Amelia Earharts’ 77-Year-Long Journey Around the World

Here’s one of my favorite speeches. It’s the story of how a woman named Amelia Earhart flew around the world. You may think you’ve heard it before but it’s unlikely.

I haven’t been posting much because I’ve been focusing more on refining my speechmaking with Toastmasters. You can see many of my speeches along with video. If you’d like to join my Toastmasters group, contact me.

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.

― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

In 1937 Amelia Earhart was the most famous aviatrix⁽¹⁾Aviatrix = female aviator. in the world. She was the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by plane, the woman who’d flown higher than anyone else in the world, and whose solo flight across the Atlantic made her into female Charles Lindbergh. Then, on July 2, 1937, Amelia’s plane disappeared on its way from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island.

So imagine my surprise in 2018 when I was watching TV with my sons. A woman named Amelia Earhart told us that she just finished her flight around the world. This, of course, was a different Amelia Earhart. Amelia Rose Earhart was born in 1984. Her parents told her she was a long lost relative of Amelia Earhart, wanted to give her a strong female role model, and figured that no one would ever forget a woman named Amelia Earhart.

It was hard growing up with the name Amelia Earhart. If I were named Charles Lindbergh I bet people would spend a lot of time making flying jokes like, “Have you flown over the Atlantic any time soon.” And I would spend a lot of time saying, “Ha that’s funny. I haven’t heard that one before. I am Charles Lindbergh the dentist.”

I started looking into people who had unique names or uncommon names. I found this wonderful movie called The Strange Name Movie. They go around the country finding people with unusual names like James Bond or Harry Potter or Paul and Linda McCartney.⁽²⁾I’ve got pictures of all of them in the video. But many of these people, like Harry Potter, were going along through life when this giant truck of name Wizardry crashed into him. Now he can’t order a pizza without people snickering. But what about people that know what they’re getting into, like Donald Duck Jr. When he was dating his wife, he said, “Don’t marry me if you don’t want to name your first son Donald Duck III.”

Which brings me to Amelia Earhart. After people asking her for years “Are you going to become a pilot?” or “Are going to fly around the world?” In 2004 she started taking flying lessons, in 2011 she realized she could get sponsors to help her fly around the world, and in 2014 she flew around the world.

Some people looked at Amelia Rose Earhart and said that she was taking advantage of the name. But the Amelia Earharts are very similar. Both got women excited about doing the impossible. Both Amelias used the media for publicity and funding. But Amelia Rose Earhart wanted to do more. She started the Fly with Amelia Foundation to help 16-18 year old girls become pilots. While over Howland Island where the original Amelia disappeared, she gave out the first $120K of scholarships. And in a true finishing touch, Amelia Rose Earhart won the Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award.

So clearly she’s the heir to the legacy of Amelia Earhart. Plus, she’s the long lost relative of our initial aviatrix. But wait, there’s something I left out earlier. I told you that Amelia’s parents told her that Amelia Earhart was a long lost relative. About a year before the flight, she hired a genealogist and found out that they weren’t related.

She was devastated. She felt like her whole life had been taken away from her. She was thinking of just scrapping the whole flight. Why do it if she wasn’t related to Amelia Earhart. But then, after some serious soul-searching, she realized that the original Amelia Earhart could only take her so far. Having the same name got her to fly and she found out she loved it. It inspired her to take on this fantastic trip around the world. But now it was up to Amelia Rose Earhart to finish the journey.

Amelia Rose Earhart inspires me. We’re all born with gifts and challenges. Some things that look like challenges are can be made into gifts and vice verse. Here’s the story of a woman who started with a name that was incredibly hard to live up to and used it to inspire others. She grew into the name and surpassed it. She completed the goal of the original Amelia Earhart—the flight around the world—77 years after it started.