Amelia Earhart

Amelia Mary Earhart ( AIR-hart; born July 24, 1897; disappeared July 2, 1937; declared dead January 5, 1939) was an American aviator and aviation pioneer who became one of the most celebrated figures of early flight.

In 1928, she was the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by airplane. In 1932, she became the first woman to make a nonstop solo transatlantic flight, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for her achievement. She was one of the first aviators to promote commercial air travel, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and helped found the Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.

On July 2, 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. Since her disappearance, Earhart has become a global cultural figure and numerous films, documentaries, and books have recounted her life. She is ranked ninth on Flying's list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation.

Early life

Childhood

Amelia Mary Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas, the daughter of Samuel "Edwin" Stanton Earhart (1867–1930) and Amelia "Amy" Earhart (née Otis; 1869–1962). Amelia was born in the home of her maternal grandfather Alfred Gideon Otis (1827–1912), who was a former judge in Kansas, the president of Atchison Savings Bank, and a leading resident of the town. Earhart was the second child of the marriage after a stillbirth in August 1896. She was of part-German descent. Alfred Otis had not initially favored the marriage and was not satisfied with Edwin's progress as a lawyer.

Following family custom Amelia Earhart was named after her two grandmothers, Amelia Josephine Harres and Mary Wells Patton. From an early age Amelia was the dominant sibling while her sister Grace Muriel Earhart (1899–1998), two years her junior, acted as a dutiful follower. Amelia was nicknamed "Meeley" and sometimes "Millie", and Grace was nicknamed "Pidge" and both girls continued to answer to their childhood nicknames into adulthood. Their upbringing was unconventional; Amy Earhart did not believe in raising her children to be "nice little girls". The children's maternal grandmother disapproved of the bloomers they wore, and although Amelia liked the freedom of movement they provided, she was sensitive to the fact the neighborhood's girls wore dresses.

The Earhart children seemed to have a spirit of adventure and would set off daily to explore their neighborhood. As a child, Amelia Earhart spent hours playing with sister Pidge, climbing trees, hunting rats with a rifle, and sledding downhill. Some biographers have characterized the young Amelia as a tomboy. The girls kept worms, moths, katydids and a tree toad they gathered in a growing collection. In 1904, with the help of her uncle, Amelia Earhart constructed a home-made ramp that was fashioned after a roller coaster she had seen on a trip to St. Louis, Missouri, and secured it to the roof of the family tool shed. After her well-documented first flight, she emerged from the broken wooden box that had served as a sled with a bruised lip, a torn dress and a "sensation of exhilaration", saying: "Oh, Pidge, it's just like flying!"

In 1907, Edwin Earhart's job as a claims officer for the Rock Island Railroad led to a transfer to Des Moines, Iowa. The following year, at the age of 10, Amelia saw her first aircraft at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Their father tried to interest his daughters in taking a flight but after looking at the rickety "flivver", Amelia promptly asked if they could go back to the merry-go-round. She later described the biplane as "a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting".

Education

Sisters Amelia and Grace, who from her teenage years went by her middle name Muriel, remained with their grandparents in Atchison while their parents moved into new, smaller quarters in Des Moines. During this period, the Earhart girls received homeschooling from their mother and a governess. Amelia later said she was "exceedingly fond of reading" and spent many hours in the large family library. In 1909, when 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.

The Earhart family's finances seemingly improved with the acquisition of a new house and the hiring of two servants, but it soon became apparent that Edwin was an alcoholic. In 1914 he was forced to retire. He attempted to rehabilitate himself through treatment but the Rock Island Railroad never reinstated him. At about this time Earhart's grandmother Amelia Otis died. She left a substantial estate that placed her daughter's share in a trust, fearing that Edwin's drinking would exhaust the funds. The Otis house was auctioned along with its contents and Amelia later described these events as the end of her childhood.

In 1915, after a long search, Edwin Earhart found work as a clerk at the Great Northern Railway in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Amelia entered Central High School as a junior. Edwin applied for a transfer to Springfield, Missouri, in 1915, but the current claims officer reconsidered his retirement and demanded his job back, leaving Edwin Earhart unemployed. Amy Earhart took her children to Chicago, where they lived with friends. Amelia canvassed nearby high schools in Chicago to find the best science program. She rejected the high school nearest her home, complaining that the chemistry lab was "just like a kitchen sink". She eventually enrolled in Hyde Park High School but spent a miserable semester, for which a yearbook caption noted: "A.E.—the girl in brown who walks alone".

Amelia Earhart graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1916. Throughout her childhood, she had continued to aspire to a future career. She kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in male-dominated careers, including film direction and production, law, advertising, management, and mechanical engineering. She began junior college at Ogontz School in Rydal, Pennsylvania, but did not complete her program.

Nursing career and illness

During Christmas vacation in 1917, Earhart visited her sister in Toronto, Canada, where she saw wounded soldiers returning from World War I. After receiving training as a nurse's aide from the Red Cross, Earhart began working with the Voluntary Aid Detachment at Spadina Military Hospital, where her duties included food preparation for patients with special diets and handing out prescribed medication in the hospital's dispensary. There, Earhart heard stories from military pilots and developed an interest in flying.

In 1918, when the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic reached Toronto, Earhart was engaged in nursing duties that included night shifts at Spadina Military Hospital. In early November that year, she became infected and was hospitalized for pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis. She was discharged in December 1918, about two months later. Her sinus-related symptoms were pain and pressure around one eye, and copious mucus drainage via the nostrils and throat. While staying in the hospital during the pre-antibiotic era, Earhart had painful minor operations to wash out the affected maxillary sinus but these procedures were not successful and her headaches worsened. Earhart's convalescence lasted nearly a year, which she spent at her sister's home in Northampton, Massachusetts. Earhart passed the time reading poetry, learning to play the banjo, and studying mechanics. Chronic sinusitis significantly affected Earhart's flying and other activities in later life, and sometimes she was forced to wear a bandage on her cheek to cover a small drainage tube.

By 1919, Earhart prepared to enter Smith College, where her sister was a student, but she changed her mind and enrolled in a course of medical studies and other programs at Columbia University. Earhart quit her studies a year later to be with her parents, who had reunited in California.

Early flying experiences

In the early 1920s, Earhart and a young woman friend visited an air fair held in conjunction with the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto; she said: "The interest, aroused in me, in Toronto, led me to all the air circuses in the vicinity." One of the highlights of the day was a flying exhibition put on by a World War I ace. The pilot saw Earhart and her friend, who were watching from an isolated clearing, and dived at them. "I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,' " she said. Earhart stood her ground as the aircraft came close. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by."

On December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father attended an "aerial meet" at Daugherty Field in Long Beach, California. She asked her father to ask about passenger flights and flying lessons. Earhart was booked for a passenger flight the following day at Emory Roger's Field, at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. A 10-minute flight with Frank Hawks, who later gained fame as an air racer, cost $10 (equivalent to $160 in 2025). The ride with Hawkes changed Earhart's life; she said: "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet [60–90 m] off the ground ... I knew I had to fly."