Amelia Earhart

At 41 years old, Amelia Earhart has this physical status:

Amelia Mary Earhart (born July 24, 1897; died July 2, 1937) was an American aviation pioneer and author.

Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Earhart, a mother from Atchison, Kansas, inherited a love for flight at an early age, wrote best-selling books about her flight experiences, and was instrumental in the establishment of The Ninety-Nines, a female pilot club, who was steadily increasing flying experience since her twenties.

Earhart became the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by plane in 1928 (accompanying pilot Wilmer Stultz), for which she achieved celebrity status.

Earhart, a Lockheed Vega 5B pilot, made a nonstop transatlantic flight in 1932, becoming the first woman to do so.

For this achievement, she was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross of the United States.

Earhart began serving as an advisor to aeronautical engineering and a career counselor to female students at Purdue University in 1935.

She was also a member of the National Women's Party and an early promoter of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1937, when in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, Earhart, and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island.

Early life

Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, on July 24, 1897, the niece of Samuel "Edwin" Stanton Earhart (1867–1930) and Amelia "Amy" (née Otis; 1869–1962). She was born in the home of her maternal grandfather, Alfred Gideon Otis (1827-1912), a former federal judge, president of Atchison Savings Bank, and a popular resident of the town. After an infant was stillborn in August 1896, Earhart was the second child of the marriage. She was of a German descent. Alfred Otis had not initially supported the marriage and was not happy with Edwin's development as a lawyer.

According to a family tradition, Earhart was named after her two grandmothers, Amelia Josephine Harres and Mary Wells Patton. Earhart was the ringleader at an early age, but Grace Muriel Earhart (1899–1998), a two-year junior, served as the dutiful follower. Both Amelia and Grace were tagged "Meeley" (occasionally "Millie") and Grace was nicknamed "Pidge"; both girls continued to respond to their childhood names well into adulthood. Their upbringing was unusual, as Amy Earhart did not believe in raising her children to be "good little girls." However, their maternal grandmother condemned the "bloomers" they wore, and although Earhart adored the freedom of mobility they provided, she was still sensitive to the fact that the neighborhood's girls wore dresses.

With the children's outgoing daily to explore their neighborhood, a sense of adventure seemed to abide. As an infant, Earhart spent long hours playing with her sister Pidge, climbing trees, hunting rats with a rifle, and "belly-slamming" her sled downhill. Although many children enjoyed the outdoors and "rough-and-tumble" games, some biographers have described the young Earhart as a tomboy. In a growing collection of "worms, moths, katydids, and a tree to ad" in a growing collection of outings, the girls kept "worms, mosh, katydids, and a tree toad." Earhart cobbled together a home-made ramp, based on a roller coaster she had seen on a trip to St. Louis, that she managed to attach the ramp to the roof of the family toolshed in 1904, with the help of her uncle. The well-documented first flight by Earhart ended tragically. She emerged from the rusted wooden box that had served as a sled with a bruised lip, torn clothing, and a "sense of exhilaration." "Oh, Pidge, it's just like flying," she exclaimed.

Though there had been some missteps in Edwin Earhart's career up to this point, his work as a claims officer for the Rock Island Railroad in 1907 culminated in a transfer to Des Moines, Iowa. Earhart's first plane at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines next year was in her first aircraft at the age of 10. Her father tried to compel his children to fly. A look at the rickety "flivver" was enough for Earhart, who yelled at the possibility of returning to the merry-go-round. The biplane was later described as "a piece of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting."

In Des Moines, sisters Amelia and Muriel (who went by her middle name from their teens to her) stayed with their grandparents, but their parents were moved to new, smaller quarters. The Earhart girls received home-schooling from their mother and governess during this time. Amelia later confessed to being "exceedingly fond of reading" and spent countless hours in the large family library. For the first time since the family was reunited in Des Moines, the Earhart children were enrolled in public school for the first time, and Amelia, 12, entered seventh grade.

Although the family's finances seemed to have improved with the purchase of a new house and even the recruitment of two servants, it was quickly discovered that Edwin was an alcoholic. He was forced to leave five years later in 1914, and although he attempted to recover himself by surgery, he was never reinstated at the Rock Island Railroad. Amelia Otis, Earhart's grandmother, died suddenly, leaving her daughter's share in a trust, afraid that Edwin's drinking would drain the funds. The Otis house was auctioned with all of its furnishings; Earhart was heartbroken and later described it as the end of her childhood.

