Happy 125th Birthday to Amelia Earhart: A Kansas Icon and Legendary Aviator

This Day in Kansas History

“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace, the soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things.”

-Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart is a legendary Kansan who broke barriers and opened doors for women in aviation. She was born in Atchison, KS on July 24, 1897, to Edwin Stanton Earhart and Amy Otis Earhart. Her father was a railroad lawyer, and her mother came from an affluent family. In 1904, at the age of seven, with the help of her uncle and sister, she recreated the roller coaster that she saw at the Worlds Fair in St. Louis and rode it off the roof of her house. She later told her parents that it felt like flying. In 1908 her family moved to Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois as her father searched for work. During this time her family struggled financially as her grandparents had passed away and her father fell into alcoholism. In 1916 she finished school in Chicago and when her mother received her inheritance Amelia was sent to Ogontz School in Rydal, Pennsylvania. She would visit her sister in Canada from time to time and on one such visit she became interested in caring for wounded soldier who had just returned from the battlefields of World War I. This influenced her decision to leave school in 1918 to be a nurse’s aide at Spading Military Hospital in Toronto. When the war ended, she entered a premed program at Columbia University in NYC, but she left the program in 1920 when her parents wanted her to live with them in California and it was here that she would ultimately find her love of flying. She took flying lessons and bought her first plane a Kinner Airster which she painted yellow and called “The Canary” in 1921.

She earned her pilots license and moved to Massachusetts in the mid- 1920s. She continued to fly while also finding work at the Denison House in Boston a home for immigrants. In April of 1928 she was chosen for the flight that would make her famous. She left Trepassey, Newfoundland on June 17, 1928, as a passenger on a seaplane and flew across the Atlantic, landing in Burry Port, Wales as an international celebrity. She wrote a book entitled 20 hrs., 40 mins about the flight. The publicity was handled by George Palmer Putnam, a publisher whom she would marry on February 7, 1931, however she used her maidan name for her career. She piloted an autogiro, setting an altitude record of 18,415 feet that same year. She flew across the Atlantic on May 20-21, 1932 and completed the flight in 14 hours and 56 minutes. She wrote a second book, The Fun of It, about her life and flying. During her career she advocated for women to reject the social norms and pursue all opportunities, especially in aviation. She was the first civilian and first woman to use a parachute. She also founded an organization for female pilots that still exist today known as the Ninety-Nine. She was known as the “Pilot in Pearls” and released a clothing line and a luggage line in 1933. That same year she had her palm read by Nellie Simmons who was known as the Palm Reader to the Stars. Simmons said Earhart did not like taking risks, though as we all know today, Earhart was a big risk taker.

In 1935 she made history yet again when she was the first woman to fly from Hawaii to California and then she became the first woman to fly from Los Angeles to Mexico City. Her last visit to Atchison was also in 1935 where she rode in a parade in her honor wearing one of her original designs. Her first attempt around the world was in March of 1937; her second and last fight was that summer.

In 1937 she began preparing to fly around the world with her navigator Fred Noonan in a twin engine Lockheed Electra. They left Miami on June 1 and landed in Lae, New Guinea on June 29. They had flown a total of 22,000 miles and made numerous refueling stops along the way. On July 2 they left New Guinea to fly 2,600 miles to Howard Island, a notoriously hard place to find. They had two brightly lit U.S. ships marking the route as well as radio contact with the Itasca, a U.S. Coast Guard ship. Late in the journey she radioed that they were running out of fuel about an hour later at 8:43 a.m. she radioed for the last time saying, “We are running north and south.” The plane was believed to have gone down 100 miles from the island and an exhaustive search was conducted. However, on July 19 it was called off and she and Noonan were declared lost at sea. Over the years there have been many theories as to what happened to her from being captured by the Japanese to landing on another island and perishing there to her landing in the water and sinking with the plane.

The theory of her landing safely on another island seems to be the most probable. In 1940 human remains were discovered on the Island of Nikumaroro. In 1941 the bones were identified as male by Dr. D.W. Hoodless, but re-analyzing the remains in 2018 would show that they were in fact that of an above average height female. This brought a buzz of excitement as the possible discovery of Amelia’s remains. The technique used to discover this was developed by Dr. Alexandra Klales an Associate Professor of Forensic Anthropology at Washburn University in Topeka, KS. She explained her technique as a modification of a 1969 method using features from the pelvis for sex estimation. She said that this standardizing of the skeletal features has increased the reliability of results. She also said that using statistics for prediction has improved the accuracy and confidence in those results. When asked how she learned that her method was used to identify the bones as Amelia’s she said that she learned that her work was used to support Dr. Richard Jantz identification of the Nikumaroro bones when she was reviewing early access publications in the journal of Forensic Anthropology for which she was working as an associate editor at the time. She was so excited that her work was used to identify the bones, especially since she ended up in Amelia’s home state, that she posted about it on Facebook. She said that her method was used by Dr. Jantz to re-analyze the 1940 finding of Dr. Hoodless and discovered that the remains were not male as originally suggested but rather female based on Dr. Klales method of looking at the subpubic angle which varies between males and females. She also explained why Dr. Hoodless thought the bones were male saying that based on her research of population from Amelia’s time there was more overlap in width between males and females making it harder to differentiate the two. However, the skull that was found was ruled out as belonging to Amelia because it lacked etching marks from sinus surgery, something that her skull would have. Even with the discoveries that have been made it is still not known as to what happened to Amelia and though the remains bring us one step closer there are those that believe that they are not really hers at all. No further evidence has been discovered on the island to suggest that they landed there. Noonan’s remains have never been recovered nor has her Lockheed Electra and until they have been located the mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart will endure.

On Wednesday, July 27, she will be honored with a ten-foot bronze statue at the U.S. Capitol, joining one of the most exclusive clubs of notable Americans.

Her story lives on at the Amelia Earhart Birthplace and Museum in Atchison, KS which was run privately by the Ninety-Nines until Dr. Bribach purchased it for $100,000 to restore it and share it with the world. In her short life she was a role model for women and girls to take control of their lives regarding family and careers. She was the first women vice-president of the National Aeronautic Association and lobbied congress on Aviation Legislation and promoting the safety and efficiency of air travel for women. She held positions at two airlines and helped found two others. She fought for Birth Control rights, for women in politics and business as well as a draft for men, women, and elderly to promote equality and peace. Amelia Earhart led an extraordinary life and broke barriers for women and though we may never know what really happened to her on that July day, her legacy has lived on through every female pilot that has come after her.