“It started with me seeing a photo of a plane in a Christmas catalogue and pointing to it. From that moment, that was what I wanted. As a child I would dream of flying, would beg my parents to go to the airport, watch planes take off and land. Around the age of 6, I flew in my first plane. It was all I ever wanted to do.” At the same time, Lepley, who was assigned male at birth, explains that “from my earliest recollection I knew I was a girl. Yet societal, family and religious expectations would not allow it. I didn’t even know what trans was. As a child of the 70s and 80s there was no Google, Internet, and so on. It was only through some research in the card catalogues of our library did I find a few stories on others like me. One was Christine Jorgensen. The other was Renée Richards.” As Lepley was coming to terms with her gender reality, her drive to become a pilot was unabated. Like many trans people, Lepley focussed on her professional career and achieved substantial success — in many ways, at the expense of her personal life — before transitioning to her gender identity. “When I was 15, my dad took me to the local community college in Traverse City, Michigan, which had an aviation program,” Lepley continues. “We met with the Administrator of that department and learned what I would need to do to prepare for my career. At the age of 16, I would begin ground school. In the mornings and early afternoon, I would attend high school. In the late afternoon? College.” “By the time I was 21, I had secured my first airline job as a flight engineer on a Lockheed Electra for an airline called Zantop, based in Willow Run Airport in Ypsilanti, MI. I was on top of the world, traveling to cities throughout the United States,” Lepley says. Today, Lepley, an MD-11 first officer for a cargo airline, is based in Anchorage and type-rated for the SA-227, B-757/767 and MD-11. In addition to her type ratings, she has flown the DC-9 and engineered on the L-188, DC-8 and B-747. Lepley flies the professionally challenging MD-11 aircraft for a cargo airline. Image: John Walton Looking back, Lepley notes that it was only as she achieved her professional goals and career success that the incongruity of living in the male gender became insurmountable. Gender identity is, of course, not a choice, and coming to the realisation that one is trans — and then making the decision to live an authentic life — is an often difficult journey. In aviation terms, Lepley describes knowing that she was female yet living in a male body as listening to the HF frequencies with constant static every hour of the day for more than thirty years. That courageous decision to confront the need to live as the same gender in one’s brain, particularly for those people who transition to living in a gender into which they were not born, often comes with consequences, however. Lepley’s transition cost her a marriage, her home, retirement, and friendships, as well as a church community, but the reaction from her employer and the aviation community was also a concern. “Weighing heavily on my mind was the career that I worked so hard to obtain. Would I lose that as well?” Lepley asked herself. “Aviation is very much a male dominated field, with less than 6% flying as women. I was very fearful of coming out. How would I be perceived? How would I be treated? Would I be accepted? These were just some of the multiple questions that I processed.” “Fortunately,” Lepley notes, “I had a role model of a woman who transitioned a few years prior to me. We met on a few occasions while overseas. She offered her help and assistance when it came to opening the door for my transition and instrumental in my success.” “When I finally sat down with my chief pilot, words just could not describe the anxiety I was feeling. Here I am about to tell another man: ‘I am a woman’. Fortunately, he was already briefed on what I was about to say and stopped me. He said, ‘Don’t worry about it…I am here for you.’” Le