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The Disappearance of Amelia Earhart: A Cultural Phenomenon

Amelia Earhart in an autogiro

In this photograph she poses in an autogiro, an airplane with a conventional fuselage and four large rotor blades mounted above it. Although it was slow and awkward to handle, the plane had the advantage of being able to take off and land in a relatively short distance. Many admired the autogiro, including Thomas Edison, and Earhart became friends with its American manufacturer, Harold Pitcairn. In 1931 Earhart set an altitude record in the autogiro and later became the first person to pilot it across the country and back. That said, the plane was only slightly faster than a car on the open road; furthermore, it was more accident-prone that other airplanes. Earhart liked the autogiro but ultimately found it impractical for the long-distance flying that she enjoyed.

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An Interest in Flying Born in Atchison, Kansas on July 24, 1897, Amelia was an adventurous tomboy who challenged the typical feminine behavior of the time. During her childood, Amelia was interested in sports and games of every kind, even those meant for boys, and enjoyed activities such as climbing trees, sledding, hunting rats, and trapping chickens for fun. Growing up, her father's job as a railroad attorney forced the family to move from Kansas to Iowa, Minnesota, and eventually Illinois, where she graduated from high school in Chicago of 1915. Amelia then went on to attend Ogontz School, a women's finishing school near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the middle of her second year, however, Amelia visited her sister in Toronto and decided to become a nurse's aide in a Canadian military hospital. Seeing the wounded soldiers returning from WWI touched Amelia, as she wanted to provide much needed help.

While in Canada, Earhart and a friend attended a stunt-flying show which sparked her interest in aviation. A pilot spotted them watching from an open area and dove straight towards them. "I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'" she said. But as the plane flew overhead, Earhart stood her ground without budging. She explained the phenomenon by saying "I did not understand it at the time, but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by." After the conclusion of the war, Earhart enrolled in Columbia University as a premedical student, but left the following year to visit her parents in California.

In December of 1920, Earhart went on a life changing airplane ride with a pilot name Frank Hawks. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly," she said of the experience. She quickly took up aviation as a passionate hobby, taking her first lesson less than a week later from female aviator Neta Snook. She even saved up enough money to buy her first plane six months later, a second-hand Kinner Airster biplane, which she named "The Canary." This plane was used by Earhart just one year later to break the women's altitude record by flying to a height of 14,000 feet. Sadly, family financial issues lead Earhart to sell "The Canary" in favor of a Kissel roadster. Her parents soon divorced and Amelia moved back east to Boston with her mother and sister and became a social worker while still maintaining her interest in flying on the side.