The astronaut and the aviator, Sally Ride and Amelia Earhart, flew sky-high in the public imagination. Kindred spirits, they enlarged the times and worlds in which they lived. They never met, but they were cut from the same visionary cloth.

Yet you could still see the bright-eyed girl in each woman. Earhart titled a 1932 book, "The Fun of It." Ride said her hours in space were "the most fun I'll ever have in my life."

Ride died days ago at age 61. Little did the world know she had pancreatic cancer, and she wanted it that way, under the radar. She flew on two Challenger missions and served on the commission seeking to determine why it exploded moments after takeoff in 1986. She also served the nation by writing books and running an educational company to encourage girls to explore science.

Earhart's claim to fame was as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. When news hit that she landed in a farm in Northern Ireland, both sides of the pond were thrilled to pieces. She told the story of the Irish farmer who witnessed her landing: "Have you flown far?" he said. "From America," she answered. Her solo flight in 1932 cheered up a nation mired in the shadow of the Depression.

So these American spirits are gone, to stardust — assuming Earhart is not 115 years old and living on a spit of land in the Pacific ever since 1937. (I don't think so.) Her plane was lost near Howland Island, a tiny target she missed in the blue water as she and a navigator, Fred Noonan, attempted to circumnavigate the globe.

A summer expedition to search for evidence that Earhart survived is returning without any major finds. But that's not the point. The point is that her mysterious legend still has a hold on us. The dashing woman of our dreams — tall, angular, tomboyish — can't leave like that. A lyrical piece of fiction in the 1990s imagined Earhart and Noonan went native in a way on the remote island — and that being rescued would be the same as being captured.

The news of Ride's death shook me up. Like many who remember her as a cheery member of two shuttle crews in the 1980s, I saw her as more than a NASA astronaut who knew her astrophysics and operated the robotic arm.

No, this woman played tennis so well Billie Jean King encouraged her to turn pro. She went to my college, Swarthmore, from California; so did I. After a year, though, she went west to Stanford and studied Shakespeare along with science. Clearly, Ride had a laser-like intellect and competitive edge softened by a streak of empathy. During the commission investigation, she sought out the engineer who testified the rocket boosters did not perform well in the cold and encouraged him with a hug.

Then, there's this: how cool to have a dance song named for you: "Mustang Sally."

Neither woman could be fully contained on the ground, unconventional as they were. Ride lived with another woman for 27 years. When Earhart married George Putnam, she wrote she could not promise "to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage." Each woman blossomed in the wake of chapters in the women's rights movement — while frontiers for women for expanding. Votes for women in 1920, and much more in the 1970s. Their lives inspired, in turn, countless others.

A few earthly remains conjure them. Earhart brought smelling salts, of all things, for crossing the Atlantic Ocean solo to stay wide awake. The green bottle is in the National Portrait Gallery.

The Smithsonian has Ride's light blue flight suit with her nametag: It says Sally, not Sally Ride. What a Ride, Sally.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.