I FLEW A PLANE!!!!!!!

This was the MOST exciting experience!!!!! I completely understand how someone can become obsessed with the idea of flight and dedicate their lives to doing it. It was such a rush! There is so much truth to the song lyrics that I feel I can connect to on such a different level now having flown. When I was in the air, I kept thinking of the section of "When I am the Wind" that says, "...every part of me is working. I feel nothing and everything. I move in all directions, I forget about my senses, a minute is forever, it's clear and I can finally see." Even though the instructor was with me, (a young woman I might add!) I felt like I was totally alone, on top of the world (literally) and didn't have to worry or think about a thing. It was such an escape from the world and from all the stress I've been feeling lately with school and life. I can only imagine how good Amelia must have felt when she could climb into her plane after lectures and appearances and get away from it all. I have a few videos that i think are too large to upload via this site. Hopefully I can find another way to post them. One is me in action flying the plane and the others are vids of the airfield and me chatting with/interviewing the instructor Erin.

Visit to the Wichita Aviation Museum!

So, since I am spending the summer working in Kansas, I figured there would be a great flight museum somewhere close. My dad was here visiting over the weekend and we found the Wichita Aviation Museum!! Here are the pics I took. They had some great Amelia artifacts as well as a lockheed electra that I was able to sit in with a flight simulator! I was most amazed by the map of Amelia's flight around the globe. It is SO sad to see how close she was to completing her journey before the plane went down.

Married Life

Here is some more great info I gathered off of links I found on the national aviation website. The first two paragraphs detail the business woman side of Amelia:



"The year 1929 became an even busier one for Earhart. The flier sold her Avian and bought a used Lockheed Vega airplane. According to Susan Butler’s biography, East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart, the used plane performed so poorly that Lockheed replaced it with a new one. Earhart used the newer plane to finish third in the first Women’s Air Derby race (from Santa Monica to Cleveland). She also became General Traffic Manager for Transcontinental Air Transport (which later became Trans World Airlines).
In 1930, Earhart took on even more business responsibilities. She took a public relations post with the Pennsylvania Railroad; helped to found the New York, Philadelphia, and Washington Airway Corporation; and became vice president of Ludington Airlines. In July, she set the world speed record for women by flying over 181 miles per hour, but could not enjoy this success for long because in September she lost her father to stomach cancer. However, in December, she became the first woman in America to fly an autogiro. (This type of aircraft is supported in flight by rotating, non-powered horizontal wings while a conventional propeller provides forward movement.)"

I have wondered about the relationship between George Putnam and Amelia and this excerpt gave me an insight into what their relationship might have been like:


"When George Putnam first met Earhart, he was married to Dorothy Binney, part of a wealthy family that owned Binney & Smith, a chemical company in Peekskill, New York. (This company later moved to Easton, Pennsylvania and has long been famous not for creating chemicals, but Crayola crayons!) However, the Putnams divorced in 1929, and in February 1931 Putnam and Earhart married. Students of Earhart continue to debate how intimate the marriage was. After all, on her wedding day, the flier told Putnam in writing, among other things, “In our life together I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly . . . . Please let us not interfere with each other’s work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements.” After marrying, she also had a romantic relationship with Eugene Vidal—military officer, public servant under Franklin Roosevelt, and the father of the contemporary writer Gore Vidal. Whatever the marriage was like, Putnam avidly promoted his wife’s career (while keeping himself in the public eye too)."

Info about Atchinson KS

I found this info in a NY Times article from 1997. It speaks of Earhart's childhood home:


"Atchison does not fit the typical image of a prairie town. It's neither flat nor plain. In its time it was very wealthy, with between 20 and 30 millionaires at the turn of the century, rich with railroad and river-trade money. Built among impressive bluffs, Atchison has lofty views of the river and valley from many parts of town. Most of its showplace homes, built in late Victorian style, remain in good condition, and the original brick streets are still in place in older residential areas. A remarkable 18 structures in the town of about 10,000 people are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

At the Earhart birthplace, a few blocks away, the former home of Earhart's grandparents, Judge Alfred and Amelia Otis, the resident caretaker, Louise Foudray, was cheerful about guiding visitors through the house in the midst of painters' dust and clutter. The house has been owned since 1984 by the Ninety-Nines, the women's flying organization of which Earhart was a founder. The group is leading the effort to raise money for the restoration of the house.

Rambling rather than palatial, the most attractive feature of the seven-bedroom brick-and-frame house is its site, on the tall bluffs, affording a sweeping view of the river and of Missouri farmland on the opposite bank. In a back bedroom on the second floor of this house, Amy Otis Earhart gave birth to Amelia on July 24, 1897. During her childhood years, Earhart slept in one of the front bedrooms, and the visitor is tempted to think that as she looked out on the river, she dreamed of distant places and dramatic accomplishments. Bits of her life are coming to rest in the house: an oak rolltop desk that Earhart had used, a gift to the museum from her sister; her dark-grained ''hope chest,'' and a bathing suit she used to wear.

