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A friend of mine has died.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/21/us/robina-asti-dead.html
Robina was an amazing woman. I had known her for 30 years before the news broke that she was trans. Just the most amazing person you ever met. She lived in a Manhattan penthouse overlooking the East River, where she had set up her own futures trading room, just for her own account. She actually owned a seat on one of the commodity exchanges.
In addition to her flying, and instructor status, which the article recounts, she was also a radio amateur who volunteered as an FCC VEC, which is where I first met her, running exam sessions for new "ham" licensees. For years, she also volunteered to read for the blind, with a regularly-scheduled session at a recording studio at one of the institutes every two weeks, recording books on tape. And if that wasn't enough, she was an arbitrator for stock market disputes between customers and brokers.
I admired her from the beginning, and ever since. She was tough to keep up with, like when she took the stairs to her 16th floor penthouse. She explained that as an older pilot, she had to pass a flight physical every 6 months, so she had to keep fit. When I found out she was trans, thanks to her ground-breaking, equality-setting suit against the Social Security Administration, I was even more amazed. Although, I admit to being annoyed to discover that some of her "cover stories" were just that. She wasn't a woman civilian test pilot for Grumman in WWII who ferried planes back and forth to Europe, she was actually in the service. She wasn't the first woman EE graduate at her school (except spiritually, of course). But, all was forgiven. I greatly admired that woman for everything she was, everything she did, and the example she set in everything she touched.
A friend of mine was one of her student pilots. I was the first to let him know about her passing. He wrote, "She taught me how to fly, and how to live." We're all in mourning. She may have been 99 and lived a long and wonderful life, but she is going to be missed.
Comments
Congratulations
She (and you) were lucky to have known one another.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
WOW!
She was one truly amazing person. I read the NY Times article but you added a whole lot more to let us admire her. May she rest in peace.
An Angel
Whether or not there's a heaven, she's one angel who earned her wings a long time ago.
Life passes too quick
The good ones we never have enough time to share with them. The bad ones seem to linger on forever.
Sometimes it's hard to accept both are in our lives to enrich our own life as we experience and come to understand why. It's a rough learning curve but diamonds never truly shine until they are burnished and polished. People are the same.
Hugs Pippa, you have been blessed to know such a person in your life.
Barb
Life is a gift meant to be lived not worn until it's worn out.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl