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Connie Tobias poses with the Bleriot plane Harriet Quimby flew across the English Channel in 1912. The plane is owned by the Collings Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports living history events. In the mid-'70s, Connie Tobias mapped out a strategy to soar. Today, the US Airways captain is fighting for the fame of her heroine. By Sally Parker Connie Tobias watched a jet paint an arc across the sky and said to herself, "That's what I want to do." Trouble was, in 1975, only a handful of women became airline pilots. If women had an unsquelchable urge for adventure, they climbed mountains, pedaled cross-country, rafted the fastest whitewaters of the world. In fact, at the moment she vowed to someday fly, Tobias was taking a breather on a bridge during a cross-country bicycle tour. But adventure that kept her feet on the ground -- or at least tucked inside a raft -- was not enough for Tobias. Like the aviation pioneers before her, she made a plan to take to the skies. Her plan brought Tobias, AAS '77 and BGS '78, to Ohio University, where she studied aviation in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology and completed the coursework for a master's degree in engineering. These days Tobias does just what she set out to do. She is an airline pilot with US Airways, flying international routes on an Airbus 330 heavy jet. In her 26 years of flying, she has logged more than 16,000 flight hours in 60 kinds of aircraft and has made more than 400 trans-Atlantic crossings. Harriet Quimby would be proud. Born in Michigan in 1875, Quimby became the first American woman to earn a pilot's license (No. 37, in 1911, to be exact) and the first woman to pilot a plane across the English Channel. An adventurous journalist and photographer with Leslie's Weekly at the turn of the last century, she was a woman ahead of her time.     Tobias bears an uncanny resemblance to Quimby, featured on this stamp issued in 1991. She remembers seeing it for the first time and thinking, "My goodness, that's my high school picture!" Yet today, Quimby's name is unfamiliar outside aviation circles. "You ask most people who the first woman pilot was in America and they answer, almost to a T, 'Amelia Earhart,'" Tobias says. So last year, Tobias decided to spread the word. In a replica of the pioneer's purple satin flying suit and complementary scarf, goggles, boots and gloves, she takes Quimby's story to museums, classrooms and aviation events across the country. She also tells audiences what it's like to be an airline pilot 90 years after Quimby's day. And sometimes Tobias gets to fly like Quimby did. At an aviation heritage festival last summer, she tasted the excitement of flying an original 1909 Bleriot XI. "When I flew the airplane, 30 to 40 feet felt like an altitude record," she says, laughing. "I really salute those early pilots. They had raw courage that in many cases outstripped their knowledge of aerodynamics and flight." Quimby's successful flight across the English Channel in a Bleriot XI was a daredevil feat. In 1912, only the best (and luckiest) of pilots completed the 22-mile flight through wind, mist and chill. But the world heard little of Quimby's achievement. Made the day after the Titanic sank, the historic crossing received scant attention from the press. Tobias wants to make up for lost time. In a little more than a year, demand for the Quimby portrayal and her motivational talks has picked up, and documentary plans are in the works. As momentum builds, Tobias believes that her latest quest, to have the pilot inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame, will succeed. A new Harriet Quimby Scholarship Fund in the Russ College Department of Aviation gives an award to a male or female aviation student who exemplifies Quimby's attitude and drive. Tobias donates her speaking fees to the fund but prefers to downplay her role. "This is a team effort, with the historical re-enactment and with the scholarship," she says. "We have the opportunity to honor our heritage, impact the present with education and unleash future American dreams. "What is success? The dreaming? The desire, the motivation, the attitude, the discipline, the preparation, the planning? Those are all key elements of success. If I can portray some of that, if I can pass some of that along, I'll feel I've given back." Sally Parker is a freelance writer living in Rochester, N.Y. For more on the scholarship fund, contact Lori Lewis of the Russ College of Engineering and Technology at (740) 593-1488 or lewisl@ohio.edu