 Hello, everyone, and welcome to our National Archives Comes Alive Young Learners program. My name is Andrew Eidell, and I'm an education specialist at the National Archives, coming to you today from Philadelphia. We are so glad you're able to join us. Please take a moment to put where you're from in the chat so we know where everybody is joining us from across the country. This morning we will have the pleasure of meeting Amelia Earhart, aviation pioneer, best-selling author and champion for women's rights, so yay. Amelia Earhart will be portrayed by Pat Jordan, who is an actor, historian, and reenactor from the American Historical Theater. A few things about Amelia Earhart before we start. Amelia Earhart achieved many firsts during her career. She was a recipient of the United States Flying Cross. She was the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She also supported women's rights and championed roles for women as pilots in the aviation industry. During her time, she was considered a celebrity and became a best-selling author and close friend to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Next slide, please. The National Archives has, in its holdings, records related to Amelia Earhart, including this famous photo of her standing in front of her plane. Next slide, please. We also have this one taken right before her last flight. And you'll see there's a link down below in this slide. You can find both of the images we just showed within the National Archives catalog online, as well as in DocsTeach, our online teaching tool for documents from the National Archives. You can also access educational activities for these images by searching for Amelia Earhart in DocsTeach. Next slide, please. These images are presented in our featured DocsTeach activity, which you'll see here associated with today's program. The DocsTeach Analyzing a Photograph Activity feature is all about looking closely at the details of a photograph. We're going to show this slide again at the end of the program today, so you'll get a chance to see it again, and hopefully you can check it out either right after the program or later on at some point. At the conclusion of today's presentation, we will have a question and answer session with Amelia Earhart, so if you have a question, please put it in the chat. The chat is monitored by colleagues of mine here at the National Archives. One last thing, all young learner programs are brought to you by the National Archives Public Programs and Education Team and the National Archives Foundation. And now, let us give a warm welcome to Amelia Earhart. Well, hello, friends, I'm delighted that you came out to wish me well on this big event in my journey through life. It's a long way from the farm in Atchison, Kansas, where I was born in July of 1897 to here, Miami, Florida, where tomorrow morning, June 1, 1937, I'll be taking off on a month-long trip around the world at the equator and will hopefully be home by the 4th of July. How did I get to this place in my life? Well, out to begin, my mother always encouraged my sister Muriel, we call her Pidge, and encouraged me to do fun, adventurous things, but my grandmother, with whom we spent a lot of time, didn't feel that way at all. Once she said, Millie, that's what I was called, please be more ladylike, which sounded pretty uninteresting to me, so I went off and built a roller coaster out of a wooden box and two long boards. Mother came out that day and gave Pidge and me bloomers. They were a lot like the boys' knickers or short pants and a lot easier to play in than skirts. My dad worked for the railroads and we moved quite a bit, which wasn't conducive to making friends, I must say. In fact, under my picture in the Hyde Park High School yearbook was the comment, the girl in brown who walks alone. Then after a happier time at the Ogon School outside of Philadelphia, I still didn't quite know what to do with my life. As for flying, the first time I saw an airplane, I wasn't impressed. But later was a different story. In 1918, I served as a nurse's aide in the Great War and one day saw a plane celebrating the end of the war. It was doing loops and rolls and disappearing behind the trees outside the hospital. And I asked myself, I wonder what it feels like to fly? Sometime later, I went to an air show where a famous flyer named Frank Hawks was selling rides in his biplane. I asked my dad to see about it because, well, I thought he wouldn't take up a woman. But he said he would if I didn't scream in fright. Ha! Not much sense of that, Mr. Hawks, although really I was a little nervous. But once we were flying above the crowd, I looked down and I called out to him, let's never go back to Earth again! Oh, it was all so beautiful. When we landed, he asked me if I was afraid. And I said truthfully, well, yes, a little, but you know what? I'm going to learn how to fly, you know, me, myself. Thanks, Mr. Hawks. After that ride, all my questions about what to do with my life were answered. I knew that I wanted to fly. And to save money, I worked for a photographer, sorted mail to the post office. And then I drove a gravel truck, after which a lot of my friends dropped me. But it didn't matter. I began taking lessons. And one day, during a job as a social worker teaching the children of recent immigrants how to speak English, I received a phone call, a call which changed my life. I couldn't believe it. Captain Hilton Raley and Mr. George Putnam, a publicist, wanted me to fly the Atlantic Ocean. No woman had ever done that. And by now, in 1928, I had about 500 flying hours and