They list Amelia Earhart’s death date, on this day, January 5, 1939. That is when the “death-declaring-people” called her legally dead.
We all know she loved to fly planes. Something about being in the air up there thrilled the woman. And so she flew. As such, Amelia was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
Maybe she started out wearing wings. She was born unto this place on July 24, 1897, in good old Atchison, Kansas. And while it should have been a happy childhood, it probably wasn’t. Amelia’s dad was a railroad lawyer. Her mother came from an affluent family. But. The family struggled financially because her father was an alcoholic, and although he tried to help himself, he didn’t find much success in stopping the drink. The Earharts moved around quite a bit.
At some point, she went on a visit to see her sister in Canada. It was then that Amelia developed an interest in caring for soldiers wounded in World War I. She made up her mind, and in 1918 she left junior college to become a nurse’s aide in Toronto.
It was a couple of years later that she got interested in flying. On December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father attended an “aerial meet” in Long Beach, California. She had such an interest she booked a passenger flight the following day at Emory Roger’s Field. The cost was $10 for a 10-minute flight with a guy named Frank Hawks. That’s a pretty good name for a pilot, I think. Hawks. Anyway, this guy Hawks 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.”
From there, she decided to learn. Amelia recruited a woman named Neta Snook to be her flying instructor. The initial contract was for 12 hours of instruction for $500. It meant so much to Amelia that she started working multiple jobs, including photographer, truck driver, and stenographer at the local telephone company. And, with all of that, she managed to save $1,000 for flying lessons.
She continued sacrificing things in her life in order to learn to fly. And. Then.
On May 16, 1923, Earhart became the 16th woman in the United States to be issued a pilot’s license (#6017).
And oh, what an excellent pilot she became. Probably the greatest female pioneer flyer. Amelia also pressed for women’s rights in her commentaries and actions.
And then it happened. Amelia famously disappeared in 1937, along with navigator Fred Noonan. She was on a journey attempting to be the first female aviator to circumnavigate the globe.
A year and six months later, the two were officially declared dead, but neither bodies nor the plane has ever been found.
Amelia Earhart is famous. But. When she vanished, she became legendary. Unfortunately, her disappearance seems to have overtaken her life’s accomplishments as an aviator and advocate for women’s rights.
I think highly of her for having a passion for something in life and following that path. She knew what she loved and stopped at nothing to make that vision come true.
May we all aspire to find our wings.
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“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
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“If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.”
― Coco Chanel
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“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.”
― Rabindranath Tagore
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Those wings are in finding them.
