Women Aviators - Amelia Earhart, Elvy Kalep, Frances Marsalis, Betty Gillies

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  American postcard showing femal aviators: Amelia Earhart, Elvy Kalep, Frances Marsalis and Betty Gillies with information about each one
• Publisher:  Helane Victoria Press, Martinsville, Ind., USA, 1977
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
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• Notes / condition:  slight bend at the top but an interesting and hard to find postcard

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Amelia Mary Earhart (/'??rh?rt/; July 24, 1897 – disappeared July 2, 1937) was an American aviation pioneer and author.^{[1][N 1]} Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.^{[3][N 2]} She received the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross for this record.^[5] She set many other records,^[2] wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.^[6] Earhart joined the faculty of the Purdue University aviation department in 1935 as a visiting faculty member to counsel women on careers and help inspire others with her love for aviation. She was also a member of the National Woman's Party, and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.^[7][8]

During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10 Electra, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. Fascination with her life, career and disappearance continues to this day.^{[N 3]}

Amelia Mary Earhart, daughter of German American Samuel ""Edwin"" Stanton Earhart (1867-1930) ^[10] and Amelia ""Amy"" Otis Earhart (1869–1962),^[11] was born in Atchison, Kansas, in the home of her maternal grandfather, Alfred Gideon Otis (1827–1912), a former federal judge, president of the Atchison Savings Bank and a leading citizen in the town. Amelia was the second child of the marriage, after an infant stillborn in August 1896.^[12] Alfred Otis had not initially favored the marriage and was not satisfied with Edwin's progress as a lawyer.^[13]

Earhart was named, according to family custom, after her two grandmothers (Amelia Josephine Harres and Mary Wells Patton).^[12] From an early age Earhart, nicknamed ""Meeley"" (sometimes ""Millie"") was the ringleader while her younger sister (two years her junior), Grace Muriel Earhart (1899–1998), nicknamed ""Pidge"", acted the dutiful follower.^[14] Both girls continued to answer to their childhood nicknames well into adulthood.^[12] Their upbringing was unconventional since Amy Earhart did not believe in molding her children into ""nice little girls.""^[15] Meanwhile their maternal grandmother disapproved of the ""bloomers"" worn by Amy's children and although Earhart liked the freedom they provided, she was aware other girls in the neighborhood did not wear them.

A spirit of adventure seemed to abide in the Earhart children with the pair setting off daily to explore their neighborhood.^{[N 4]} As a child, Earhart spent long hours playing with Pidge, climbing trees, hunting rats with a rifle and ""belly-slamming"" her sled downhill. Although this love of the outdoors and ""rough-and-tumble"" play was common to many youngsters, some biographers have characterized the young Earhart as a tomboy.^[17] The girls kept ""worms, moths, katydids and a tree toad""^[18] in a growing collection gathered in their outings. In 1904, with the help of her uncle, she cobbled together a home-made ramp fashioned after a roller coaster she had seen on a trip to St. Louis and secured the ramp to the roof of the family toolshed. Earhart's well-documented first flight ended dramatically. She emerged from the broken wooden box that had served as a sled with a bruised lip, torn dress and a ""sensation of exhilaration."" She exclaimed, ""Oh, Pidge, it's just like flying!""^[13]

Although there had been some missteps in his career up to that point, in 1907 Edwin Earhart's job as a claims officer for the Rock Island Railroad led to a transfer to Des Moines, Iowa. The next year, at the age of 10,^[19] Earhart saw her first aircraft at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.^[20][21] Her father tried to interest her and her sister in taking a flight. One look at the rickety ""flivver"" was enough for Earhart, who promptly asked if they could go back to the merry-go-round.^[22] She later described the biplane as ""a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting.""^[23]

The two sisters, Amelia and Muriel (she went by her middle name from her teens on), remained with their grandparents in Atchison, while their parents moved into new, smaller quarters in Des Moines. During this period, Earhart received a form of home-schooling together with her sister, from her mother and a governess. She later recounted that she was ""exceedingly fond of reading""^[24] and spent countless hours in the large family library. In 1909, when the family was finally reunited in Des Moines, the Earhart children were enrolled in public school for the first time with Amelia Earhart entering the seventh grade at the age of 12 years.