I wasn't surprised to learn that I wouldn't be doing any actual flying. But they dubbed me the captain of the ship. It was called the Friendship. And I sat back in the fuselage and kept the log. After we landed in Burryport, Wales, President Calvin Coolidge wired congratulating me. I right away sent back a message that the success of that flight was due solely to the skill of the pilot and the navigator. To say this, I wrote a book about flight called 20 The Flight called 20 Hours 40 Minutes. I also purchased a yellow Avro avian airplane. Later I sold that and bought a kinner, which was yellow. And I called it my yellow canary. George Putnam became my manager and booked me on over 200 speeches, each in a different city. I became vice president for an airline, aviation editor for Cosmopolitan magazine, started my own fashion business and even lent my name to a lightweight luggage. I began entering more competitions too. Some worked out very well and others, well, I remember once my plane broke down in a field of cabbages right after I took off. The reporters and some of the crowd came running up to see if I was all right. And one reporter asked, Ms. Earhart, Ms. Earhart, are you all right? Yes, I said, will you ever fly again? I looked at him very directly and I said, yes, I will, but I will never eat another cabbage. One of the things I like about flying is that it has its ups and downs, but it is always interesting. In 1929, I bought a single engine Red Lockheed Vega airplane. I acquired my air transport license and now set some new records, including a woman's world flying record of 181.18 miles per hour. Other flyers were accomplishing a lot as well. And I started a group called the 99s named for the first 99 women charter members. They're a great bunch of gals. On a personal topic, GP, the nickname for my manager George Putnam, was a man of massive energy. As a publicist and a manager, I couldn't ask for more. He made sure everything I did was noticed. After a time, though, GP asked me to marry him, but marriage was not in my plans because my work was my life. He asked me six times and one day I was working on my new Vega when he popped his head into the fuselage and he said, Amelia, will you marry me? With some frustration in my voice, I answered, George, when will you stop asking me to marry you? And he looked at me and said, when you say yes. I guess he got me in a weak moment because I did say yes and we were married in February of 1931 in Connecticut. But before the ceremony, I wrote him a letter saying I couldn't guarantee to enjoy the confinements of living even in an attractive cage, but I would do my best. It's turned out to be a hectic lifestyle, but we've had a successful life together. I enjoyed writing and my first book, I liked so much that I decided to write another one, which I called the fun of it. Then one morning, I was reading the newspaper and saw that Ruth Nichols, another flyer, was planning to cross the Atlantic solo. I called George. TP, did you read that Ruth Nichols is planning to fly the Atlantic solo? I don't want her to be the first to do it. You know how I hated being just a sack of potatoes on that first friendship flight. There's more to life than just being a passenger. I want to do it. Yes. I do know my Vega has only one engine, but it's a very good engine. Oh, please, George, say you support me. Thank you, dear. Thank you. So on May 20, 1932, five years to the day that Charles Lindbergh made his solo flight across the Atlantic, I began mine. It was one of the worst flights of my life. It ended when I landed in a cow pasture in London, Derry, Ireland. A herd of cows was my first welcoming party, followed by the farmer and the townspeople. I was so tired, I couldn't even think of a thing to say, except, hello, I'm from America. President Herbert Hoover Wired saying that I had proven the capacity of women to match the skill of men. When we returned to New York, cheering crowds in a grand ticker tape parade greeted us, and I was given the National Geographic Society's special gold medal, where I said it was my hope that women pilots would soon be making flights as often as men. And then I added, I just wanted to make one thing clear. I am sure I didn't kill a cow when I landed in Ireland, unless one died of fright. It was also a great honor to have my flight featured in the National Geographic Magazine. Would you like to see it? It was in this issue, and I'll just show you one picture. But here I am, landing in Londonbury, and the people from the town all gathered about. I wish there'd been a cow in it, don't you? Well, to get along with it, George, as usual, had made sure the celebration was a splash throughout the country in the newspapers and on the radio. I sometimes tell people that I am a household name because of George's remarkable publicity efforts. In 1935, I became the first woman to fly over the Pacific from Honolulu to Oakland. I often say I flew from Honolulu to California because it's much easier to see the whole California than it is to see the tiny island from the Pacific Ocean. And I was the first person, man or woman, to fly over both oceans. What else do I do for fun? Well, for me, flying is the most fun. But on the ground, I started collecting stamps after discovering that selling stamps in envelopes called covers could help me pay for my trips. Sometime after that, Purdue University got in touch with me, and I was asked to teach there. It's a university that has 6,000 men students and 1,000 women, and it would be my job to instill in those college girls a conviction that their world