A Celebration of Women™

is elated to share this Celebration of the Life of a woman that exemplified courage, perseverence, strength and vision; all wrapped in one.

In honor of INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION DAY, it seemed only appropriate to take this moment in time to Celebrate the Life of this Famous Pioneer Female Flyer.

Earhart was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for becoming the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Please enjoy this Tribute to one of our world’s most inspiring women in history.

 
 

WOMAN of ACTION™

 

 

Amelia Earhart

“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace with yourself.”
-Amelia Earhart

 

 

Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. Amelia was the second daughter of Samuel “Edwin” Stanton Earhart (March 28, 1867) and Amelia “Amy” Otis Earhart (1869–1962), was born in Atchison, Kansas, in the home of her maternal grandfather, Alfred Gideon Otis (1827–1912), a former federal judge, president of the Atchison Savings Bank and a leading citizen in Atchison. This was the second child in the marriage as an infant was stillborn in August 1896.

Earhart was named, according to family custom, after her two grandmothers (Amelia Josephine Harres and Mary Wells Patton). From an early age Earhart, nicknamed “Meeley” (sometimes “Millie”) was the ringleader while younger sister (two years her junior), Grace Muriel Earhart (1899–1998), nicknamed “Pidge,” acted the dutiful follower. (Both girls continued to answer to their childhood nicknames well into adulthood). Their upbringing was unconventional since Amy Earhart did not believe in molding her children into “nice little girls.” Meanwhile their maternal grandmother disapproved of the “bloomers” worn by Amy’s children and although Earhart liked the freedom they provided, she was aware other girls in the neighborhood did not wear them.

 

 

Alfred Otis had not initially favored the marriage and was not satisfied with Edwin’s progress as a lawyer.

Although there had been some missteps in his career up to that point, in 1907 Edwin Earhart’s job as a claims officer for the Rock Island Railroad led to a transfer to Des Moines, Iowa. The next year, at the age of 10, Earhart saw her first aircraft at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Her father tried to interest her and her sister in taking a flight. One look at the rickety old “flivver” was enough for Earhart, who 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.”

While the family’s finances seemingly improved with the acquisition of a new house and even the hiring of two servants, it soon became apparent Edwin was an alcoholic. Five years later (in 1914), he was forced to retire and although he attempted to rehabilitate himself through treatment, he was never reinstated at the Rock Island Railroad. At about this time, Earhart’s grandmother Amelia Otis died suddenly, leaving a substantial estate that placed her daughter’s share in trust, fearing that Edwin’s drinking would drain the funds. The Otis house and all of its contents, was auctioned; Earhart was heart-broken and later described it as the end of her childhood.

The two sisters, Amelia and Muriel (she went by her middle name from her teens on), remained with their grandparents in Atchison, while their parents moved into new, smaller quarters in Des Moines. During this period, Earhart received a form of home-schooling together with her sister, from her mother and a governess. She later recounted that she was “exceedingly fond of reading” and spent countless hours in the large family library. In 1909, when the family was finally reunited in Des Moines, the Earhart children were enrolled in public school for the first time with Amelia Earhart entering the seventh grade at the age of 12 years.

She planned to go to college, but after encountering four wounded World War I soldiers on the street, she decided to go into nursing. After receiving training as a nurse’s aide from the Red Cross, she began work with the Volunteer Aid Detachment at Spadina Military Hospital. Her duties included preparing food in the kitchen for patients with special diets and handing out prescribed medication in the hospital’s dispensary.Hence, during World War I, Amelia worked in Canada as a military nurse, and after the war was over, returned to her family, where she became a social worker at the Denison House in Boston, Massachusetts. There, Amelia started to teach immigrant children the English language.

When the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic reached Toronto, Earhart was engaged in arduous nursing duties including night shifts at the Spadina Military Hospital.She became a patient herself, suffering from pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis. She was hospitalized in early November 1918 owing to pneumonia and discharged in December 1918, about two months after the illness had started.Her sinus-related symptoms were pain and pressure around one eye and copious mucus drainage via the nostrils and throat.

In the hospital, in the pre-antibiotic era, she had painful minor operations to wash out the affected maxillary sinus, but these procedures were not successful and Earhart subsequently suffered from worsening headache attacks. Her convalescence lasted nearly a year, which she spent at her sister’s home in Northampton, Massachusetts.

She passed the time by reading poetry, learning to play the banjo and studying mechanics. Chronic sinusitis was to significantly affect Earhart’s flying and activities in later life, and sometimes even on the airfield she was forced to wear a bandage on her cheek to cover a small drainage tube.

 

 

At about that time, with a young woman friend, Earhart visited an air fair held in conjunction with the Canadian National Exposition in Toronto. One of the highlights of the day was a flying exhibition put on by a World War I “ace.”  The pilot overhead spotted 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.”

By 1919 Earhart prepared to enter Smith College but changed her mind and enrolled at Columbia University signing up for a course in medical studies among other programs. She quit a year later to be with her parents who had reunited in California.

