"Amelia Earhart 1897-1937"


A tomboy from Kansas, a volunteer in a Red Cross Hospital during World War I, a teacher of English to immigrant factory workers.

Still, surrounded by the excitement of stunt fliers and air shows, her first love was the airplane. Amelia Earhart made her first solo flight in 1921 and scraped together the money to buy her own plane.

In 1928, she was working in a settlement house in Boston, when she was approached by the organizers of a transatlantic flight. The woman originally scheduled to be part of the team could not go, and so it began. As the first woman to fly the Atlantic, she won the public's affection. The press dubbed her "Lady Lindy," a female Charles Lindberg.

She became aviation editor of Cosmopolitan, was active in Zonta International, and helped establish an organization of women pilots. In 1931 she married George Palmer Putnam, of the publishing family, and his promotional skills kept her name in the press.


Aviation was quite a new concept and the industry looked for ways of improving its image. Amelia was appointed Assistant to the General Traffic Manager at Transcontinental Air Transport (later known as TWA) with a special responsibility of attracting women passengers.

Amelia organized a cross-country air race for women pilots in 1929, the Los Angeles to Cleveland Women's Air Derby. Will Rogers coined the name "The Powder-Puff Derby"...a name that stuck!

The "Ninety-Nines", a now famous women pilots organization, was formed by Amelia Earhart in her hotel room in Cleveland during a meeting with other women pilots. Charter membership included 99 applicants. She was to serve as its first President.

After achieving a number of flight "firsts," she determined to do "just one more long flight," In 1937 she took off from Miami heading east on an around-the-world course. Her Lockheed Electra was specially equipped, and she was accompanied by a navigator, Fred Noonan. On July 2 they took off for the most difficult leg of the trip, from New Guinea to tiny Howland Island is the mid-Pacific. They never arrived, and an extensive air and sea search failed to turn up any trace of them.



Amelia Earhart in a letter to her husband George.

"Please know I am quite aware of the hazards...I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail their failure must be but a challenge to others."




Source: Ellen's Place, "Amelia Earhart - Biography," .

Source: The Ninety-nines, Amelia Earhart: a timeline

Contributed by: Crimson (GSR)






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