Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots Celebrates Pioneering Female Aviatrix

Her life as a ground-breaking aviatrix -- linked with her mysterious death at age 39 when she disappeared while attempting an around-the-world flight -- are likely to draw aviation enthusiasts, educators, women, and the general public to the new Amelia Earhart exhibition at the Ninety-Nines Museum of Women Pilots in Oklahoma City.

The exhibition commemorates the 70th anniversary of Earhart's 1937 disappearance and the 75th anniversary of her solo flight over the Atlantic Ocean, reports The Associated Press. The museum is located near Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City.

"She's still a mystery," said Margie Richison, chairwoman of the museum's board of trustees. "She's probably the greatest mystery of the last century, and it's [still] unsolved."

Among items on display are the scarf Earhart wore on some long-distance flights, her pilot's license, and navigation charts.

Born in Kansas in 1897, Earhart went on her first flight in 1919, earning a pilot's license three years later -- a rarity for women at that time.

After a 1929 women's air derby, in which Earhart finished third, a letter went out to all the nation's female pilots -- a group numbering fewer than 150 -- about forming a women's aviation group. Ninety-nine of the women responded, leading to the group's name, and Earhart became the organization's first president.

School children visiting the museum Thursday recreated her trans-Atlantic journey using small model planes.

Said fifth-grader Malcolm Davis when asked what he had learned from studying Earhart's life, "It showed that women can do anything!"

Teacher Cathy Ozeroglu said that was an important lesson for students of both genders to learn.

"Children need to know that," she said. "God has made us all equal, and we all can accomplish great things."

Earhart became a darling of the media in part because of her adventurous nature, Richison said: Earhart was the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean in 1932 and the first person - male or female - to fly from Hawaii to California over the Pacific Ocean three years later.

On May 20, 1937, Earhart began her much-publicized 27,000 mile "World Flight" in Oakland, CA, that would make her the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe.

On July 1, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan took off in her twin-engine Lockheed Electra from Lae, New Guinea, on what was planned as a 2,550-mile journey to Howland Island in the North Pacific Ocean. But the two never reached the island, and on the morning of July 2, in one of her last radio transmissions to the US Coast Guard cutter Itasca, she noted her fuel was running low.

Theories about what happened abound.

The official US government position is that the plane ran out of gas and crashed at sea. Others believe they landed on another island and the pair lived for a time as castaways, while some believe they ended up in the Northern Mariana Islands, thousands of miles away, after being shot down by the Japanese and were executed on suspicion they were spies.

FMI: www.ninety-nines.org