should not be limited to becoming teachers. It shouldn't be as librarians or housekeepers or mothers which are all worthy of vocations. But they should go after whatever career they chose, no matter if it be as a mechanic, a truck driver or a flyer. A young woman who can create her own job is the person who will win fame and fortune. And the university had an idea that would fit into my idea of making a flight around the world at the equator. They explained that such a trip would provide a chance to study weather, particular climate conditions, and other research that had never been done before. A special fund was set up, and a twin-engine Lockheed Electra 10E airplane was purchased for this purpose, and plans now began in earnest. Around the campus, the plane was fitted out for these experiments and came to be known as Earhart's Flying Laboratory. Compared to small planes like my first yellow canner canary, I sometimes think of the Electra as a magnificent silver eagle of a plane. Many people don't know that only two people in the entire world fly an Electra 10E. How are cues of holly myself? There are so many things to think about in a trip like this one. Plans, plans, plans, and lots of questions. You probably heard that we had an accident in Honolulu in our first attempt back in March. But since then, the plane has been repaired, and we now have had the advantage of flying over land to check things out before leaving the country in this exciting new beginning of our trip around the world at the equator. Now we'll be heading from west to east to avoid the late spring monsoons. My navigator, Fred Noonan, and I have decided on radio voice transmission using frequencies 60 to 10 by day and 3105 at night. Now we both know Morse code, but we're now confident in our ability to communicate as well as we'd like on this trip. We have a new radio receiver, we've been instructed in its use, but we're still deciding whether to have an emergency trailing antenna on board. A lot depends on fuel and weight, which matters because we'll be traveling over 2,500 miles from La Inugini to Howland Island. The island is only two miles long. It's a small dot in the vast ocean. And there, the Coast Guard ship, the Etosca, will be waiting to send up a thick black smoke that will guide us through the heavy cloud cover, which usually exists almost all the time in that part of the world. We'll be taking along the rubber lifeboat, life belts, the usual tomato juice, hard boiled eggs, and chocolate squares, but we're expecting to have some truly fantastic dinners in the exotic places where we land. Fred and I will communicate using a bamboo fishing pole with a paper clip on the end so we can attach index cards with messages that can be attached to it. Also if he has to come forward from way in the back, in the fuselage, he can climb up to the cockpit on the catwalk over the fuel tanks. Oh, it's all very advanced stuff, wouldn't you say? It's a lot of planning, well, as I've often said. Being prepared is two-thirds of any venture. The rest is adventure, with no borders, just horizons. And for me, the fun of doing it is its own reward. I remember writing a note to my dad before our first big flight to be opened only if we didn't make it. The note said, who raved for the last grand adventure? I wish I had one, but it was worthwhile anyway. Sometimes I imagine what could happen on a flight like this, both good and bad. The fact is you'd be a fool not to think about both. Imagining problems can be a little spooky, I must say, but that's exactly the jittery kind of thing that tests your courage. I believe that having courage is such an important part of life. Every time we make a hard choice, it takes courage. Exactly the kind of thing that inspired me to write that note to my dad. Remember? Who reigned for the last grand adventure? I wish I had one, but it was worthwhile anyway. Well, it's time to get started. It's been a pleasure to be here today to tell you something about myself and my aspirations. And it's my hope that on our return to the United States, perhaps some of you will lie out to Oakland to greet us. I'm looking forward to that day, and I'm sure there will be some exciting stories to share. So goodbye, and I'll see you on the 4th of July. Right. Thank you so much, Ms. Earhart. What an exciting story, a story of courage and adventure. Just the kind of thing to get us thinking today. So I wanted to remind everybody who's watching to go ahead and put where you're joining us from in the chat. I know so far we have someone from Wildemore, California. Let's get some more things in the chat. But for now, we'll also start with some of our questions. And if you have questions, go ahead and put them in the chat as well. So let's start off with our first question. Why was your solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean so dangerous? Oh, I'm glad I came back thinking somebody might have a question. Yes, it was dangerous. I must tell you to begin with. All my instruments broke. My altimeter went. I had no idea how high or low I was flying. I discovered I had ice on the wings. And I had to fly lower in the warmer air. I was terrified of plunging into the ocean. My directional gyro went. I didn't know what way I was headed. And then just as you think nothing else could happen, a fire broke out in the manifold and smoldered until I landed in Ireland and was met by that herd of cows. I told you. Right. That story was scary with me. I know that was so funny that the cows were the first witnesses. OK, so thanks for explaining to us all the different things that