From the lake we returned to town and stopped at the old Santa Fe depot, a restored landmark built of limestone that houses the town visitors center and the museum of the Atchison County Historical Society, which displays Earhart's personal effects from her childhood and artifacts and memorabilia from Atchison's railroading days.

We made our way through the Earhart exhibit to music from video clips of Judy Garland singing ''On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe'' in the movie ''The Harvey Girls'' (the video is now part of the railroad exhibit), marveling over Earhart's leather flight jacket, a watercolor of the Missouri River that she painted as a child, a pair of her dancing shoes and a shimmering, beaded dress that she bought in Paris."

[I am amazed that she actually purchased a shimmering beaded dress! Doesn't seem like her style!]

Poem written by Amelia

I found this poem written by Amelia after her engagement to Sam Chapman ended. I LOVE the line about the livid loneliness of fear:

Courage

Courage is the price which life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things;

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear
Nor mountain heights, where bitter joy you can hear
The sound of wings.

How can life grant us boon of living, compensate,
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare

The soul's dominion? Each time we make a choice we pay
With courage to behold resistless day
And count it fair.

Lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh is mentioned so often in the script as Amelia becomes known as "Lady Lindy." Since all I knew of Lindbergh was that his son got kidnapped, I decided I should probably find out more about the man who inspired Amelia to choose her career.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) (nicknamed "Slim", "Lucky Lindy" and "The Lone Eagle") was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.
Lindbergh, then a 25-year old U.S. Air Mail pilot, emerged from virtual obscurity to almost instantaneous world fame as the result of his Orteig Prize-winning solo non-stop flight on May 20–21, 1927, from Roosevelt Field located in Garden City on New York's Long Island to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France, a distance of nearly 3,600 statute miles, in the single-seat, single-engine monoplane Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh, a U.S. Army reserve officer, was also awarded the nation's highest military decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his historic exploit.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Lindbergh relentlessly used his fame to help promote the rapid development of U.S. commercial aviation. In March 1932, however, his infant son, Charles, Jr., was kidnapped and murdered in what was soon dubbed the "Crime of the Century" which eventually led to the Lindbergh family fleeing the United States in December 1935 to live in Europe where they remained up until the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Before the United States declared World War II on December 8, 1941, Lindbergh had been an outspoken advocate of keeping the U.S. out of the world conflict, as was his Congressman father, Charles August Lindbergh (R-MN), during World War I, and became a leader of the anti-war America First movement. Nonetheless, he supported the war effort after Pearl Harbor and flew many combat missions in the Pacific Theater of World War II as a civilian consultant, even though President Franklin D. Roosevelt had refused to reinstate his Army Air Corps colonel's commission that he had resigned earlier in 1939.
In his later years, Lindbergh became a prolific prize-winning author, international explorer, inventor, and active environmentalist.

Great Childhood Info

I love the information on this site about Amelia's childhood and upbringing. The fact that she was a bit of a "loner" as a child makes so much sense given how and by whom she was raised. I also enjoyed reading that she fell in love with flying while on a ferris wheel at the fair and that she played field hockey while in school (I did as well!!).


The world's most famous female aviator disappeared in 1937, as she attempted to become the first woman to fly around the world. With her navigator, Fred Noonan, her Lockheed Electra was last heard from about 100 miles from the tiny Pacific atoll, Howland Island, on July 2, 1937. President Roosevelt authorized an immediate search; no trace was ever found.

Over the years, the disappearance of Amelia Earhart has spawned almost as many conspiracy theories as the Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Kennedy Assasination.

She achieved a number of aviation records:

the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, in 1928
the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic, in 1932
the first person to solo from Hawaii to California, in 1935
Guided by her publicist and husband, George Putnam, she made headlines in the era when aviation gripped the public's imagination.

Youth

Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Kansas, the daughter of Edwin and Amy Earhart. At the age of three, she was sent to live with her grandmother (her namesake), mainly because the old woman needed company and a distraction from the deaths of her mother, her son, and her daughter-in-law, as well as the poor mental condition of her husband Alfred. The grandparents (or grandmother) raised Amelia during her early childhood. She liked their home in Atchison, Kansas, especially her large bedroom with views of the nearby river, now a museum open to the public. She enjoyed her life with her grandparents: learning to read at five, and secure in a place where it seemed that almost everyone was family. But her grandmother was timid, and a worrier, and did not approve of Amelia's tomboy tendencies, so Amelia kept her pony-riding, tree-climbing, snow-sledding, and hunting activities to herself. Her parents were only 50 miles away, and she summered with them, so she remained close to them during these years.

