In recent months, U.S. government records related to Amelia Earhart have been declassified and released, apparently because of the continued wide interest in determining the site and causes of her disappearance, which are still unknown. Although many Earhart experts believe that the newly released documents contain little new information, the publicity has put her name back in the headlines.
As described in my columns about Earhart (available online at ryerecord.com), she resided in Rye mainly during the early years of her marriage to George Palmer Putnam (roughly 1931–1934). While writing her second book during that period, she enjoyed socializing with friends and swimming at the Manursing Island Club, in addition to flying her plane from local airfields.
Earhart’s residence in Rye was brief, but another pioneering female aviator, Ruth Norton Nichols, grew up in Rye at her family’s home and large estate on Grace Church Street. Her father, Erickson Norman Nichols, was a wealthy member of the New York Stock Exchange and a veteran of the Spanish-American War, where he served as one of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders.”
After attending a local private school, Nichols spent her high school years at the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry. When she graduated in 1919, her father’s gift was an airplane ride with a famous World War I and barn-storming pilot named Eddie Stinson Jr, which she often said kindled her interest in flying.
From Masters, she went to Wellesley College in Massachusetts, a leader among the seven top women’s colleges, known as the “Seven Sisters.” During her college years she took flying lessons and earned her private pilot’s license in 1922, becoming one of a small number of licensed women pilots in the world at the time.
Graduating from Wellesley in 1924, Nichols rapidly gained certifications in cross-country, night, and seaplane flying. In 1930, she became the first woman in the United States to earn a transport pilot’s license. It was the highest grade of pilot certification then available and made her nationally famous.
In 1931, she set three major world records for a woman — speed, altitude, and distance — making her the only woman ever to hold all three simultaneously. Among these achievements, the most demanding technically, physically, and operationally was her transcontinental speed record, flying from Los Angeles to New York in under 14 hours.
Setting that record demonstrated her skills at long-range navigation (pre-radar), regional weather forecasting and night flying, as well as physical endurance. It also prepared her for the transatlantic flight to Europe that she planned for later in 1931, which had to be delayed until 1932 to raise the necessary funds.
During that delay, Earhart took off from a Canadian airfield on May 20, 1932 and landed in Northern Ireland the next day, making her the first woman to follow Lindbergh’s historic flight in 1927. Although Earhart had won the women’s transatlantic record, Nichols went ahead with her planned flight to Europe a month later. As she headed down an unpaved runway, her airplane’s wheels hit a rut and crashed, leaving her with severe spinal injuries.
