COURTESY OF LYNDA MEEKS
Exit
you’re a pilot? You mean like a real
pilot?’ As if there were any other
kind,” she huffs, recalling with some
disdain all the cups of coffee she’s
been asked to fetch when mistaken
for a flight attendant.
Her presentations to groups of
girls, in classrooms or at Girl Scout
troop meetings, are usually the first
time any girl has seen a woman pilot.
Meeks walks them through the basics of navigation, of flying and controlling an aircraft.
“I show them if something seems
overwhelming and you’ll never be
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able to figure it out, what you do is
to break it down into little pieces,”
Meeks says. “That’s the lesson for
everything you want to do in life.”
Meeks has been asked if she is “a
boy hater” by critics and has been
told that her program seems unfair.
“I’ve tried to give it to both and
what ends up happening is the boys,
once they find out I [was] in the
army, want to know if I shot anybody
and what kind of weapons I had on
my helicopter. That dominates the
conversation,” she says. “The boys
are so assertive that the girls just
really get lost. It’s better to have the
room full of girls so they just feel really free to express themselves.”
HUFFINGTON
10.14.12
Three Girl
Scouts pose
in Meeks’
various
uniforms.
Left to
right: army
helicopter
pilot, army
officer and
pilot.