On any given night you can find us down at Aero Club, which feels more like an extension of our living room than a local dive bar. In the corner by the back pool table, there's a little shelf with a lamp in the shape of a rocket on it and above it, a framed photograph of the picture you see here. I love staring at this photo and I've spent plenty of moscow mules doing just that. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's one of my favorite pictures ever, but I almost feel silly because I don't know why. If I had to put my finger on it though, I'd say it has something to do with her casual confidence and how happy and relaxed she looks. It's calming somehow and always makes me smile.
Mostly though, I want to know what happened to this girl and who she is today, if she's still alive. I would hope so. She's got to be about 20 in the picture, which is only from the '70s. A quick Google search yielded nothing and on a whim I emailed Southwest, the airline where she worked as a flight attendant, but I doubt they'll know/write back. Was she as happy as she looked? How long was she a flight attendant? Did she hate the uniform or rock it? Does it make her happy that the photo is as iconic as it is? She would be incredible to interview.
I think the reason I seek out interviews from people who inspire me in some way, is because it's the most interesting form of writing for me. I love the challenge of drawing out what makes that person unique, of allowing people who are idolized to become human, of making them think about themselves from a different perspective. It's funny because so little of the interview is "written" by me, just the questions, but research has to go into the questions to make them effective. Maybe it's the recruiter side of me influencing the writer side of me that makes so interested in the interview form or maybe the writer side of me is what made me a natural fit for the work I do. Whatever the case, to me, interviews are like a scavenger hunt for a person's truth and when I'm inspired by a person, there is nothing I'm more curious about than what that truth is.
