When World War I broke out, Amelia trained as a nurse through the American Red Cross (which was started by Clara Barton) and volunteered at a military hospital in Toronto, where her sister lived. In 1918, the Spanish influenza became a pandemic, killing an estimated fifty million people—ten times as many people who died in the war itself. (Some estimates put the toll as high as one hundred million!) Amelia contracted influenza that November and had a long convalescence at Pidge’s new home in Northampton, Massachusetts. Set to enroll at Smith College, Amelia changed her mind when she recovered and instead went to Columbia University (where Alexander Hamilton studied) to study medicine.
A year later, she dropped out of college to live with her parents, who by then had settled in Long Beach, California. Back in Toronto, Amelia had seen a World War I flying ace perform, and an earlier fear of flying and airplanes—inspired by an experience at the Iowa State Fair when she was a girl—disappeared. She later said that the airplane that day in Toronto spoke to her. But it wasn’t until December 1920 in Long Beach that Amelia became determined to learn to fly. On January 3, 1921, she took her first flying lesson, and within six months she bought her own airplane, a bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane that she named Canary. She also bought a leather jacket that she slept in every night so that it looked broken in, and cut her hair short like the other female aviators did. This look—the worn leather jacket and short hair—became the trademark of Amelia Earhart.
Flying Canary, Amelia made her first women’s record by flying to an altitude of 14,000 feet. But in 1924, her parents divorced and, with her mother’s inheritance depleting, Amelia sold her plane, bought a yellow sports car that she named Yellow Peril, and, with her mother, took a six-week transcontinental car trip that ended in Boston. There, with her mother now out of money and unable to pay for her daughter’s college, Amelia eventually became a social worker at Denison House. One afternoon in 1928, a man phoned her there and asked, “How would you like to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic?” Without hesitation, Amelia replied, “Yes!”
A year earlier, Charles Lindbergh had flown his solo flight across the Atlantic. Amy Phipps Guess owned a Fokker F.VII named Friendship, and wanted to make the flight herself. But three women had died within the year trying to be that first woman, and Guess’s family objected to her taking on such a dangerous mission. Instead, she asked aviator Richard Byrd and publisher George Putnam to find the “right sort of girl” for the trip. There are many theories as to why they selected Amelia Earhart. People thought she resembled Charles Lindbergh. She had a wholesome “All-American” personality. But she was also an accomplished pilot who had logged 500 hours in the air. Whatever the reasons, she was asked to join pilot Wilmer “Bill” Stultz and copilot/mechanic Louis “Slim” Gordon.
On June 17, 1928, the team left Trepassey Harbour in Newfoundland and arrived at Burry Port, Wales. Although she was promised time at the controls, Earhart never flew the plane during the nearly twenty-one-hour flight. Although she described the flight as a “grand experience,” she later said she felt like just a “sack of potatoes.” Nevertheless, reporters were much more interested in her than either of the male pilots who actually flew the plane, and the flight brought her international attention. They were greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York and a reception held by President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. The press nicknamed her “Lady Lindy.”
From then on, Amelia’s life revolved around aviation. In 1931, she married George Putnam, and the two embarked on a major publicity campaign for her that included a lecture tour, a book and book promotion, and endorsements for products that ranged from luggage to Lucky Strike cigarettes. These endorsements helped her finance later flights. As an associate editor for Cosmopolitan magazine, she encouraged women to enter the field of aviation. In 1929, she was among the first aviators to promote commercial air travel through the development of a passenger airline service. With Charles Lindbergh, she represented an airline that later became Trans World Airlines (TWA) and she invested time and money in setting up the first regional shuttle service between New York and Washington, DC.