Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 and lived on her grandparents' home
in Atchison, Kansas with her sister Muriel. They both went to private schools and
Amelia graduated from Hyde Park School in 1916.
In the fall of 1919 Amelia enrolled as a pre-med student at Columbia University.
In 1920, she decided to join her mother and her father in California. But her sisters did
not want to join them.
Several months after her arrival in California Amelia and her father went to the
"aerial meet" at Daugherty Field in Long Beach. She then became very interested in
flying. The next day, given her helmet and goggles, she boarded the open-cockpit biplane
for a 10 minute flight over Los Angeles.
Amelia began lessons with pioneer aviatrix Anita "Neat" Snook at Kenner Field
near Long Beach. They both had the same integrants and the same background.
In July Amelia purchased a prototype of the Kenner airplane.
She named it "The
Canary". She had many faulted accidents during this period of time. That was because of
the unreliability engines and slowness of the planes.
In October 1922, Amelia began participating in record breaking attempts and ser
a women's altitude record of 14,000 feet then, broken in a few weeks by Ruth Nichols.
Amelia later sold her plane and perused a car. A Kisser that she nicknames "the
yellow peril". She drove her mother cross-country to Boston.
In autumn 1925, Amelia took a position at Denison House in Boston as a "novice"
social worker and was later employed as a staff member. She joined the Boston Chapter
of the National Aeronautic Association, and invested what little money she had in a
company that would build an airport and market Kenner airplanes in Boston. She
regularly became the subject of columns in...