Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History: Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart is the topic of this third installment in the series, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. Because the purpose of the series is to be inspirational to women, and while there are enormous opportunities to discuss women in history, a thread that will run throughout all of these articles is that of the woman who has to push against the norms of her life, her family, or her society in order to be truly herself. This takes a particular brand of courage, to know in your heart that you are different and to be with reconciled to that difference while pushing to make your dreams come true. Amelia Earhart would therefore have to be one of the inspirational women highlighted here.
Getting Past a Difficult Childhood
As is true of many famous people who have gone beyond the norm, her early life was not an easy one. Amelia was born in 1897 at her grandparent's house in Kansas, and while her grandfather was one of the leading citizens of this small town, there was always a push and pull between the grandparents and her father. Always a tomboy, some relate that she may have been a trial for her otherwise timid grandmother and ailing grandfather. Stories differ, but it seems that Amelia and her sister did not actually live with their parents until she was about 10, when her father began to drink publicly. By all accounts, her teenage years were scarred by the difficult challenges of having everyone be aware that her father was a drunkard. By 1914 her mother had left her father (a difficult thing in those days) and Amelia and her sister experienced loss of social status, while being the object of gossip and pity.
Amelia trained as a nurse and worked in a Voluntary a Detachment at the end of the First World War from 1917 to 1918. In her own words: There for the first time I realized what the world war meant. Instead of new uniforms and brass bands, I saw only the result of four years desperate struggle; men without arms and legs, men who are paralyzed, and men who were blind." When the war ended she pursued medicine as a career, but she lost her heart to aviation in 1920.
From Stunt Shows to Flight
Again accounts differ, but it seems that Amelia first enjoyed aviation as a hobby, watching stunt routines for entertainment at local fairgrounds, as was popular at the time. She took her first ride in 1920 with a barnstormer pilot named Frank Hawks. But she is quoted as saying, "As soon as we left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly." And it seems as though that dream came from her very soul, and she never looked back. Flight in those days, as now, was expensive, and she had to work hard save her money and do things in small doses. Apparently she did odd jobs and put together her first $1000 -- for flying lessons. Flight in the 1920s was very different than it is today with the small planes occasionally crashing, and Amelia's record was no different. Nevertheless by 1921 she was flying solo and by the next year she had purchased her own plane. By 1928 her hobby became her vocation and she became (although just as a passenger) the first woman to cross the Atlantic in a plane. The publisher who wrote an article on that flight, George Putnam, became her husband in 1931. And by 1932 she had crossed the Atlantic flying solo and setting a new record of 13 hours and 30 minutes for which she received a medal from the United States President at the time, Herbert Hoover.
What was it like to be a woman in a man's territory in the early 1900s? We can get some glimpse of the courage and tenacity of Amelia Earhart from her own words.
Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do......The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward......Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.....Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn't any good reason to refer to it.
As most people are aware, Amelia's story ends in tragedy and mystery. As she tried to circumnavigate the globe, the Coast Guard lost communication with her plane and it is assumed she went down, although the remains of the plane were never found. Amelia's own words sum up the challenges all women face as they lead uncommon lives:
Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.
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