could have gone wrong and actually did. But you still persisted and were able to land safely. So we're so glad to hear that. Oh, it looks like we have someone joining us from Hartford, Pennsylvania. I'm in Pennsylvania, too. So shout out especially for people in Pennsylvania joining us. Let's go to our second question. You've been talking about planes, and we love hearing about them, all the different kinds. But someone had a question. Did you ever own a car? Well, you know I drove a gravel truck, of course. Oh, that's true. Yeah. And interestingly, after I did have that job and after I was blind quite a bit, my personal life changed somewhat. My mother and father decided that they were going to separate. And my sister moved back east, and she was living in Boston. But dad decided he was going to stay in Oakland, and mother wanted to go out to where Muriel was. I wanted to head out that way also. So I sold my airplane, and I bought the most beautiful automobile that you have seen. It was a 1923 Kissel. Its model was the gold bug. And it was this bright yellow color I just loved it. Mother was a little bit impressed when she saw what we were going to be heading cross country in. And people would just wave at us as we were going by. But instead of going directly east, we went a little bit north and did some visits up in Canada. We saw BAMP and other places. And then we went and saw several national parks, which has always been interesting to me. And my mother was the first woman to do a lot of really, really high climbing. And I was so proud of her. She was always the first person to say to us, you kids go after what you want. So she was great. And so there we headed over, made our way to Boston, where we lived with for a time. My sister Muriel, her husband, Albert, and their two little children, David, and later little Amy. That's always nice. I can see where you got your spirit of adventure and daring from your mother. If she had all those accomplishments herself as well. All right, thank you. So our third question is, what famous people do you know that aren't flyers? Of course, most people weren't out flying airplanes. And you had to meet a lot of people as you were moving across the country and as you wrote your book. So who are some of the famous people that you know who aren't flyers but are admirers of your work of flying? Well, a lot of my friends, they may admire my flying, but I admire them to begin with. We have the friends of the president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, and his wife, Eleanor, who is a good friend of mine. Now Eleanor at one point said to me that she wanted to learn to fly and made my advice. And I said, oh, I think you should do it. Then she broke the news to her husband, the president. And he just looked at her and he said, I cannot let you be taking chances like that, Eleanor. I need you to help me run the country. You say no to that. That's true. But. That's a good argument. I thought it was, but we still had to assert ourselves a little bit. So one night we were all dressed up in our long dresses and our wraps at dinner at the White House. When Eleanor and I on a queue that we gave one another, I said, how about taking a little spin around Washington in an airplane, Eleanor? And she said, oh, I'd be delighted. And so we got up, we put on our wraps, and we started out, we turned around, we said, ta-ta-men or something like that and headed out to an airplane that I had rented in advance. And on that beautiful, beautiful evening, Eleanor and Rose, Eleanor Roosevelt and I flew around the city of Washington, DC enjoying the lights below and having a little smile about what we did to our husbands. Right. And did she like flying as well? I know you had mentioned that in your first flight, you were a little bit afraid, but did she like being up in the airplane? She would love anything that required courage. That is a woman you just have to admire for everything she does. I just love being a friend of hers, but I did have a few other friends and still do people who maybe some people have not heard of. One is Gene Fidal. He was an Olympic competitor and a quite amazing athlete, but he also got involved in aviation and we were partners in an airline, Transcontinental Air Transport and he was the general manager there. And then he became the advisor to the United States Army's Chief of Staff. So he is quite an accomplished individual and a lot of fun to be around. And just as much fun is my friend Paul Mantz. I think he is the world's best Hollywood stunt flyer. This man can do anything in the air. And he was actually a strong contender to be the navigator on this trip around the world at the equator. So, and finally, I have to say that George Putnam, my husband, is a really, really well-known person as a publicist. He's publicized so many people, but mostly he has made me, as I said earlier, a household name for which I am so grateful. But he was also as a publicist working out in Hollywood for a while. And because of that, I got to know some people who you may have heard about or maybe not, but I'll show this to you anyway. And let's see, where is this? Here we have me and, wait a minute, where is Carrie? Me and Carrie Rent, the most handsome actor I've ever seen, even in person. Yes. And then also, can you see... Who is the person with you? You can see that. That's Harpo Marks. He was quite a character. He left me kind of speechless sometimes, you know? But that's his job, I suppose. Yes. So I met them and a lot of others started. So really what I always say is, it's great to have a husband