While the family's finances seemingly improved with the acquisition of a new house and even the hiring of two servants, it soon became apparent Edwin was an alcoholic. Five years later (in 1914), he was forced to retire and although he attempted to rehabilitate himself through treatment, he was never reinstated at the Rock Island Railroad. At about this time, Earhart's grandmother Amelia Otis died suddenly, leaving a substantial estate that placed her daughter's share in trust, fearing that Edwin's drinking would drain the funds. The Otis house, and all of its contents, was auctioned; Earhart was heartbroken and later described it as the end of her childhood.^[25]

In 1915, after a long search, Earhart's father found work as a clerk at the Great Northern Railway in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Earhart entered Central High School as a junior. Edwin applied for a transfer to Springfield, Missouri, in 1915 but the current claims officer reconsidered his retirement and demanded his job back, leaving the elder Earhart with nowhere to go. Facing another calamitous move, Amy Earhart took her children to Chicago where they lived with friends. Earhart made an unusual condition in the choice of her next schooling; she canvassed nearby high schools in Chicago to find the best science program. She rejected the high school nearest her home when she complained that the chemistry lab was ""just like a kitchen sink.""^[26] She eventually was enrolled in Hyde Park High School but spent a miserable semester where a yearbook caption captured the essence of her unhappiness, ""A.E. – the girl in brown who walks alone.""^[27]

Earhart graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1916.^[28] Throughout her troubled childhood, she had continued to aspire to a future career; she kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about successful women in predominantly male-oriented fields, including film direction and production, law, advertising, management and mechanical engineering.^[19] She began junior college at Ogontz School in Rydal, Pennsylvania but did not complete her program.^{[29][N 5]}

During Christmas vacation in 1917, Earhart visited her sister in Toronto. World War I had been raging and Earhart saw the returning wounded soldiers. After receiving training as a nurse's aide from the Red Cross, she began work with the Volunteer Aid Detachment at Spadina Military Hospital. Her duties included preparing food in the kitchen for patients with special diets and handing out prescribed medication in the hospital's dispensary.^[30][31]

When the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic reached Toronto, Earhart was engaged in arduous nursing duties including night shifts at the Spadina Military Hospital.^[32][33] She became a patient herself, suffering from pneumonia and maxillary sinusitis.^[32] She was hospitalized in early November 1918 owing to pneumonia and discharged in December 1918, about two months after the illness had started.^[32] Her sinus-related symptoms were pain and pressure around one eye and copious mucus drainage via the nostrils and throat.^[34] In the hospital, in the pre-antibiotic era, she had painful minor operations to wash out the affected maxillary sinus,^[32][33][34] but these procedures were not successful and Earhart subsequently suffered from worsening headache attacks. Her convalescence lasted nearly a year, which she spent at her sister's home in Northampton, Massachusetts.^[33] She passed the time by reading poetry, learning to play the banjo and studying mechanics.^[32] Chronic sinusitis was to significantly affect Earhart's flying and activities in later life,^[34] and sometimes even on the airfield she was forced to wear a bandage on her cheek to cover a small drainage tube.^[35]

At about that time, with a young woman friend, Earhart visited an air fair held in conjunction with the Canadian National Exposition in Toronto. One of the highlights of the day was a flying exhibition put on by a World War I ace.^[36] The pilot overhead spotted Earhart and her friend, who were watching from an isolated clearing, and dived at them. ""I am sure he said to himself, 'Watch me make them scamper,'"" she said. Earhart stood her ground as the aircraft came close. ""I did not understand it at the time,"" she said, ""but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.""^[37]

By 1919 Earhart prepared to enter Smith College but changed her mind and enrolled at Columbia University, enrolling in a course in medical studies among other programs.^[38] She quit a year later to be with her parents, who had reunited in California.

