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con't...
The Woman Who Taught Amelia to Fly. 

[[margin]]POTPOURRI November 2, 1976 [[/margin]]

[[note]] Neta Snook, left, and Amelia Earhart, 1921. The plane, Neta's rebuilt Canadian Canuck, used for Amelia's first flight 
instructions. [[note/]]

attention to an account of early aviation history and an intimate, revelatory side of a very young Amelia Earhart. 

Neta told why Amelia preferred older, staid men to hot-blooded young flyers who around the airfield; how she crash-landed her plane, then reached for her lipstick before stepping out of the cockpit to face the photographers; and how she liked to spiker her tea-with soy sauce. Other delightful tidbits described a stubborn Amelia who provoked the wits out of Neta by persistently landing between high tension wires instead of over them, and how an equally stubborn Neta broker her out of the habit. 

There were nights, wrote Neta, when she and Amelia cooked their evening meal together in the hangar; Amelia's phobia about germs made her a compulsive dishwasher. And much more-all related in the book I TAUGHT AMERLIA TO FLY, completed an published in 1974. 

Throughout the years, ever since that warm December day in California when Amelia tapped Neta on the shoulder and said, "I want to learn to fly," much has been written about Amelia, history has summed up in one sentence the woman who taught her: "Amelia Earhart received her first flight instructions from Neta Snook at Kinner Field, Los Angeles, in 1921."

Neta, a master of understatement, remains unruffled by this lack of fanfare. Her son, Curtiss, was fifteen years old before he grasped the significance of his mother's background. Neta explains that she and her husband, Bill Southern, were much too busy with their five acre apricot orchard to sit around discussing her past career in aviation. 

It was not until Amelia disappeared on that last flight in 1037 that the conversation in their home centered on flying. During these anxious days of listening to every newscast Curtiss learned that his mother had not only taught Amelia to fly, but had racked up an impressive list of "firsts" to her own credit. 

She was the first woman to gain entry and to graduate from the Curtiss School of Aviation, the first to carry passengers, do stunt flying an aerial advertising. She rubbed elbows with such notables as Eddie Stinson (who taught her aerial acrobatics), Major Tom Baldwin (the balloonist who hoped to start an airline after World War I and hire her as his chief pilot), Eddie Rickenbacker (who told her she was pretty), and Glenn Curtiss (who allowed her to attend his school during an era when the popular rubric was "no females allowed.")

She was the first woman to test hop a plane -the Kinner "Airster," which Amelia later purchased. She set up the wing section for Donald Douglas in the one -room factory where he designed the famous DC series, and she single-handedly covered the wings of the first plane Douglas built for the United States Government. 

Neta, now 80 and widowed, lives alone on her fie acre hilltop in an adobe home that she and Bill built, brick by adobe brick. She still overhauls her car, gardens, raises exotic birds, and does her own home repairs. 

Last year she dug a trench 250 feet long to bring natural gas to the house. No mean feat for a woman who had just recovered from a fall off a stone wall while pruning apricot trees. The tumble sent her to the hospital with a crushed elbow, broken shoulder, and two broken wrists. 

"And another thing," she says, "They tell me I had a heart attack while in the hospital." 

Two hundred and fifty feet with a pick and shovel, after all that? 

"Oh yes, and my artificial elbow joint worked just fine. The public utilities company was supposed to dig the last sixty feet, but I got tired of waiting for them." 

Life is not confined to household chores. Neta hits the lecture circuit with verve, reliving tales of cockpit capers and early aviation history. 

Delayed recognition for her indomitable spirit and aviation achievement is beginning to pour in. This year she was presented the Distinguished Alumni Award for 1976 by Shimer College, Mount Carroll, Illinois, and in a recent TV movie role of Neta was portrayed by actress Susan Oliver. In July, Fred Goerner, author of "the Search for Amelia Earhart" visited in her home while professional crews photographed and taped the day-long interview. The purpose? A possible TV documentary. 

Neta marvels at the technological advances in aviation, but lets slip her innate dare0devil streak when she remarks, "My goodness, it must be mighty boring to fly one of those 'push button' jets."