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IN MAY 1932, Amelia Earhart became first woman to make a nonstop flight across the Atlantic.

Pioneer women pilots

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person to fly solo around the world, on a trip from Los Angeles to Moscow. When she turned Post down in order to go on her honeymoon with journalist Linton Wells, Post chose humorist Will Rogers. Both men were killed on that flight in 1935.
     Earlier, in 1929, while working in the sales department of the Curtiss Wright Flying Service, Wells helped to found the Ninety-Nines, an association of female pilots still active today. "We organized for the fun of it," Wells recalls, "and also to have a network to pass on information about jobs." The first meeting took place in 

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FAY GILLIS worked for Curtiss Wright before moving to Russia in 1930. Right, Ruth Nichols with adviser Clarence Chamberlin in 1931 after she broke the world altitude record for women.


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Atop Lockheed Vega, Amelia Earhart is greeted after 1935 solo flight from Hawaii to California.

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an airplane hangar above the din of an engine; tea was served from a tool box on wheels.
     The club's name was Earhart's idea, Wells says, "She sat very modestly in the back row while we argued about the name. Some of us wanted names life The Lady Bugs and others wanted to be The American Association of Licensed Woman Pilots. Then Amelia spoke up and said, 'Why don't we name ourselves after the number of our charter members?'"
     Jacqueline Cochran, a charter member of the Ninety-

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Nines, became the fist woman to break the sound barrier in 1953. She was also an ace in business, starting a successful cosmetics company, which her flying helped to publicize.
     A highly competitive racer who was always eager to fly "hot" racing airplanes, Cochran won the prestigious 1938 Bendix transcontinental race.

     AS THE AMERICAN public became "sold" on air transportation in the 1930s, women played an increasingly important role in the selling. Dozens of new air transport lines were added and passenger growth mushroomed.
     Nichols and Earhart promoted aviation by making countless speeches and writing hundreds of magazine articles. Many airplane companies hired women to demonstrate and promote their products in the 1930s. The sales gimmick was successful for the companies and it gave the women a chance to fly, although Helen Richey resigned her job as the first woman commercial airline pilot in 1934 because the all-male pilots' union refused to admit her and she was seldom allowed to fly.
     As today, the "stars" of aviation were in great demand for advertisements. "Cigarettes have nearly been my downfall," Earhart wrote in 1928 after "wickedly endorsing" a certain cigarette, though she estimated smoking only three that year. Earhart donated the $1,500 fee to Cmdr. Richard Byrd's South Polar Expedition, but an irate subscriber still admonished, "I suppose you drink, too!"
     In 1936 and 1937, Earhart worked with female students of Purdue University, one of the few U.S. colleges to offer aviation classes to women. Purdue presented her with a new twin-engine Lockheed Electra loaded with the latest instruments, funded by Lockheed, Bendix and other groups. The donors wanted to promote aviation, Earhart said, "and especially, perhaps, overcome women's 'sales resistance' to air travel."
     It was in that Electra that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, nearly succeeded in completing the longest around-the-world flight. In July 1937, after flying 22,000 miles, the plane was lost at sea. 
     Throughout her career as an aviation spokeswoman, Earhart insisted that the risks of long-distance flights

South Bend Tribune, Sunday, March 30, 1986