Amelia Earhart - The Fun of It

Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, in 1898. In The Fun of It she describes her childhood and education, and her work as nurse, teacher and social worker before she discovered the overwhelming fascination of airplanes and made flying her lifes work.

In 1931, already a respected aviator, she married George Palmer Putnam, on the conditions that they would separate if either was unhappy at the end of one year, and that they would be equally free to pursue their own careers, wherever they might lead. Amelia Earhart continued to accept new challenges and new risks. Before one dangerous flight she wrote her husband: I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.

In 1937 she embarked with navigator Fred Noonan on an around-the-world flight that ended when her plane was lost in the South Pacific. Their fate has remained a mystery.

Amelia Earhart was aviation editor for Cosmopolitan from 1928 to 1930. Her other books are 20Hrs. 40 Min. (1928) and Last Flight (1937) compiled by G.P. Putnam.

A.E.

Academy Chicago Publishers

363 West Erie Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

Copyright 1932 by Amelia Earhart Putnam

All rights reserved.

First Academy Chicago edition 1977

Printed in the United States of America

12 11 10 09 08 07 06 5 6 7 8 9 10

No part of this book may be reproduced in any way without the express written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

Earhart, Amelia, 1898-1937.

The fun of it.

Reprint of the ed. published by Harcourt Brace, New York

1. Earhart, Amelia, 1898-1937.

2. Women in aeronautics [1. Earhart, Amelia, 1898-1937.

2. Air pilots. 3. Women in aeronautics]

I. Title.

TL540.E3A3 1977

629.13092.4 [B] [92] 77-16052

ISBN-10: 0-915864-55-X

ISBN-13: 978-0-915864-55-3

To the
Ninety Nines

A. E

THE FUN OF IT

W HENEVER anyone asks me about my work in aviation I know that sooner or later I shall hear, And, of course, you were mechanical when you were a girl, werent you? As a matter of fact, in a small way, I waswitness the trap I made to catch the chickens that strayed into our yard. My girlhood was much like that of many another American girl who was growing up at the time I was, with just the kind of fun and good times we all had then.

Looking back now, however, I can see certain threads in what I did that were fully as important in leading me to aviation as being mechanical perhaps was. There is the thread of my fathers being a railroad man and the many trips we had togetherby which I discovered the fascination of new people and new places. There is the thread of liking all kinds of sports and games and of not being afraid to try those that some of my elders in those days looked upon as being only for boys. There is the thread of liking to experimentperhaps this thread is the same as the one I have just mentionedand of the something inside me that has always liked to try new things. There they all are, weaving in and out and here and there through the years before aviation and I got together.

But to begin at the beginning.

Among the best stories my mother told were those of her own girlhood. My sister and I always spoke of that mysterious and far away period as thousands of years ago when Mother was little. Looking back on my own infant days I seem to feel a new significance in that childish quotation. So I think Ill begin this sketchy history of me by using it.

Well, then, thousands of years ago, I was born in Atchison, Kansas. My parents did not live there at the time, but my grandparents did. My grandfather was a judge of the district court, though he had retired from that office and others he held long before he became a relative of mine. My grandmother was a Philadelphian, having come out from that city after the war. Her family were Quakers, and she had lived within sight of old Christ Church in a house which stands today. I think inside she never quite got used to the west, for now and then something came popping out which made me feel Philadelphia must be quite superior to Atchison (this point, of course, has never been proved).

She arrived when Kansas was really wild. Great piles of buffalo bones lined the newly built railroad tracks when she came and Indians in blankets were always to be seen in the town. I remember her telling me of their crowding about her when, as a young housewife, she went to market. They lifted the lid of her basket and peered within, and felt the fabric of her dress, until she was quite terrified, mistaking their native curiosity for some kind of sinister threats.

There were no Indians around when I arrived, though I hoped for many a day some would turn up. And the nearest I got to buffaloes was the discovery of an old fur robe rotting away in the barn. Truly the Kansas I knew had lost some of its wool-liness.

Before I return to my beginnings, I should mention that I had two more grandparents. My fathers father was a Lutheran minister, he and his wife both coming from Pennsylvania. I barely remember him as a tall, slight man with very thin hands, and she was not living when I was born.

I went to school in Atchison in a private college preparatory until I was ready for high school. I was named for my grandmother and was lent her for company during the winter months. I am sure I was a horrid little girl, and I do not see how she put up with me, even part time. Like many horrid children, I loved school, though I never qualified as teachers pet. Perhaps the fact that I was exceedingly fond of reading made me endurable. With a large library to browse in, I spent many hours not bothering anyone, after I once learned to read. Scott, Dickens, George Eliot, Thackeray, Harpers Magazine for Young People, and The Youths Companion of a generation past fell before my onslaught, as well as forgotten books like Dr. Syntax. On the crowded shelves I also found waiting for me the so-called childrens books of fifty years ago, where very good little boys and girls always emerged triumphant over very bad little boys and girls.

I go back now to few of the books I read as a child since without a feeling of disappointment. Whether this is in the books, or in me, I do not know. I suppose mine is a repetition of the experience of the elderly gentleman who returned to his native country after many years abroad to taste the cherries he was so fond of as a boy. Of course, he found that they were no better than those he had been eating regularly in other parts of the world. And everyone over thirty understands this. Note: This point is not important enough to wish to be thirty to understand.

Books have meant much to me. Not only did I myself read considerably, but Mother read aloud to my sister and me, early and late. So fundamental became the habit that on occasions when we girls had to do housework, instead of both pitching in and doing it together, one was selected to read aloud and the other to work.

At one time I thought that my father must have read everything and, of course, therefore, knew everything. He could define the hardest words as well as the dictionary and we used to try to trip him and he to bewilder us. I still have a letter he wrote me beginning, Dear parallelepipedon, which sent me scurrying for a definition.