Amelia Earhart was born 39 years ago in Atchison, Kans. Her father was a lawyer and railway claim agent. She went east to study at Columbia University, then west to be with her parents, who had moved to Los Angeles. In California. Amelia saw many more airplanes than in Kansas. The idea of flying excited her. Famed Captain Frank Hawks took her up for her first flight. In 1918 she made her first solo, after ten hours of instruction. Two years later she set a woman's altitude record of 14,000 ft.
Amelia Earhart and her mother went east in a canary-colored automobile. The young girl again studied at Columbia and at Harvard Summer School. She got into social service work, teaching soiled urchins at South Boston's old Denison House. One day the telephone rang and a voice asked her if she would go along as a passenger on a transatlantic airplane flight. The sponsor of the project thought it would be good publicity to take a woman along. Amelia said at once that she would go.
Amelia Earhart thus made national headlines as the first woman to cross the Atlantic, with Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon in the Friendship. After that she settled down to learn flying as well as she could. She flew for fun, flew for publicity. While flying for Beechnut Products she made headlines by cracking up an autogiro, nearest thing to a foolproof aircraft. But she learned to fly so well that she became the world's No. i woman flyer, rolled up an impressive list of "firsts":
¶ First woman to fly the Atlantic.
¶ First woman to fly the Atlantic alone.
¶ First person to fly the Atlantic alone twice.
¶ First woman to fly an autogiro.
¶ First person to cross the U. S. in an autogiro.
¶ First woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross.
¶ First woman to fly non-stop across the U. S.
¶ First woman to fly from Hawaii to the U. S.
Amelia Earhart became a good friend of Eleanor Roosevelt who shared her belief that women should not stand in the shadow of men. In 1931 she married Publisher George Palmer Putnam, who never dissuaded her from flying wherever she wanted to go. Keynote of Mrs. Putnam's career was the title of her book, The Fun Of It. But she professed interest also in the scientific aspect of flying. She became a consulting member of Purdue University's faculty, specializing in aeronautics and careers for women, and last year acquired a Wasp-motored Lockheed Electra which was supposed to be a "flying laboratory" equipped with up-to-the-minute flying and navigating devices. The cost— $80,000—was mostly provided by anonymous members of the Purdue Research Foundation but it was specified that the plane should be Mrs. Putnam's property.
One thing Amelia Earhart Putnam still wanted to do—for the fun of it—was to fly around the world. She started from Miami, Fla. on June i with Fred Noonan, onetime Pan American navigator. They made mostly back page news until last fortnight when they started across 2,550 miles of Pacific Ocean toward tiny Howland Island, failed to reach it. Last week the likelihood was approaching sad certainty that Amelia Earhart Putnam had made headlines for the last time.*