In Long Beach, on December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father visited an airfield where Frank Hawks (who later gained fame as an air racer) gave her a ride that would forever change Earhart’s life. “By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground,” she said, “I knew I had to fly.”After that 10-minute flight (that cost her father $10), she immediately became determined to learn to fly. Working at a variety of jobs, including photographer, truck driver, and stenographer at the local telephone company, she managed to save $1,000 for flying lessons. After ten hours of instruction, Amelia was ready to fly alone.

 
 

L–R: Neta Snook and Amelia Earhart in front of Earhart’s Kinner Airster, c. 1921

 

Amelia took her first solo flight in 1921 and bought her own plane a year after. Still, flying was only a hobby at hers; she still taught English at the Denison House. However, from June 17 to 18, 1928, Amelia was a passenger on a plane called Friendship that flew from America to England. She became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Her story of the flight was covered by publisher George Putnam, whom Amelia later married in 1931.

 

 

From May 20 to 21, 1932, Amelia crossed the Atlantic solo and also established a new time record for the flight: 13.5 hours. For this feat, she received a medal from president Herbert Hoover.

 

 

 

For a while Earhart was engaged to Samuel Chapman, a chemical engineer from Boston, breaking off her engagement on November 23, 1928. During the same period, Earhart and Putnam had spent a great deal of time together, leading to intimacy. George P. Putnam, who was known as GP, was divorced in 1929 and sought out Earhart, proposing to her six times before she finally agreed.After substantial hesitation on her part, they married on February 7, 1931, in Putnam’s mother’s house in Noank, Connecticut.

Earhart referred to her marriage as a “partnership” with “dual control.”

In a letter written to Putnam and hand delivered to him on the day of the wedding, she wrote,

“I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any midaevil [sic] code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly.”

 

Earhart’s ideas on marriage were liberal for the time as she believed in equal responsibilities for both “breadwinners” and pointedly kept her own name rather than being referred to as Mrs. Putnam. When The New York Times, per the rules of its stylebook, insisted on referring to her as Mrs. Putnam, she laughed it off. GP also learned quite soon that he would be called “Mr. Earhart.”

There was no honeymoon for the newlyweds as Earhart was involved in a nine-day cross-country tour promoting autogyros and the tour sponsor, Beech-nut Gum. Although Earhart and Putnam had no children, he had two sons by his previous marriage to Dorothy Binney (1888–1982), a chemical heiress whose father’s company, Binney & Smith, invented Crayola crayons: the explorer and writer David Binney Putnam (1913–1992) and George Palmer Putnam, Jr. (born 1921).Earhart was especially fond of David who frequently visited his father at their family home in Rye, New York. George had contracted polio shortly after his parents’ separation and was unable to visit as often.

A few years after 1932, Amelia became the first woman to fly successfully from Hawaii to California. Then, in June 1937, Amelia and navigator Fred Noonan set out to fly around the world. They left Miami, Florida, and passed South America, Africa, Thailand, Singapore, Java, and Australia. But when they left New Guinea for Howland Island, they disappeared. The only thing left was a frantic message to the US Coast Guard at 8:45 p.m. on July 2, 1937.

 

 

 

Amelia Earhart, Fred Noonan, and Amelia’s plane were never found.

 

 

http://www.amazon.com/Soaring-wings-biography-Amelia-Earhart/dp/B00086124E

In 1939, Amelia’s husband, George Putnam, wrote a book in tribute to her titled Soaring Wings.

Amelia Earhart was a widely known international celebrity during her lifetime. Her shyly charismatic appeal, independence, persistence, coolness under pressure, courage and goal-oriented career along with the circumstances of her disappearance at a young age have driven her lasting fame in popular culture. Hundreds of articles and scores of books have been written about her life which is often cited as a motivational tale, especially for girls. Earhart is generally regarded as a feminist icon.

Earhart’s accomplishments in aviation inspired a generation of female aviators, including the more than 1,000 women pilots of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) who ferried military aircraft, towed gliders, flew target practice aircraft, and served as transport pilots during World War II.

The home where Earhart was born is now the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum and is maintained by the Ninety-Nines, an international group of female pilots of whom Amelia was the first elected president.

A small section of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra starboard engine nacelle recovered in the aftermath of the Hawaii crash has been confirmed as authentic and is now regarded as a control piece that will help to authenticate possible future discoveries. The evaluation of the scrap of metal was featured on an episode of History Detectives on Season 7 in 2009.

 
HONORS

 

• Amelia Earhart Centre And Wildlife Sanctuary was established at the site of her 1932 landing in Northern Ireland, Ballyarnet Country Park, Derry.
• The “Earhart Tree” on Banyan Drive in Hilo, Hawaii was planted by Amelia Earhart in 1935.
• The Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship Awards were established in 1938.

