An Interest in Flying
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.