Above: Amelia Earhart with her husband George Putnam, April 2, 1931.
Amelia Mary Earhart (born July 24, 1897, disappeared July 2, 1937, declared dead January 5, 1939) was an American aviation pioneer and author. She was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.
Born in Atchison, Kansas, Amelia developed a passion for adventure at a young age, steadily gaining flying experience from her twenties. In 1928, she became the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by airplane (accompanying pilot Wilmer Stultz), for which she achieved celebrity status. In 1932, piloting a Lockheed Vega 5B, Amelia made a nonstop solo transatlantic flight, becoming the first woman to achieve such a feat. She received the United States Distinguished Flying Cross for this accomplishment. In 1935, Amelia became a visiting faculty member at Purdue University as an advisor to aeronautical engineering and a career counselor to women students. She was also a member of the National Woman's Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.
During an attempt at becoming the first female to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10-E Electra, Amelia and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. The two were last seen in Lae, New Guinea, on July 2, 1937, on the last land stop before Howland Island and one of their final legs of the flight. Nearly one year and six months after she and Noonan disappeared, Amelia was officially declared dead. Investigations and significant public interest in their disappearance still continue over 80 years later. In light of Amelia's "tomboyish" and hardy personality, her great love of reading, her lifelong passion for aviation and flying, her blunt honesty, and her strong will, it is possible, but not conclusive, that she was autistic. Amelia was fiercely independent and wanted nothing to block her life's path, marriage included. A year before her historic transatlantic flight, on the morning of their wedding, February 7, 1931, she wrote this letter to her publicist and fiancé, George Putnam — whom she loved dearly — and reiterated her "reluctance to marry." He later called it "brutal in its frankness but beautiful in its honesty."
The marriage was a happy one, but brief. Amelia's ideas on marriage were liberal for the time, as she believed in equal responsibilities for both breadwinners and pointedly kept her own name rather than being referred to as "Mrs. Putnam".
The letter:
Noank
Connecticut
The Square House
Church Street
Dear GPP
There are some things which should be writ before we are married — things we have talked over before — most of them.
You must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work which means most to me. I feel the move just now as foolish as anything I could do. I know there may be compensations but have no heart to look ahead.
On our life together I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any midaevil code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. If we can be honest I think the difficulties which arise may best be avoided should you or I become interested deeply (or in passing) in anyone else.
Please let us not interfere with the others' work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements. In this connection I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.
I must exact a cruel promise and that is you will let me go in a year if we find no happiness together.
I will try to do my best in every way and give you that part of me you know and seem to want.
A. E.
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