In Long Beach, on December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father visited an airfield where Frank Hawks (who later gained fame as an air racer) gave her a ride that would forever change Earhart's life. ""By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground,"" she said, ""I knew I had to fly.""^[39] After that 10-minute flight (that cost her father $10), she immediately became determined to learn to fly. Working at a variety of jobs, including photographer, truck driver, and stenographer at the local telephone company, she managed to save $1,000 for flying lessons. Earhart had her first lessons, beginning on January 3, 1921, at Kinner Field, near Long Beach. In order to reach the airfield, Earhart had to take a bus to the end of the line, then walk four miles (6 km). Earhart's mother also provided part of the $1,000 ""stake"" against her ""better judgement.""^[40] Her teacher was Anita ""Neta"" Snook, a pioneer female aviator who used a surplus Curtiss JN-4 ""Canuck"" for training. Earhart arrived with her father and a singular request, ""I want to fly. Will you teach me?""^[41]

Earhart's commitment to flying required her to accept the frequently hard work and rudimentary conditions that accompanied early aviation training. She chose a leather jacket, but aware that other aviators would be judging her, she slept in it for three nights to give the jacket a ""worn"" look. To complete her image transformation, she also cropped her hair short in the style of other female flyers.^[42] Six months later, Earhart purchased a secondhand bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane which she nicknamed ""The Canary."" On October 22, 1922, Earhart flew the Airster to an altitude of 14,000 feet (4,300 m), setting a world record for female pilots. On May 15, 1923, Earhart became the 16th woman to be issued a pilot's license (#6017)^[43] by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).^[44]

Betty Gillies (January 7, 1908 – October 14, 1998) was a pioneering American aviator.

The first pilot to qualify for the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron was Betty Huyler Gillies of Syosset, Long Island, New York. She entered the WAFS on September 12, 1942. Gillies at this time had 14 years of flying experience, running up a total of 1400 hours to her credit, held various aeronautical ratings, and for two years (1939–1941) was president of the Ninety-Nines, an international club of women flyers formed in 1929.

When Nancy Love transferred to Love Field, Dallas, Texas to start a new WAFS ferrying unit, Gillies was made squadron leader of the WAFS assigned to the 2nd Ferrying Group, New Castle Army Air Base, Wilmington, Delaware.

In early March 1943 Mrs. Gillies became the first woman to fly the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt when she was checked out on the aircraft at Wilmington. The ""check out"" consisted of an explanation of aircraft systems, flight characteristics and emergency procedures. Since the P-47 was a single seat aircraft, her first flight was also her first solo flight.

One of the outstanding ferry missions accomplished by the original Squadron at Wilmington came in April 1943, when four PT-26s were delivered from Hagerstown, Maryland, to DeWinton, Alberta, Canada, a distance of more than 2,500 miles. Gillies was flight leader, and the other three pilots were Nancy Batson, Helen McGilvery and Kathryn Bernheim. The type of plane flown had a cruising speed of only around 100 mph. They left Hagerstown on April 18, spent the night at Joliet, Illinois (697 miles away), spent the next night at North Platte, Neb., after a run of 585 miles, then made a long hop of 846 miles to Great Falls, Mont. On April 21 they flew the remaining 275 miles to DeWinton, Alberta. All four pilots were back at the 2nd Group by Friday evening, April 23, and were commended by Colonel Baker for their efficient and prompt delivery, which included not only the flying of the planes but also the paperwork involved in such deliveries, such as flight logs, gasoline reports and RON (remain over night) messages.

On August 15, 1943, Love and Gillies qualified as first pilots (i.e. aircraft commanders) on Boeing B-17s and made three deliveries together during the balance of the month. On September 2, 1943 Gillies and Love departed Cincinnati on a ferry mission to deliver a B-17F to England; however, the mission was canceled before the aircraft left Goose Bay, Labrador.

Gillies remained squadron leader of the Women Airforce Service Pilots assigned to the 2nd Ferrying Group at New Castle Army Air Base until the WASPs were disbanded on December 20, 1944.

Betty and her husband B. A. Gillies had three children. One of her children died at age 4; her remaining son and daughter became commercial pilots, and four of her grandchildren become pilots as well.

Also after the war, Gillies was a ham radio operator who, using her radio, connected phone calls to ships in the Pacific from her home in California. She had her huge antenna directed at the Antarctic and maintained contact with the staff and Navy personnel in Operation Deep Freeze who were stationed there for two year hitches. She also participated in the Navy MARS program under the call sign NNN0AYT.

type=printed postcards

theme=people

sub-theme=aviators

number of items=single

period=1945 - present

postage condition=unposted