Earhart's father found work as a clerk at the Great Northern Railway in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Earhart attended Central High School as a freshman in 1915. Edwin applied for a transfer to Springfield, Missouri, but the current officer recalled his job and demanded his reinstatement, leaving the elder Earhart with nowhere to go. Amy Earhart took her children to Chicago, where they met with friends in the midst of another catastrophic move. Earhart was unusual in the choice of her next schooling; she canvassed nearby high schools in Chicago to find the best science curriculum. When she complained that the chemistry lab was "much like a kitchen sink," she left the high school nearest her home. She enrolled in Hyde Park High School but "A.E." captured the essence of her unhappiness in a miserable semester. The girl in brown who walks alone.

In 1916, Earhart graduated from Hyde Park High School in Chicago. She had aspired to a future as a teenager, and she saved a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about women in mainly male-oriented fields, including film direction and production, branding, advertising, management, and mechanical engineering. She began junior college at Ogontz School in Rydal, Pennsylvania, but did not finish her course.

Earhart visited her sister in Toronto during her Christmas holiday in 1917. The war has raged, and Earhart saw the returning wounded soldiers. She began working with the Voluntary Aid Detachment at Spadina Military Hospital after receiving formalization as a nurse's aide from the Red Cross. Her responsibilities included cooking food for patients with special diets and giving out prescription drugs in the hospital's dispensary. While flying, Earhart heard stories from military pilots and developed an interest in flying.

When the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic struck Toronto, Earhart was engaged in strenuous nursing jobs that included night shifts at the Spadina Military Hospital. She became a patient herself, with pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis. She was hospitalized for pneumonia in early November 1918 and discharged in December 1918, about two months after the disease had started. Her sinus issues included pain and pressure around one eye, as well as extensive mucus drainage via the nostrils and throat. Although living in the hospital during the pre-antibiotic period, she underwent intense minor surgeries to wash out the affected maxillary sinus, but these procedures were not fruitful, and Earhart continued to have worsening headaches. Her convalescence lasted almost a year, when she spent a year at her sister's house in Northampton, Massachusetts. Earhart spent the majority of his time reading poetry, learning to play the banjo, and studying mechanics. Chronic sinusitis influenced Earhart's flying and activities in later life, and she was often forced to wear a bandage on her cheek to cover a small drainage tube.

About the same time, Earhart and a young woman friend attended an air fair in Toronto in conjunction with the Canadian National Exhibition. "The curiosity, which had piqued in me, led me to all the air circuses in the area" One of the day's highlights was a flying display conducted by a World War I ace. The pilot overhead identified Earhart and her companion, who were sitting in a secluded clearing, and swung a look at them. "I'm positive he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'" she said. As the aircraft approached, Earhart stood at her post. "I didn't know it at the time," she said, "but I suspect that the little red plane said something to me as it went by."

Earhart was preparing for Smith College, where her sister was a pupil by 1919. However, she changed her mind and enrolled in a Columbia University course in medical studies and other specialties. Earhart came back a year later to be with her parents, who had reunited in California.

At Daugherty Field in Long Beach, California, Earhart and her father attended a "aerial meeting" on December 28, 1920. Edwin, her mother, begged for information about passenger flights and flying lessons. At the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, she was booked for a passenger flight the following day at Emory Rogers Field. Frank Hawks, a ten-minute flight, (who later became well-known as an air racer), was $10 per flight. Earhart's life would forever be changed by the Hawks. "I knew I had to fly" by the time I had two or three hundred feet [60–90 m] off the ground," she said.

Neta Snook, Earhart's next month, will be her flying instructor. For $500, the initial contract was for 12 hours of instruction. She saved $1,000 for flying lessons while working in a variety of industries, including photographer, truck driver, and stenographer at the local telephone company. Earhart had her first lesson on January 3, 1921, at Kinner Field on the west side of Long Beach Boulevard and Tweedy Road, now in South Gate. Snook used a crash-salvaged Curtiss JN-4 "Canuck" to train, which Snook had revived. Earhart had to take a bus to the end of the line and then walk four miles (6 kilometers) to reach the airfield. Earhart's mother was also part of the $1,000 "take" against her "better judgment" against her "better judgment."

Earhart's dedication to flying required her to deal with the demanding hard work and rudimentary conditions that came with early aviation training. She cut her hair short in the style of other female flyers to complete her image transformation. Earhart bought a secondhand bright chromium yellow Kinner Airster biplane, which she named "The Canary" six months later in 1921. She bought a new leather flying coat after her first solo landing. She was excited by the coat's newness, so she aged her coat by sleeping in it and staining it with aircraft oil.

