Amelia Earhart the aircraft came close. "I did not understand it at the time," she said, "but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by." By 1919 Earhart prepared to enter Smith College but changed her mind and enrolled at Columbia University, in a course in medical studies among other programs. She quit a year later to be with her parents, who had reunited in California. In Long Beach, on December 28, 1920, Earhart and her father visited an airfield where Frank Hawks (who later gained fame as an air racer) gave her a ride that
Last Flight (book) material written by Putnam, as well as a poem, "Courage", which Earhart had herself written. Although credited to Earhart, historians have cast doubt as to how much of this book was actually written by Earhart and how much had been rewritten or embellished by Putnam. Amelia Earhart explains the origin of her dream to fly a multi-motored plane, which was in May 1935 during her nonstop flight from Mexico City to New York. En route to New York, while flying her single engine Lockheed Vega, she ponders her nightmare that the only engine would “conk” or break down in mid-flight.