Conner Pressgrove
Research Paper
Mrs. Young
February 21, 2013
Amelia Earhart Being torn between two diverse passions, Amelia Earhart followed her ultimate dream of flying. Born in 1897, Amelia Earhart spent her childhood wanting to be lady-like with good manners to impress her mother. However, as she became older, she wanted to fly planes and be a social worker. As she lived each day, she became torn between the two. Amelia Earhart was vastly different from other girls of the early 1900s. Her interest in flying planes was something most people think only men could do. Amelia Earhart grew up in Atchison, Kansas, where she had trained herself to be lady-like to impress her mother (Elifton). Women of Amelia Earhart’s time were all about their manners and appearances to other people. It was very unlikely for a women to do things that men could do. When Earhart was nine years old she went to the town fair where she saw her first airplane. At that point she was not very interested in planes. Amelia Earhart, years after seeing her first airplane, began learning how to fly planes (Lewis). While she was getting in to planes, she was still doing social work. During World War 1, Earhart worked as a nurse’s aid at the age of 19 in Toronto (Lewis). In 1919 she began studying at Columbia University as a pre-medical student. When Earhart was younger she and her family moved a great deal around the US (Lewis). In 1916 she graduated from high school in Chicago and moved back to Kansas wit her mother and her sister to live with her father (Faber 101). Earhart began flying lessons in 1921. Soon after that she bought her first airplane and earned a National Aeronautic Association license. She called her first plane “The Canary”. She began college at Ogontz School, Pennsylvania. She then took an auto repair class for girls only in Massachusetts (Dunn). In 1924 Earhart sold her aircraft and bought an automobile to drive cross-country in June with her mother to move to Massachusetts. Earhart began getting into social working while moving so much. Earhart got a job at the Dension House as a social worker. She very much enjoyed playing and working with children. She was the supervisor of the girls program and enjoyed playing sports with the girls. She taught the immigrant how to play basketball. She was in charge of adult education and soon began organizing other clubs for women of the neighborhoods such as the Syrian Mother’s Club. Earhart became the delegate of the Dension house for the Conference of the National Federations of Settlements, this took place in Boston. She was known as one of the most promising social workers of her generation (Dunn). After she left the Dension house she soon began flying again. Social work was a major part of her life and career. But soon, flying became the ultimate part of her career. Earhart started organizations for women to fly. During this time people did not think it was right for women to fly planes. Critics said the women panicked easily and were two “scatter brained” to master complex technical matters. Many women around the nation spoke and wrote about freedom in the air “soaring with the birds” and testing their personal achievement. Earhart considered herself a little more than “a sack of potatoes” from which critics called her (Laughley).