Earhart flew the Airster to a height of 14,000 feet (4,300 meters), setting a world record for female pilots on October 22, 1922. By the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, Earhart became the 16th woman in the United States to be granted a pilot's license (#6017) on May 16, 1923.

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Aviation career and marriage

Earhart's inheritance from her grandmother, which was now managed by her mother, slowly diminished during the 1920s, following a disastrous investment in a failing gypsum mine. Earhart, also, lost no immediate prospects for recouping her investment in flying, has sold the "Canary" as well as a second Kinner and purchased a yellow Kissel Gold Bug "Speedster" two-seat vehicle, which she dubbed the "Yellow Peril" from Kissel. Earhart's exacerbation of her old sinus disease lasted as her pain worsened, and she was hospitalized in early 1924 for another sinus surgery, which was unsuccessful. Earhart took a new path after trying her hand at a number of ventures that necessitated the establishment of a photography business.

She drove her mother in the "Yellow Peril" on a transcontinental journey from California to Banff, Alberta, following her parents' divorce in 1924. The two were then taken to Boston, Massachusetts, where Earhart underwent another sinus surgery, which was more fruitful. After recuperation, she returned to Columbia University for several months, but she was compelled to drop her studies and any other plans for enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology because her mother could no longer afford the tuition fees and associated costs. She began working as a tutor and then as a social worker at Denison House, a Boston settlement house, right away. She was born in Medford, Massachusetts, at this time.

When Earhart lived in Medford, she maintained her interest in aviation, becoming a Boston member of the American Aeronautical Society and being elected vice president. She flew out of Dennison Airport (later Naval Air Station Squantum) in Quincy, Massachusetts, and helped finance the airline's operation by investing a small amount of money. In 1927, Earhart operated the first official flight out of Dennison Airport. Earhart, a Boston area sales rep, also wrote local newspaper columns promoting flying, and as her local celebrity increased, she laid out the groundwork for a group dedicated to female flyers.

Amy Guest (1873-1999), who expressed an interest in being the first woman to fly (or be flown) across the Atlantic Ocean following Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, expressed disappointment in being the first woman to fly (or be flown) across the Atlantic Ocean. She decided that the trip was too painful for her to take, so she decided to fund the campaign, implying that they find "another girl with the right image." Earhart received a phone call from Capt. While at work one afternoon in April 1928. "Would you like to fly the Atlantic?" Hilton H. Railey, who asked her, "Do you like to fly the Atlantic?" she asked.

The project's project coordinators (including book publisher and publicist George P. Putnam) interviewed Earhart and asked her to accompany pilot Wilmer Stultz and copilot/mechanic Louis Gordon on the flight, primarily as a passenger but also as a passenger, but with the added challenge of keeping the flight log. On June 17, 1928, the team departed from Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland, with the words "Friendship" appearing on Pwll, just 20 hours and 40 minutes later. At the museum, there is a commemorative blue plaque. Earhart did not pilot the aircraft because the bulk of the flight was on instruments and she had no experience with this style of flying. When she landed, she said, "Stultz did all the flying—had to." "I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes." "Maybe someday I'll try it alone," she said.

Earhart is said to have received a rousing reception on June 19, 1928, when she landed at Woolston in Southampton, England. She flew the Avro Avian III, SN: R3/AV/101, owned by Lady Mary Heath, and later delivered the aircraft back to the United States (where it was given the number "unlicensed aircraft identification code" 7083).

As the Stultz, Gordon, and Earhart flight crew returned to the United States on July 6, they were welcomed with a ticker-tape parade along the Canyon of Heroes in Manhattan, followed by a White House reception.

Any newspapers and journals began to refer to Earhart as "Lady Lindy" due to her physical resemblence to Lindbergh, whom the press had dubbed "Lucky Lindy." The United Press was more opulent, with Earhart as the reigning "Queen of the Air." She began an exhausting lecture tour in 1928 and 1929 right after returning to the United States. Putnam, on the other hand, had to heavily promote her in a campaign that included publishing a book she authored, a series of new lecture tours, and using photographs of her in mass-market endorsements for luggage, Lucky Strike cigarettes (this caused image issues for her), women's clothing and sportswear, and more. Commander Richard Byrd's impending South Pole expedition was planned with the money earned from Lucky Strike.

