Amelia Earhart vanishes!

She was born in Atchison, Kansas in 1896. Her nickname was Pidge and loved being a tomboy; she spent the school year with her grandparents in Atchison where she used to love climbing trees and hunting. In her high school yearbook, she was referred to as “A.E.- the girl in brown who walks alone”. In 1917 she volunteered for the Red Cross as a nurse for WWI soldiers at Toronto’s Spadina Military Hospital. In 1918 she saw an airplane for the first time at a stunt exhibit show. 1921 Earhart attended a year of pre-med at Columbia University until she rode on an airplane for the first time during a vacation visiting her father. Having been struck by a love for flight, she drops out of Columbia, completes flying lessons, buys a Kinner Airster, and names her “the Canary”. Her first flying lessons were with Neta Snook, during which Earhart worked as a truck driver, photographer, and stenographer to save up for her lessons and the Canary. In 1922 Amelia set the world altitude record for female pilots at 14,000 feet. She becomes one of a handful of incredible women to receive an international pilot's license the following year. 1924 she decided to take a hiatus from aviation and worked as an English teacher and social worker for Syrian and Chinese immigrants. On June 17 and 18 of 1928 Amelia, a prominent advocate for female pilots in aviation for the Boston chapter of the National Aeronautics Association became the first female passenger on a transatlantic flight along with Wilmer Stultz and copilot and mechanic Louis Gordon. She protests receiving acclaim however for being the first woman on a transatlantic flight given that “Stultz did all the flying…I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes” and vows to do it alone one day. By 1929 Earhart helped found the 99s Club, the first organization for women aviators. That same year she organized and participated in the women’s air derby race from Santa Monica to Cleveland in a single-engine Lockheed Vega. She became the President of the 99s in 31. Between 1930 and 35 she set 7 women’s speed and distance records, including a speed record of 181.18 miles per hour. In 1931 she finally accepted George Palmer Putnam’s 7th marriage proposal under the pretense that their marriage was a “partnership…of dual control”. The following year Earhart shocked the world by being the first woman and second person ever after Charles Lindbergh to fly solo across the Atlantique. She departed from Newfoundland aiming for Paris but arrived in Northern Ireland instead where they would establish a museum at the spot of her landing. For this momentous achievement, she earned the distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Hoover. By 1933 after she visits the white house she befriends Eleanor Roosevelt. She was born to fly and in 1935 she became the first person to fly from Honolulu Hawaii to Oakland, California. On March 17, 1937, Amelia and her astral navigator Fred Noonan fly on a Lockheed Electra 10E which she calls the “flying laboratory”. This would be the day of the first leg of what would be the most daring flight known to humankind. She set out to fly along the equator of the Earth and back. She took off in Oakland and landed in Honolulu, Hawaii. By June 1st, 1937 Earhart and Noonan completed almost 22,000 miles of flight across South America, Africa, and India and landed in Loe, New Guinea. On the fated June 2nd, the pair takes off from Lao with their sights on Howland Island, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where they plan to refuel. A destination they weren't destined to reach. They lost radio contact with the coast guard in Itasca who received communications that they were lost, their gas was running low and they were flying at an altitude of 1000 feet. One final communication before Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared. President Roosevelt would later issue a large search and rescue mission for the daring adventurers. Earhart’s companion, George Putnam lead his own searches until October of 1937. Amelia Earhart was never found.

Amelia Earhart really was an incredible human being. So dedicated to her own freedom, everything she ever did was just to fly, up there towards the horizon, where the constellations meet the sea, where there are no borders, no cages no matter how attractive they were, where “everything was comprehensible”. After reading about her life, and watching some movies about her adventures, you could tell the courage, kindness, and unwavering dedication to freedom that propelled her life. She was the type to put a painting of a jungle or the bottom of an ocean on her bedroom wall just so she could face her fear of plummeting to her Death every day, face it straight on, stare right into its ugly mug so that her fear could lose its hold to comprehension. She knew no one could fulfill her life but herself, and yet, she allowed the world to make her who she was. She didn’t let herself be imprisoned in safety, nor in herself for that matter, she just wanted to fly; to cross the oceans every one of us has to cross. She cared more for the sight of the stars than hearing her name spoken among them. Amelia flew through the Sun to reach Heaven, to find out what essence remained once the flames lightened her load. She felt at Home amongst the clouds, among the hands she’s touched and faces she met and loved. She’s so cool.