who's a publicist because you never know who he's going to bring home for dinner. That's true. And let's see, we have another question, but I also wanted to give a shout out for the person from Battle Creek, Michigan, who's watching. And the question is, you have such an adventurous life, so many things happening, but the question is, what else do you do for fun besides all the flying, all the meeting people, you know, writing the book, what else do you like to do? Well, as you probably have guessed by now that for me, flying is the fun. But when I'm on the ground, there is something that I've been attracted to and it came directly from my flying experience. And it is that when I first started, we discovered just how expensive it is to make these flights when you fly. You've got to find ways to earn money. And one thing we found was that people were anxious, excited to buy stamps in packages that they're like an envelope, but they were called covers. And in them, a bunch of stamps are placed and they're all stamped. And the people pay a certain amount of money to buy one of these. And then I carry them in my airplane on a record-breaking flight. And when they get back, they own an envelope, a cover that Amelia Earhart flew across the country for somewhere else. I made many transcontinental flights and that's how we raise money. But one in particular, I really love. But first, I thought it would be, oh, there, I think we- Yes, we have it up on the screen on some of the state ops. I'm very excited about that. Thank you. Yes, I flew from Oakland, California down to Mexico City. And after that, up to Newark, New Jersey. And that was a record breaker. I was invited to go to Mexico City by the government of Mexico. And what they did was, they called it an overprint. They took one of their own stamps and then they printed over it, Amelia Earhart and Mexico, I think it says, let me see what it said on it. Yeah, Del Bueno Voluntad, Mexico, 1935. And I got to looking at stamps after a while, you know, when so many people were buying them. And honestly, they're all so beautiful they're like little works of art. I just love pretty things. And sometimes I just think that if I have been to one of the places, I think back and it's like revisiting, like as if you almost have like a photograph in a way, only a tiny one. And other places, I look and say, gee, I've never been there. Wouldn't that be great? And it becomes something that extends my consideration of how great it is to travel and to get somewhere and see the different things about other people and cultures. But at the same time, get to see how much we have in common. Travel is a wonderful way to discover those things. So that's why I like stamp collecting, Hange. That is great. Yeah, I maybe, I'm gonna ask you our final question and maybe that'll play into what your answer is going to be this idea about travel and seeing new things and learning about other cultures. Or maybe it'll be something completely different, but here's the question, our final question for you today. What advice do you, Amelia Earhart, have for our young people today? Thank you for asking me that question. The advice I have is this. Always try to keep adventure and fun in your life. It doesn't matter what you do. Even if you, no, maybe you work in a flower shop or a short order cook or a writer, whatever it is you do, discover something in your job that makes you happy. The second thing is keep learning. I like to use the example of Clara Barton, the very famous Civil War nurse and the founder of the American Red Cross. She always said, anything you can learn is important because you never know if you will need it. And her brother, David, although all her siblings taught her how to read and write whatever, but David taught her things like how to play ball, how to tie really interesting and different and useful knots, how to ride a horse well and later in her life, all those things were useful to her. And so I would suggest take Clara Barton's advice, which has become my advice, keep learning. And thirdly, never lose your sense of your individuality. It's important you are a person of your own and it's fine to be a member of a group or a member of a team, but in the end it comes back to you and who you are and the character that you bring to that because character in life really matters. Oh, great advice. And I certainly agree with you and with Clara Barton in that, just keep learning because you never know. So thank you so much for your time today. And now we wanna take one last look at that Doc's Teach educational activity related to Amelia Earhart. So we'll look at that slide. So those of you who would like to go to our Doc's Teach page and search Amelia Earhart can find this activity for you to look closely at the photograph of her in her airplane here. And also, if you'll move to the next slide please, I wanted to let you know that next month in our Young Learners Program, we will have John Adams, one of the founders and leaders of the early United States, discussing his role in crafting the United States Constitution. And that'll be Thursday, September 15th at 11 a.m. and of course, September is Constitution month. So we especially wanna hear about stories of the Constitution. So dates and information about programs beyond that because we do this once a month can be found on the National Archives website which is archives.gov under attend an event and on our National Archives Facebook page. So thank you again, Amelia Earhart and thank you all for participating in our program today and we hope to see you next time. Bye.