Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart is one of the most prominent icons of the 20th century. She was a pioneering female pilot, determined and independent, and a supporter of women’s rights. Her numerous aviation firsts and her disappearance during an attempt to fly around the globe in 1937 have ensured her status as a legend.

Amelia Mary Earhart was born July 24, 1897, to Edwin and Amelia "Amy" (Otis) Earhart in her Otis grandparents’ house in Atchison, Kansas. Two years later, her sister Grace Muriel was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on December 29, 1899. Until Amelia was 12, the two sisters primarily lived with their Otis grandparents in Atchison - her grandfather was a successful judge - and attended a private school there. She spent summers with her parents in Kansas City.

In 1908, after their father, an attorney, got a job with Rock Island Railroad and moved to Des Moines, Iowa, Amelia and Muriel went there to live with their parents. It was in Des Moines that Amelia saw her first airplane at a state fair, although she was not impressed - it had only been six years since the Wright brothers made their first flight at Kittyhawk, North Carolina.

In 1911, Amelia’s grandmother Otis, her namesake, died. Around this time, her father began to drink heavily and eventually lost his job. In 1913, Edwin got a job in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the family moved. In the spring of 1914, Edwin took another job in Springfield, Missouri, but after moving, discovered that the man he was to replace had decided not to retire. Rather than return to Kansas with Edwin, where he eventually started his own law practice, Amy took her children to live with friends in Chicago’s tony Hyde Park neighborhood. Amelia’s shame and humiliation over her father’s alcoholism and from watching her mother struggle financially caused a lifelong dislike for alcohol and need for financial security.

Earhart graduated from Hyde Park School in 1915 and attended a finishing school in Philadelphia, the Ogontz School, the following year. Her ultimate goal was to attend Bryn Mawr, then Vassar. Over the Christmas break during her second year, 1917, she visited her sister in Toronto, Canada, where Muriel was attending St. Margaret’s College. Earhart encountered many World War I veterans and, although she was already helping with the war effort at Ogontz as secretary of the Red Cross chapter, she wanted to do more. She left Ogontz to volunteer as a nurse in at Spadina Military Hospital, where many of her patients were French and English pilots. She and Muriel spent time at a local airfield watching the Royal Flying Corps train.

During the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, which swept through Toronto in the summer of 1918, Earhart contracted a severe sinus infection that required surgery and a lengthy recovery period. That fall, she went to live with her mother and sister in Northampton, Massachusetts, where her sister was preparing to attend Smith College. During her convalescence, she learned to play the banjo and completed a course in automobile maintenance.

In the fall of 1919, Earhart enrolled in a pre-medical program at Columbia University in New York City. Although she did well academically, she left after a year to rejoin her reconciled parents in Los Angeles, California, having changed her mind about becoming a doctor and hoping to help her reconciled parents stay together.

In Los Angeles, Earhart saw her first airshow and took her first plane ride—"As soon as we left the ground, I knew I had to fly." She began taking lessons at Bert Kinner’s airfield on Long Beach Boulevard from Neta Snook on January 3, 1921. Snook gave her lessons in a rebuilt Canuk, the Canadian version of the Curtiss JN4 Jenny, which proved to be to lumbering and slow for Earhart—by summer, she had a bright yellow Kinner Airstar that she called *The Canary*. To help pay for the plan and flying lessons, she worked in a photography studio and as a filing clerk at the Los Angeles Telephone Company.

Snook thought Earhart was ready to fly solo after 20 hours of flight training—generally 10 hours were deemed sufficient at the time—but Earhart insisted on having stunt training before flying alone. She began participating in public aerial demonstrations and air rodeos. In the fall of 1922, she set an unofficial altitude record for women, flying to 14,000 feet. On March 17, 1923, she received top billing for the air rodeo and opening event at Glendale Airport in Glendale, California.

Unfortunately, due to a change in the Earhart family’s fortune and her own inability to earn enough to keep the plane, Earhart sold the Airstar in June 1923. In 1924, her parents divorced and Earhart moved back to the East Coast with her mother and sister, and eventually to Boston, Massachusetts where she worked at Denison House teaching English to immigrant families. She became a full-time, live-in staff member at Denison House, which provided social services and education to the urban poor by having educated women and poor people live together in the same residence.

In 1928 she was invited to join pilot Wilmer "Bill" Stultz and co-pilot/mechanic Louis E. "Slim" Gordon as a passenger on their transatlantic flight set to take place a little over a year after Charles Lindbergh’s landmark flight—she would be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. On June 17, 1928, they left Newfoundland in a Fokker F7 and, about 21 hours later, arrived at Burry Port, Wales. The successful flight made headlines across the world—in no small part because book publisher and publicist George P. Putnam was involved in the project. He would become Earhart’s manager and eventually her husband. A ticker-tape parade in New York City and a reception at the White House by President Calvin Coolidge catapulted the crew to fame. Although Earhart was just a passenger—in her own words, "a sack of potatoes"—the trip set the stage for Earhart to become a pioneer of aviation and a celebrity. By the end of the year, Putnam had arranged for her first book to be published, titled *20 Hrs. 40 Min., Our Flight in the Friendship: The American Girl, First Across the Atlantic by Air, Tells Her Story.*

In August 1929 the Cleveland Air Race, a transcontinental race, was opened to women as a nine-stage race that began in Santa Monica, California, and ended in Cleveland, Ohio. In the Women’s Air Derby, dubbed the "Powder Puff Derby" by humorist Will Rogers, Earhart piloted a new Lockheed Vega-1, the heaviest of the planes flown in her class. Due to several mishaps and one fatality, only 16 of the 20 pilots completed the race. Louise Thaden won the Class D race with a Beechcraft Travel Air Speedwing, Gladys O’Donnell came in second with a Waco ATO, and Earhart came in third in her Vega, two hours behind the winner.