Education

When she was seven, her father Edwin took the family to the St. Louis World's Fair, where, on riding the Ferris wheel, she learned that she rather enjoyed heights. She learned to build and make things with her own hands, once making a crude roller coaster out of two-by-fours, a packing box, and roller-skate wheels. She was an avid reader, and even as a child read Harper's Magazine for Young People, and the novels of Dickens and Thackeray. One of her favorite poems was "Atalanta in Calydon" by Algernon Charles Swinburne; it's a poem about a warrior maiden, who hunts and kills a boar with Meleager.

From the first grade, she attended the College Preparatory School in Atchison. It was a tiny place, with only about 30 students, housed in a building that used to be a stable. Amelia was bright, but her independent spirit and lack of interest in recitation did not endear her to the teachers. In high school, cheerleading was not enough for her, she wanted to play on the basketball team.

Like Pappy Boyington, her family circumstances were unsettled, marked by moves and alcoholism in the family. The odd family arrangement (Amelia living with her grandparents in Atchison, her younger sister Muriel with the girls' parents in Kansas City) lasted until Amelia was ten, when she rejoined with her mother and father.

Her father Edwin, was well-educated, but tended to the impractical; money just slipped through his fingers. His in-laws, the Otises, helped him out a lot (including taking care of Amelia), but Edwin's extravagance remained a problem. In 1908, he got a new job, with the Rock Island railroad, which required him to move to Des Moines. Now, the arrangement with the Atchison grandparents was no longer feasible, so Amelia joined them in Iowa, and saw her first airplane, at the 1908 Iowa State Fair. For a few years, Edwin did well, moving into a newer, larger houses almost every year, as his income grew. But his spendthrift nature won out, and he kept living beyond his means, and increasingly turning to alcohol. He moved out for a time, but Amy (Amelia's mother) implored him to return.

The death of Amelia's grandparents, the Otises, was the final blow. The Otises were quite wealthy, with an estate worth over $170,000 (a huge sum in those days). While the will sought to provide for the grandchildren, it excluded Edwin and Amy. A lengthy, messy struggle ensued. During this time, Edwin had lost his job, and was forced to accept a menial position in St. Paul, which required another family move, to Minnesota.

In the 1913-14 school year, at St. Paul Central High School, where Amelia was more in control of her own destiny, she did very well, keeping a grade point average in the high eighties, with a curriculum including Latin, German, and Physics.

In 1916, she matriculated at Ogontz, a highly-regarded women's college, what used to be called a "finishing school," outside of Philadelphia. In her three semesters there, Amelia played field hockey, studied Shakespeare & Latin, and attended concerts of the Philadelphia Symphony. When the United States entered World War One in 1917, Amelia was drawn in and served as a nurse with the Volunteer Aid Detachment (VAD) of St. John Ambulance Brigade.

Flight

She took her first ride in an airplane in 1920. After her flight with barnstormer Frank Hawks, she said "As soon as we left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly." Indeed, within a few days, she took her first flying lesson, in a Curtiss JN-4 Jenny. Six months later, she bought her own airplane, a yellow Kinner Airster, that she dubbed "The Canary." Like Gabby Gabreski, she was not a naturally gifted pilot, but she persevered, built up her flying time, and even broke the woman's altitude record in 1922.

The mid-Twenties were difficult years for Amelia. Her mother finally divorced Edwin, thus ending that part of Amelia's family life. She studied at Columbia for a time, but lack of money compelled her to withdraw. She had a long-term engagement to one Sam Chapmen, but they never married. She was active in aviation and social work, living in Medford, Massachusetts for a time. She flew whenever she could, distributing ing free passes to a carnival on one occasion, and was active in Boston aviation cirles.

Across the Atlantic

She became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic on June 18-19, 1928. The flight was the brainchild of Amy Guest, a wealthy, aristocratic American expatriate living in London. Aware of the huge publicity that would accrue to the first woman to fly the Atlantic, the 55 year old Mrs. Guest had purchased a Fokker F7 trimotor from Commander Richard Byrd, to make the flight herself. Her family objected, and she relented, as long as the "right sort" of woman could make the flight. The "right sort" would take a good picture, be well-educated, and not be a publicity-seeking gold-digger. The Guest family hired George Putnam, a New York publicist who had promoted Lindbergh's book We, to look for a suitable women pilot. He selected the little-known Amelia Earhart, and introduced her as "Lady Lindy".

While the flight instantly made her world-famous, she was little more than a passenger in the Fokker tri-motor "Friendship." They took off from Trepassy, Newfoundland, and after a 20 hour and 40 minute flight, landed in Burry Port, Wales. When they went on to London, another huge mob welcomed them. The pilots, Wilmer Stutz and Louis Gordon, were all but forgotten in the media frenzy surrounding the first woman to fly across the Atlantic.