“This modern world of science and invention is of particular interest to women, for the lives of women have been more affected by its new horizons than those of any other group.” Amelia Earhart, “A Woman’s Place in Science” (radio broadcast), 1935
Kuiper was super excited to meet Amelia Earhart, one of his heroes, this summer. This statue of her lives in the International Forest of Friendship, a public park in Atchison, KS. The park was one of our favorite stops on our big road trip from Portland, OR to Washington DC and back. It has trees from all 50 US states, 36 countries, and even a tree from a seed that flew all the way to the MOON! (Check out our post from July 28th.) The park was founded in 1976 by the Ninety-Nines, the first international organization of women pilots (Amelia was the first president.)
We still don’t definitively know what happened to Amelia Earhart, but as any diehard Mass Effect fan knows, it’s sometimes better to focus on the journey rather than the ending. According to her autobiography, she saw a plane for the first time at age 10. She recalled, “It was a thing of rusty wire and wood and looked not at all interesting. One of the grown-ups who happened to be around pointed it out to me and said, ‘Look, dear, it flies.’ I looked as directed but confess I was much more interested in an absurd hat made of an inverted peach-basket. which I had just purchased for fifteen cents. What psychoanalysts would make of this incident, in the light of subsequent behavior, I do not know.”
In addition to her aviation career, Amelia was a pre-med student, English teacher, social worker (she once dropped pamphlets from her airplane over Boston to help fundraise for charity), aviation editor for Cosmopolitan magazine, clothing designer, and airline brand ambassador. She once claimed, “I’ve had 28 different jobs in my life, and I hope I’ll have 228 more.”
Have you ever had odd jobs like her?
Original post: https://www.instagram.com/p/BaA1HJRgIf-/