Both Earhart and Putnam's marketing campaign was fruitful in establishing the Earhart mystique in the public psyche. Earhart's participation in the campaigns, particularly in women's fashions, was more than simply endorsing the items. For a few years she had sewn her own clothes, but the "active living" lines in 50 stores, such as Macy's in metropolitan areas, represented an extension of a new Earhart image. Her idea of simple, natural lines mixed with wrinkle-proof, washable fabric was the embodiment of a sleek, purposeful, yet feminine "A.E." (the familiar name she used with family and friends) Her luggage line, which she marketed as Modernaire Earhart Luggage, bore her distinctive stamp.

The Earhart name appeared on a large number of promotional products.

Earhart was aided in financing her flying by celebrity endorsements. She converted this forum into a platform for greater public recognition of aviation, particularly as an assistant editor on Cosmopolitan magazine, where she concentrated on the role of women in this field. Earhart was one of the first aviators to promote commercial air travel in 1929 as a result of the establishment of the first regional shuttle service between New York and Washington, D.C., with Margaret Bartlett Thornton as her companion. She was Vice President of National Airways, which supervised the flying activities of the Boston-Maine Airways and several other airlines in the northeast. By 1940, it had become Northeast Airlines.

Although Earhart was known for her transatlantic flight, she wanted to establish a "untarnished" record of her own. She started flying Avian 7083, a short time after her return, and only as her name was emerging in the national spotlight. Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the North American continent and back by going on vacation in August 1928. Her piloting abilities and professionalism increased as a result of her frequent flying with her. In 1929, General Leigh Wade rode with Earhart: "She was a born flier with a delicate touch on the stick."

During the first Santa Monica-to-Cleveland Women's Air Derby (nicknamed the "Puff Derby" by Will Rogers), Earhart continued to participate in competitive air racing in 1929, landed in Cleveland, Ohio on August 26. She landed in fourth place in the "heavy planes" division during the series. Ruth Nichols, a third-place finisher at Columbus, had an accident while on a test flight before the race recommenced. Nichols' aircraft crashed a tractor and flipped over at the start of the runway, kicking her out of the competition. Earhart was ranked third in the heavy division at Cleveland.

Earhart became a member of the National Aeronautic Association in 1930, where she actively promoted the establishment of separate women's records and was instrumental in the establishment of a national standard. She set a world altitude record of 18,415 feet (5,613 meters) on April 8, 1931, when she borrowed a Pitcairn PCA-2 autogyro from Beech-Nut Chewing Gum.

During this period, Earhart became involved with The Ninety-Nines, a group of female pilots committed to moral assistance and advocating the cause of women in aviation. Following the Women's Air Derby, she called a meeting of female pilots in 1929. She suggested the name based on the number of charter members; later, she became the organization's first president in 1930. Earhart, a vocal advocate for female pilots, and when the 1934 Bendix Trophy Race barred women, she openly refused to fly screen actress Mary Pickford to Cleveland to open the competitions.

Earhart, a Boston chemical engineer, was engaged by Samuel Chapman, but she broke off the relationship on November 23, 1928. Earhart and publisher George P. Putnam had been spending a considerable amount of time together during the same time. Putnam, the former prime minister of the United States, was divorced in 1929 and sought out Earhart, who then proposed six times before she finally agreed to marry him. In Putnam's mother's house in Noank, Connecticut, they married on February 7, 1931. With "dual responsibility," Earhart referred to her marriage as a "partnership." "I want you to know that I will not hold you to any midaevil [sic] code of faithfulness to me," she wrote to Putnam and handed-delivered to him on the day of the wedding. "I may have to sit down somewhere I can't be by myself every time," she said.

Earhart's marriage plans were liberal for the time, as she believed in equal responsibilities for both breadwinners and graciously retained her own name rather than being referred to as "Mrs. Putnam." When The New York Times refused to refer to her as Mrs. Putnam, she scoffed it off. Putnam also learned that he would be named "Mr. Earhart." The newlyweds did not get a honeymoon because Earhart was on a nine-day cross-country tour promoting autogyros and the tour sponsor, Beech-Nut chewing gum. Though Earhart and Putnam never had children, he had two sons by his previous marriage to Dorothy Binney (1888–1982), a chemical heiress whose father's firm, Binney & Smith, (1913–2013). Earhart was particularly fond of David, who frequently visited his father at their family's house, which was on the grounds of The Apawamis Club in Rye, New York. Soon after his parents' divorce, George developed polio and was unable to travel as often as often.

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