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Real life was the best tutor, experience the best preparation for life. That was the attitude of Jessica's parents, and as a result, they kept Jessica, her brother Joshua, 9, and sister Jasmine, 3, at home--without filing a home-schooling plan with the local authorities. Hathaway seemed to have a reflexive distrust for institutions and convention and a fear of stifling her children. Jessica did not have dolls but tools. Instead of studying grammar, the children did chores and sought what their mother called "mastery." Boundaries seemed to be off limits, and parenting seemed to consist of cheerleading. "They're getting a tremendous education from having their lives be in the real world," Hathaway had said. "What it takes to get this flight scheduled and done is much better than sitting in a math classroom." Whether or not her children could do long division, they were seen by the townspeople who knew them as bright, curious and confident. "You get the feeling that everyone in the family was at peace," says Zona O'Neill, a Massachusetts friend. "My children enjoyed being around them because they were so loving and happy."
Jessica became interested in flying after her parents gave her an airplane ride for her sixth birthday, which was only 23 months ago. She began taking flying lessons twice a week with Reid, who said she was an able pilot, though what that means for a seven-year-old is open to question. Her father footed the bill for the flying lessons--about $50 an hour--and also shelled out about $15,000 for the cross-country odyssey. "That's less than I'd pay for private school," Dubroff told the San Francisco Examiner.
He also admitted that "the trip was my idea but was presented to Jessica for her choice." No one disputes the girl was gung-ho, and her father became her press agent, courting all the usual engines of modern publicity: TV, radio, print. For all their New Age patter, Jessica's mother and father seemed to be stage parents of the old school, pushing their daughter in front of the curtain, hoping she would become a star, Macaulay Culkin in a cockpit. The week before the flight Jessica handed out signed photographs to members of the Half Moon city council. Dubroff spent $1,300 on custom-made baseball caps to distribute to friends and the media. They read, JESSICA WHITNEY DUBROFF, SEA TO SHINING SEA, april 1996. He also primed her to write a letter to President Clinton, inviting him along for a ride. "To visit you at the White House would be wonderful," she wrote in her simple, child's hand, "and clearly to pilot an airplane that you would be in would bring me even greater joy." (The White House did not accept.)
But Jessica's flight plan found a receptive audience at the television networks. It was an ideal human-interest story. Upbeat. A natural narrative. Good visuals. A telegenic little girl with a dusting of freckles on her nose. A challenge. A record. Triumph. End with slo-mo of Jessica throwing her baseball cap in the air. Music from Chariots of Fire.
NBC's Today show did an interview with Jessica, her father and her flight instructor. CBS's overnight broadcast did a five-minute interview with Jessica and her dad in Cheyenne the morning before her last flight. The day before the flight, ABC gave Lloyd a Hi8 video camera, so he could "document the flight," an ABC spokeswoman said.