Shuttle Chief Eclipsed Earhart, Gore Proclaims
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HOUSTON — Astronaut Eileen Collins, the first female shuttle commander, was welcomed back from space Wednesday and hailed by Vice President Al Gore as a bigger hero than Amelia Earhart.
“She has not only equaled but surpassed Amelia Earhart in the history of flight,” Gore told the welcoming crowd, which was filled with a larger-than-usual proportion of women and girls.
In February 1995, the 42-year-old Air Force colonel became the first woman to pilot a shuttle on what was her first shuttle mission.
She took with her a scarf worn by Earhart, an early aviation pioneer who vanished over the Pacific in 1937 while attempting to become the first woman to fly around the globe.
As Collins’ 3-year-old daughter Bridget, clad in a jumper bearing the Stars and Stripes, sat in the front row of the audience, her mother grinned graciously as Gore congratulated her.
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