Never had so many female pilots spent a significant amount of time together or gotten to know each other so well. Because of the camaraderie and support they felt during the race, Thaden, O’Donnell, Earhart, Ruth Nichols, Blanche Noyes, and Phoebe Omlie gathered to discuss forming an organization for female pilots. All 117 of the women pilots licensed at the time were invited to join. On November 2, 1929, twenty-six women, including Earhart, met at Curtiss Airport in Valley Stream, New York to form the organization now known as the 99s, named for the 99 charter members. Earhart was the first president of the organization.

Following Putnam’s divorce in 1929, his professional relationship and friendship with Earhart developed into more. After numerous proposals, Earhart finally accepted and they were married on February 7, 1931. Earhart called the marriage a "partnership" with "dual control." Putnam continued to manage Earhart’s career, arranging her flying engagements, which were often followed by lecture tours to maximize the opportunity for publicity.

On April 8, 1931, Earhart set an altitude record in a Pitcairn autogiro—a type of early helicopter—that would stand for years. She was sponsored by Beech-Nut company in an attempt to be the first pilot to fly an autogiro from coast to coast, but discovered on arrival that another pilot had accomplished the feat a week before. She decided to attempt to be the first to complete the first transcontinental round-trip flight in an autogiro, but crashed after taking off at Abilene, Texas, on the return leg of the trip, for which she received a reprimand for negligence from Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aviation Clarence Young. Although she completed the trip in a new autogiro, she abandoned the rotorcraft after several other mishaps.

To dispel rumors that Earhart was not a skilled pilot but merely a publicity figure created by Putnam, they began planning a solo transatlantic flight from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Paris, which would make her the first female and second person to fly solo across the Atlantic. Earhart took off May 20, 1932, in her Lockheed DL-1—five years to the day after Lindbergh began his historic flight. Mechanical problems and adverse weather forced Earhart to land in a pasture near Londonderry, Ireland, rather than Paris, but her achievement was undeniable. The National Geographic Society awarded her a gold medal, presented by President Herbert Hoover, and Congress award her a Distinguished Flying Cross—both awarded to a woman for the first time.

Earhart continued to set records and achieve firsts for females in aviation. In August 1932, she became the first woman to fly nonstop coast-to-coast across the continental United States in her Lockheed Vega. She had the fastest nonstop transcontinental flight by a woman in 1932. In 1933, she was one of two women to enter the Bendix race from Cleveland, Ohio, to Los Angeles, California, which officials had opened to women, allowing them to compete against men in the same race for the first time. Although she crossed the finish line six hours behind the men, on her return flight, she beat the nonstop transcontinental flight record she set the previous year by two hours.

Earhart received many awards and accolades for her record-setting achievements. She won the Harmon Trophy as America’s Outstanding Airwoman for 1932, 1933, and 1934. She was given honorary membership in the National Aeronautic Association and was awarded the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government.

Earhart launched a fashion line in 1934 but did not have success and closed it by the end of the year. She also worked with Paul Mantz, a Hollywood stunt pilot and technical advisor, to prepare for a new record flight from Hawaii to California as the first person to fly solo across the Pacific. She received FCC approval to install a two-way radio in her Hi-Speed Special 5C Lockheed Vega—the first in a civilian aircraft.

On December 3, 1934, another pilot and his two-man crew had disappeared attempting to complete the flight from California to Hawaii. In spite of the disappearance and public opinion that the flight was both dangerous and pointless, the Vega was shipped to Honolulu, Hawaii, in late December and on January 11, 1935, Earhart took off from Wheeler Army Airfield near Honolulu. A little over 18 hours later, she landed in Oakland, California, after an uneventful flight.

Hoping to break another record, in April 1935 she became the first person to fly solo from Los Angeles, California, to Mexico by official invitation from the Mexican Government, but became lost 60 miles from her ultimate goal of Mexico City and had to stop for directions. In May, she set a record traveling nonstop from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey, arriving in just over 14 hours. In August 1935, she flew in the Bendix race again, this time with Mantz, and placed fifth, winning $500.

Earhart joined the Purdue University staff as a women’s career counselor and advisor in aeronautics in 1935 after being invited by university president Edward C. Elliott to lecture at the university in 1934. In December 1935, Purdue had a conference on Women’s Work and Opportunities - Earhart was the featured speaker.

In July 1936, Purdue and other sponsors helped Earhart purchase a Lockheed Electra 10E, which she called her "flying laboratory," and she began planning a trip to fly around the world at the equator. In early 1937, she and Frank Noonan, her navigator, began their first attempt. They flew from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii, March 17–18, but crashed while attempting take-off from Luke Field near Pearl Harbor on March 20. After the plane was repaired at the Lockheed plant in California, they began a second attempt, this time traveling from west to east, departing from Miami, Florida June 1.

On July 1, having completed 22,000 miles of the trip, they took off from Lae, Papua New Guinea for Howland Island in the central Pacific. After about 18 hours of flight, they lost radio contact with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter *Itasca*, which was helping guide them in to land on the island. They were never seen or heard from again. President Roosevelt authorized a massive naval, air, and land search, but nothing was found and it was ended on July 18. Putnam financed his own search for his wife but was also forced to call off the search in October 1937. On January 5, 1939, Earhart was declared legally dead in a Los Angeles, California, Superior Court.

The mystery of Earhart and Noonan’s disappearance continues to fuel speculation and searches - it is one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century. Amelia Earhart continues to live on in our collective imagination for her accomplishments and because of the mystery of her disappearance. There are countless biographies and four movies about her life, not to mention numerous books, movies, and television shows about her disappearance and what may have happened to her and Noonan.