Amelia Earhart Flies Again!
Amelia Earhart has returned to the skies—in the form of a giant helium parade balloon!
EVE is bringing women’s history right to the streets—and the skies—with a new line of parade balloons featuring Great American Heroines. Amelia Earhart is our first entry.
In the summer of 2010 we partnered with StarBound Entertainment, one of the country’s top balloon suppliers, to launch our new line of balloons. The funding for the Amelia Earhart balloon came from a group of wonderfully generous donors whom we dubbed “The 99 Club,” after the organization Amelia Earhart founded for women pilots. These are the folks who made the balloon possible, and we are proud to list their names at the bottom of this page.
Our Amelia Earhart balloon was officially launched on October 2, 2010, becoming the first parade balloon ever to depict an actual historical woman.
The balloon gets its first test flight during a rainy parade in Indianapolis.
The balloon is shaped as a 45-foot replica of the red Lockheed Vega that Amelia Earhart piloted across the Atlantic during her 1932 solo flight (now housed in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum). An oversized Amelia looms out of the cockpit, with her leather jacket and aviator cap modeled after existing photographs. Chad Baptiste of Fort Lauderdale created the renderings that guided the construction of the balloon.
Original artist sketch of the balloon by Chad Baptiste.
