Early Life and Formative Years
Born in Atchison, Kansas, on July 24, 1897, Amelia Mary Earhart was never destined for a conventional life. Raised in an upper-middle-class household, her upbringing was nonetheless turbulent due to her father’s struggle with alcoholism, which led to financial instability and frequent moves. Alongside her younger sister, Muriel, Amelia was encouraged by her mother, Amy, to reject traditional gender roles. The girls climbed trees, hunted rats with a .22 rifle, and collected insects, earning Amelia the nickname “Meeley.” She kept a scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings of women who excelled in male-dominated fields like law, engineering, and film production—a clear indication of her early ambitions.
Her first encounter with an airplane, however, was unimpressive. At a 1908 Iowa State Fair, she dismissed the rickety biplane as a “thing of rusty wire and wood.” The spark wasn’t lit until a decade later. During Christmas vacation in Toronto in 1917, she saw wounded soldiers returning from World War I. Deeply moved, she left her junior college and volunteered as a nurse’s aide with the Red Cross. The experience was transformative, exposing her to both human suffering and the burgeoning field of military aviation, as she watched pilots from the Royal Flying Corps train at a local airfield.
It was after the war, in 1920, that her destiny took flight. While attending an airshow in Long Beach, California, with her father, a pilot offered her a ten-minute joyride. As the plane lifted off the ground, something inside her clicked into place. “As soon as we left the ground,” she later wrote, “I knew I myself had to fly.” The experience was not a fleeting thrill; it was a calling. She immediately sought out flying lessons, working odd jobs to save the $1,000 fee. Her instructor was Neta Snook, another female aviation pioneer. Within six months, Earhart had purchased her own aircraft, a bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane she nicknamed “The Canary.” In it, she set her first unofficial record, rising to an altitude of 14,000 feet—a feat that announced her arrival in the world of aviation history.
