Past-Time Lover: Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart

Likes: heights, adventure, exploration
Dislikes: laziness, inequality, hindrance

Nicknames: Meeley, Millie

Age: 117

Personality Traits: ambitious, adventurous, high-flying

A bit about me:

Ever since I was a girl the outside world has enthralled me! I spent much of my childhood exploring, climbing trees, hunting vermin and investigating the world with my younger sister Pidge. My first exhilarating experience of flight was when I burst out of the crushed box that remained of my broken sled, which had flown from the ramp I had built from my tool shed as a child.

After a few back-and-forths we moved to Chicago, where I investigated local High Schools to find the very best science program. I continually updated my scrapbook of women who inspired me – excelling in male dominated fields.

I’ll never forget the day I very first flew two or three hundred feet off the ground, when my father paid for me to have a ten minute flight with Frank Hawks – I knew there and then that I absolutely had to fly! I began saving for flying lessons at once and in 1922 I felt my first rush of achievement when I set a world record for female pilots by flying my Canary to 4,300m altitude. I had the bug!

Following this, I fulfilled my sense of adventure – I was the first woman flown across the Atlantic Ocean, but this was not true satisfaction for me, I wanted my own record, my own achievements!  I followed on to become the first woman to solo fly across the North American continent and back, the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic and between 1930 and 1936 I set seven women’s speed and distance records in aviation and continued to be a huge advocate for female pilots.

Unfortunately my life-long adventure ended in what would become my final attempt at a major accomplishment – to circumnavigate the globe. I never arrived and was never found, but I died as I lived – fulfilling my dreams.

I am looking for:

As made clear to my former husband by note on our wedding day – ‘I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any midaevil [sic] code of faithfulness to more nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly’. I believe in equal responsibility and will be known by my own name, as I always have done. My life is my own and I intend to make the most of it. 

Does Amelia make your heart soar? Cast your vote!

Illustrator: Neil Arnold