 
 

“Earhart Light” on Howland Island in August 2008

 
 

Earhart Light (also known as the Amelia Earhart Light), a navigational day beacon on Howland Island (has not been maintained and is crumbling).

The Amelia Earhart Memorial Scholarships (established in 1939 by The Ninety-Nines), provides scholarships to women for advanced pilot certificates and ratings, jet type ratings, college degrees and technical training.

The Purdue University Amelia Earhart Scholarship, first awarded in 1940, is based on academic merit and leadership and is open to juniors and seniors enrolled in any school at the West Lafayette campus. After being discontinued in the 1970s, a donor resurrected the award in 1999.

In 1942, a United States Liberty ship named SS Amelia Earhart was launched (it was wrecked in 1948).

Amelia Earhart Field (1947), formerly Masters Field and Miami Municipal Airport, after closure in 1959, the Amelia Earhart Regional Park was dedicated in an area of undeveloped federal government land located north and west of the former Miami Municipal Airport and immediately south of Opa-locka Airport.

Amelia Earhart Airport (1958), located in Atchison, Kansas.

Amelia Earhart Commemorative Stamp (8¢ airmail postage) was issued in 1963 by the United States Postmaster-General.

The Civil Air Patrol Amelia Earhart Award (since 1964) is awarded to cadets who have completed the first 11 achievements of the cadet program along with receipt of the General Billy Mitchell Award.

Amelia Earhart Residence Hall opened in 1964 as a residence hall for women at Purdue University and became coed in 2002. An eight-foot sculpture of Earhart, by Ernest Shelton, was placed in front of the Earhart Hall Dining Court in 2009.

Member of National Women’s Hall of Fame (1973).

Crittenton Women’s Union (Boston) Amelia Earhart Award recognizes a woman who continues Earhart’s pioneering spirit and who has significantly contributed to the expansion of opportunities for women. (since 1982)

Earhart Corona, a corona on Venus was named by the (IAU) in 1982.

The Amelia Earhart Birthplace,Atchison, Kansas (a museum and historic site, owned and maintained by The Ninety-Nines since 1984).

UCI Irvine Amelia Earhart Award (since 1990).

Member of Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (1992).

3895 Earhart, a minor planet discovered in 1987, was named in 1995 after her, by its discoverer, Carolyn S. Shoemaker.

Earhart Foundation, located in Ann Arbor, MI. Established in 1995, the foundation funds research and scholarship through a network of 50 “Earhart professors” across the United States.

Amelia Earhart Festival (annual event since 1996), located in Atchison, Kansas.

Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award, Atchison, Kansas: Since 1996, the Cloud L. Cray Foundation provides a $10,000 women’s scholarship to the educational institution of the honoree’s choice.

Amelia Earhart Earthwork in Warnock Lake Park, Atchison, Kansas. Stan Herd created the 1-acre (4,000 m²) landscape mural in 1997 from permanent plantings and stone to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Earhart’s birth. Located at 39°32′15″N 95°08′43″W / 39.537621°N 95.145158°W / 39.537621; -95.145158 and best viewed from the air.

Amelia Earhart Bridge (1997), located in Atchison, Kansas.

Greater Miami Aviation Association Amelia Earhart Award for outstanding achievement (2006); first recipient: noted flyer Patricia “Patty” Wagstaff.

On December 6, 2006, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Amelia Earhart into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.

USNS Amelia Earhart (T-AKE-6) was named in her honor in May 2007.

Amelia Earhart full size bronze statue was placed at the Spirit of Flight Center located in Lafayette, Colorado in 2008.

 

 
 

• The Amelia Earhart General Aviation Terminal, a satellite terminal at Boston’s Logan Airport (formerly used by American Eagle, now unused)
• Amelia Earhart Dam on the Mystic River in eastern Massachusetts.
• Schools named after Amelia Earhart are found throughout the United States including the Amelia Earhart Elementary School, in Alameda, California, Amelia Earhart Elementary School, in Hialeah, Florida, Amelia Earhart Middle School, Riverside, California and Amelia Earhart International Baccalaureate World School, in Indio, California.
• Amelia Earhart Hotel, located in Wiesbaden, Germany, originally used as a hotel for women, then as temporary military housing is now operated as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Europe District Headquarters with offices for the Army Contracting Agency and the Defense Contract Management Agency.
• Amelia Earhart Road, located in Oklahoma City (headquarters of The Ninety-Nines), Oklahoma.
• Earhart Road, located next to the Oakland International Airport North Field in Oakland, California.
• Amelia Earhart Playhouse, at Wiesbaden Army Airfield.

 

 
 

GAMES ONLINE: http://www.downeu.com/d/Unsolved+Mysteries+Club+Amelia+Earhart.html

Homestead:  http://www.ninety-nines.org/index.cfm/amelia_earhart_birthplace_museum.htm

 

A Celebration of Women™

sends our blessings to the descendants of this powerhouse of a woman.

 

 

May Your Spirit Live forever, inside the soul of every flyer.

 

Brava Amelia!