SHEET MUSIC & EPHEMERA: Button; and sheet music for "Wings."
1-1/4" diameter celluloid pin, photograph image of a serious looking Amelia Earhart wearing her leather flight helmet. A bit of rubbing on the back but pin and image is fine. Very scarce.
TOGETHER WITH:
[Sheet Music]. Wings. Dedicated to Amelia Earhart. Words by Elsie B. Gillespie. Music by Evelyn D. Hotchkill. (Zonta International District VII). [ND. NP, (Chicago)]. Large 8vo. 4pp. Buff paper with black silhouette of Amelia Earhart framed by a lacy embroidery pattern with a facsimile signature of Earhart in the image. Light creasing to bottom corner. Housed in an absolutely stunning “wild blue yonder” archival display slipcase.
According to cover notes, the lyricist met Earhart when she spoke in Duluth, Minnesota, and began a poem soon thereafter. Following Earhart's loss in 1937, the poem was finished and set to music, then sung at Zonta Conference in 1939 at Sweet Briar, West Virginia. The Zonta International was founded in Buffalo in 1919, the Zonta clubs took their names from a Sioux word meaning trustworthy. Its 1919 founding date was indicative of its close affiliation with internationalism, for it grew out of the movement for the League of Nations in that year and was aimed at providing opportunities for women worldwide. Headquartered in Chicago, Zonta International has more than one thousand clubs located in fifty-nine countries. Over thirty-five thousand members call themselves Zontians.
Amelia Earhart [1898-1937] became an aviator whose speculator nine-year career advanced public acceptance of commercial aviation and women's capabilities in the air and other adventurous arenas. Another female aviator, Neta Snook, gave flying lessons to Earhart. In 1921, she set her first record, for women's altitude, the same year of her first solo fight. She came to national attention in 1928, as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean - thus becoming known as "Lady Lindy” - likening her to Charles Lindburgh. In 1932 she made her own solo flight across the Atlantic; and in 1935 she became first person to fly solo to the U.S. mainland from Honolulu; and another flight in which she became the first person to fly nonstop to Newark, New Jersey, from Mexico City.
Earhart's most famous flight was her last: a 1937 attempt to fly around the world. Earhart's plane lost communication during the most arduous segment of the 2,556-mile stretch from New Guinea to Howland Island in the mid-Pacific and disappeared. Many scenarios have been offered but her disappearance still remains a mystery. Earhart took her position as a groundbreaking role model for other women, both in and outside the world of aviation very seriously. As founder of the 'Ninety-Nines', an organization of female pilots which is still in existence. An outspoken supporter of women's rights who used her many lecture opportunities to call for an end to discrimination against women. During her short life, she published many books about her experiences. Honors and awards received by Amelia Earhart include the gold medal of the National Geographic Society, the Harmon International Trophy, the Cross of the French Legion of Honor, and from the United States Congress, the Distinguished Flying Cross.
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