Amelia
Earhart saw her first plane at the Iowa State Fair, 1908, and amazingly, she was not the least bit interested in it. She took
her first ride in an air plane 12 years later, in 1920. But in that time in between she didn’t just sit around and do
nothing, she enrolled into Orgontz School in 1916, but left in February of 1918 to take Red Cross training. She never really
graduated. She really wanted to take lessons after the flight in 1920, so she worked as a clerk until she had enough money
to take them. Her teacher was Neta Snook. The plane she used was called, “JN-4 Jenny”. She then bought her first
plane, “The Kinner Airster”, but she called it, “The Canary” because of its color. Then in 1922 she
got her Pilot license.
Sam Chapman asked her to
marry him, but she refused saying she didn’t want to become a “domestic robot” although see was fond of
him. But, she did except when George Putnam proposed to her for the 6th
time, he than divorced his wife and married Amelia in 1931. They met when GP was assigned to write an article on her about
her first round-world flight.
In
1932 Amelia in the Lockhead “Vega” started her cross Atlantic, which nobody had done since Lindbergh, on May 20th. She ended up going
ofr course and landing Londonderry in Northern
Ireland.
Then, in autumn of 1934 she decided that she was going to try a route that 10 others died trying. This route was from
trans-Pacific flight from Hawaii to California...and
then on to Washington D.C.
When she landed in Oakland, California,
everyone was cheering, and the president sent congratulations to Amelia. "You have
scored again...(and) shown even the "doubting Thomases" that aviation is a science which cannot be limited to men only."
The president said.
In
1935, Amelia started planning for her world round flight, she would be full filling two firsts, longest distance possible
to travel, and first women to travel it. But as she was taking of for the first time at Luke Field, near Pearl
Harbor, she turned to hard and the plane went out of control, she was not hurt but it was a delay in her flight
plans.
You
can find out more about the world-round-flight under the page. We have on it on the page bar.
