Amelia Earhart Biography: A Lady Born Before her Time

Amelia Mary Earhart was born July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas; her parents were Amy and Edwin Otis. Amelia lived with her younger sister, Muriel, and maternal grandparents Alfred and Amelia Harres Otis until the age of 12. At age 12, Amelia moved back with her parents due to her grandmother’s death. Her family moved to many cities due to her father’s job as a lawyer for Rock Island Railroad Company. In the year 1909 Amelia and Muriel lived with their parents in Des Moines, Iowa. Amelia attended schools in St. Paul Minnesota, and Springfield, Illinois for high school. In total Amelia went to 6 different high schools before she graduated. Amelia’s father was fired for drinking; so Amelia’s mother took her sister and her to go live with some of Amelia’s mom’s friends in Chicago in 1914.
Chicago is where Amelia attended the private school Hyde Park and graduated in 1915. Hyde Park’s yearbook described Amelia as “A.E- the girl in brown who walks alone.” After Amelia graduated from high school, she received money from her mom to attend Ogontz School in Philadelphia. This was an exclusive high school as well as a junior college. Christmas of 1918 Amelia went to visit Muriel, who was attending a private school in Toronto, Canada. In Toronto, Amelia saw many men wounded from World War I, she insisted that she volunteer as a nurse’s helper. Amelia also visited a local airfield and she decided that after seeing the airfield, she wanted to learn how to fly right away! Amelia said “I want to do it because I want to do it.”
Once the war ended, Amelia took a medical course at the University of Columbia in New York. When her medical course was done she met up with her family in Los Angeles. Amelia asked her dad to give her $10 so she could fly as a passenger in an air show. When Amelia landed from the air show, she couldn’t wait to begin flying lessons. Neta Snook, the 1st women instructor to graduate from an aviation school, became her teacher. Amelia practiced her flying lesson at Bert Kinner’s Airfield on Long Beach Boulevard. Amelia really wanted her own plane! Amelia took many jobs to pay for her plane and along with her mother’s help; she was able to buy a plane. She bought a yellow Kinner Airster.
In 1924 Amelia’s parents got a divorce, Amelia sold her plane so she could give her mom a ride back to Boston. She became a social worker after returning to Boston but still tried to fly in her spare time. April of 1928 Amelia received an invitation to be interviewed by a committee to fly as a passenger across the Atlantic. This would be a very dangerous flight, 18 people died on the previous flight and the weather conditions weren’t always the best. Amelia of course was chosen for the flight and accepted the challenge. This same year she flew to Los Angeles to visit her father and then back to New York. This trip made her the 1st women to fly solo across the country.
A year later Lockheed Company came out with a new type of plane called the Vega. The Vega was a single winged plane. The company showed this plane to Amelia and she entered it in the Women’s 1st Air Derby across the US, she took 3rd. Amelia got married to her manager George Putnam in 1931, George was a publisher and used his job to make Amelia well known in America.
For Amelia’s 39th birthday she got a plane and in 1937 she announced her plans for a trip around the world to the press, this had never been done before. She reached Hawaii safely but as she was leaving she crashed on takeoff. Luckily no one was injured; the crash caused Amelia to take a different path than before. She also took a different navigator with her this time named Fred Noonan. June of 1937 Amelia took off; she flew across the Atlantic, Africa, Red Sea, and many more landmarks. Amelia planned on landing on Howland which was a very tiny island as big as a dot and only 2 miles long. This would be very difficult to do. Unfortunately, Amelia and her navigator Fred never reached Howland and to this day, no one knows what happened to them. It is assumed Amelia died July 2, 1937 but one thing is for sure, Amelia was one of the greatest women’s pilots of all time! She broke many records and received many awards for her outstanding flying, and she will never be forgotten. “Flying may not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price” Amelia stated.