looked Class, though not stuck-up, like some of the other girls at the house.
"Hi," the girl said, approaching. "I've seen you before, haven't I? At the sorority house?"
Barbara liked the way the girl put it. She did not say, "Don't you wait on tables at the sorority house?"
"Yes," Barbara said, then introduced herself.