Through A Father’s Lens This is a portrait of my daughter, Laura Joyce-Hubbard, in 1999, at the controls of a C-130 Air Force Cargo aircraft. She was one of two women Instructor Pilots assigned to the 39th Airlift squadron, Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, at the time. She and her crew had just landed on a USAF Thunderbird Support Mission in Mississippi. Laura selected the C-130 because it supported special forces and was known for its versatile missions—from humanitarian relief to low level formation flying to the ability to land on short dirt strips in remote hotspots of the world. The C-130 was reserved for men only to fly combat sorties until the combat exclusion ban was lifted for aviation in 1993. Laura was in the first wave of women to command crews into the combat zone of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1996 and 1998. Laura first thought of flying at age eight, when she read a biography about Amelia Earhart. At that time, we were living aboard a sailboat, and there was only room for one book on the boat in her V-birth. So she read and re-read that book continually. When she read the Earhart biography, flying a C-130 and securing an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy were accomplishments reserved for men only. She didn’t know then that eventually, she’d become a cadet in the tenth class to admit women to the USAF Academy. Today, Laura is a retired Major and Poet Laureate living in Highland Park, IL. We first collaborated on papermaking at the Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, in 2002. Laura taught me how to make paper in the Picante Paper studio. I shot this photo of Laura in her C-130 on film, and it is printed on paper we made together. Materials: Abaca and Cotton.