Amelia Earhart
Aviator and Author
The first woman to fly solo above 14,000 feet. The first woman, and the second person of any gender, to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. The first woman to fly solo, nonstop across the United States. The first person of any gender ever to fly solo from Hawaii to the continental United States. This was Amelia Earhart.
She lived a life of relative freedom uncommon to many women at the time. Whether it was playing basketball in high school, learning automotive repair, studying medicine in college, or becoming an aviator, Amelia didn’t let her gender define or inhibit her. For this, she has her mother, Amy, to thank. Amy didn’t want to bring her children up as “nice little girls,” instead she allowed them to wear bloomers and play outdoors.
Throughout her childhood, Amelia kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in predominantly male-oriented fields such as film directing and production, law, advertising, management, and mechanical engineering.
Amelia became the 16th woman in the US to receive a pilot’s license. She was a proponent of women in aviation, establishing The Ninety-Nines which is now an international organization of licensed women pilots from 44 countries with thousands of members. She continued playing by her own rules, not changing her last name after marriage.
As with many explorers, Earhart died doing what she loved. She disappeared in an attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe in 1937. Her plane and remains have not yet been found.