Chapter 1 ｜ Amelia Earhart ｜ American Experience ｜ PBS

On a summer day in 1932, Amelia Earhart completed another record-breaking flight. A few weeks earlier, she had made history by being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. Now she was a superstar, and her every move fascinated the public. Yesterday I hopped off from Los Angeles about noontime and landed in Newark this morning after a nonstop transcontinental trip. And what did you carry on the trip? You mean to eat? Yeah, to eat and drink. Well, I carried some water, of course, because my cockpit is very warm, and I carried a sandwich in case. I didn't eat it, though. I carried some hot chocolate and the all-reliable tomato juice. What kind of a sandwich was it? A chicken sandwich. I have walked the streets with many famous people in my time, from Greta Garbo to Paul Newman to Eleanor Roosevelt. No one got the crowd that Amelia got. She was, I must say, beyond stardom. It was a strange continuum that she and Lindbergh occupied. They were like gods from outer space, and people would just stand and stare at her. Amelia Earhart was a legend, the first modern American heroine, adored because she was daring and successful in a man's world, and because she was magnificently promoted in the press and newsreels of the time. Yet Amelia Earhart, the best-known woman in America, would always remain curiously remote. I don't know you at all, her closest friend wrote. I doubt anyone does. The one thing that she really feared in life was that nothing would happen. She had to have an important life, and that meant you had to have adventure. You had to try things that were exciting. In that, all of her life, there's no doubt that she needed this, and believed this was the way to live. Better to die young, but live. In 1937, Amelia Earhart decided to go for the one record in aviation no one, man or woman, had ever attempted before, to fly around the world at the equator. It would be the most dangerous flight of her life. To succeed, Earhart would need months of preparation and a lot of luck. In the end, she had neither. Going up, she goes. Up, she goes. Balance yourself like a bird on a beam. In the air, she goes. Where, there, she goes. Up, up, and it pulls it higher. Oh, no. Like most Americans, Amelia was fascinated by the sheer novelty of flight. On Christmas Day, 1920, when she was 23 years old, her father took her to the opening of a new airfield in Long Beach, California. There, she watched pilots in wood and fabric machines perform daredevil stunts. A few days later, when she paid $5 for her first ride, she knew that flying was more than a passing fancy. As soon as we left the ground, she wrote, I knew I myself had to fly. I think I'd like to fly, I told my family casually that evening, knowing full well I'd die if I didn't. Amelia Mary Earhart was raised by her domineering mother to be a proper Victorian young lady. But she never was. When Earhart was seven years old, she had a new sled, and she went to the top of a hill with her sister Muriel, and she, instead of sitting on it, as her grandmother had said one must, she flung herself in a manner called belly slamming, and went tearing down the hill. A horse and wagon was crossing on the cross street. She went right under that horse's belly. She missed both sets of legs, and she emerged triumphant, waving at her sister afterwards. This is an indication that came up again and again later in life, that she took good luck for granted. Amelia was resilient, in spite of a difficult childhood. Born in Kansas on July 24, 1897, she and her younger sister Muriel had an unstable life, shuttling back and forth between their grandparents' luxurious home in Atchison and their parents' meager existence in Kansas City. Amelia's father, Edwin, was a charming man who earned a modest living as a lawyer, but it was never enough for Amelia's mother, Amy. During the course of their troubled marriage, Edwin became an alcoholic. When Amelia was 12, the Earharts left Kansas, moving around the Midwest, settling wherever Edwin could find work. Amelia adored her father, but he let her down so often, she learned early on to be self-reliant. During high school, she kept an unusual scrapbook of articles about women pioneering in new careers. The scrapbook reveals a young girl with unconventional dreams. She was a loner, you know. She had seen so much change in her childhood. She'd lived in many different places, she'd gone to many different schools, and naturally, this resulted in a kind of restlessness. I think Amelia got easily bored. Sent to a finishing school in Pennsylvania, Amelia didn't fit the mold, and was kicked out for stunts like walking on the roof in her nightgown. She was a rebel and had high ideals. During World War I, she nursed wounded veterans in Canada and briefly pursued a career in medicine. In her early 20s, Earhart was living in Los Angeles with her parents when she discovered flying. At Kenner Airfield, she met a young woman who agreed to teach her to fly for a dollar a minute. Earhart regularly walked the three miles to the airfield, took menial jobs to pay for lessons, and drove a gravel truck for a construction company to raise money to buy her own plane. Amelia's mother demanded her daughter stop driving a truck and act like a lady. Reluctantly, she helped Amelia out, and by her 25th birthday, Earhart finally had the cash she needed. She bought a new biplane and painted it bright yellow. The amateur flyer was also a novice poet. In the spring of 1921, she submitted several poems to a journal under the pen name Emile A. Hart. They were never published, but one was about her newest passion. From an airplane, even the watchful purple hills that hold the lake could not see so well as I the stain of evening creeping from its heart. From the beginning, Earhart saw herself in the vanguard. She was a flyer, a poet, and an amateur photographer. She was supporting herself, and though there were suitors, she rejected a traditional marriage as too confining. I don't want anything all of the time, she said.