Aviator Amelia Earhart honored with statue at U.S. Capitol

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional leaders and Kansas officers praised aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart on Wednesday for advancing the reason for girls’s rights throughout her barrier-breaking profession at a ceremony unveiling her statue within the U.S. Capitol.

Earhart, the primary girl to fly solo throughout the Atlantic Ocean, joins President Dwight Eisenhower as Kansas icons enshrined within the Nationwide Statuary Corridor Assortment. She is the eleventh girl honored with a statue within the assortment, the place every state is represented by two individuals of significance.

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas stated that whereas Earhart is finest identified for flying throughout the ocean, she was additionally a navy nurse, social employee, creator, and a champion for girls’s development.

“Feminine pilots was known as ‘ladybirds,’ ‘sweethearts of the air,’ and due to Amelia Earhart, again then, now and into the longer term, girls who fly planes are actually known as ‘pilots,’” Davids stated.

Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi famous that Earhart, who was born and raised in Atchison, Kansas, was the primary girl to ever obtain the Distinguished Flying Cross from the U.S. Congress.

“Not solely was she an impressive aviator, however she had a powerful ethical compass as an outspoken champion for gender equality,” Pelosi stated. “Amelia envisioned aviation as an ideal equalizer, and he or she fought valiantly to shut the gender hole.”

The Kansas Legislature voted in 1999 to interchange earlier statues with these of Eisenhower and Earhart. Eisenhower’s statue arrived in 2003 however the bronze statue of Earhart was delayed till the Atchison Amelia Earhart Basis raised the funding for it.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly stated it was becoming that one of many state’s most notable pioneering girls was being honored.

“Let or not it’s an inspiration for all, significantly our younger women, for generations to return,” Kelly stated.

Earhart disappeared in July 1937 on a flight over the Pacific Ocean whereas attempting to grow to be the primary pilot to circle the globe on the equator. No hint of her or her navigator, Fred Noonan, has ever been discovered, sparking quite a few theories about what occurred to them.