Elvy Kalep

Alviine-Johanna Kalep (26 June 1899 – 15 August 1989), known as Elvy Kalep, was an Estonian aviator and the country's first female pilot, as well as an artist, toy designer and a one-time children's author.

Kalep grew up in Estonia and Russia, and subsequently moved to China to escape the Russian Civil War. She worked briefly as an interpreter for military officials in China before settling in Paris to study art with Alexandre Jacovleff. In 1931, she qualified as a pilot in Germany, becoming the first Estonian female pilot. Befriending American aviator Amelia Earhart, she joined the Ninety-Nines and took up the cause of encouraging other women to take up aviation. She wrote and illustrated a children's book about flying, Air Babies, which was first published in 1936.

After settling in the United States, Kalep founded a toy manufacturing business in New York. Although she was forced to close the business in 1946 due to her poor health, she made a living through the 1950s by selling patents to toy designs to larger businesses. In later decades, she created artworks out of leather, which she exhibited across the United States. She died in Florida in 1989.

Early life Kalep was born on 26 June 1899 in the village of Taali in Tori Parish, Pärnu County. She was the only child of Joanna (née Liidemann) and locksmith Aksel Emil, who both died when she was a young girl. As a teenager, Kalep moved to Russia to live with an aunt in Saint Petersburg. She witnessed the events that sparked the February Revolution in 1917, and spent a night in police detention as an eyewitness. She completed five hours of flying with Fokker and, after breaking her arm during a sledding accident in the winter of 1931, took her pilot's test in Germany on 1 August 1931. She passed, becoming the first qualified female pilot from Estonia, and the seventh woman to pass the exam in Germany. The story followed two young planes, Happy Wings and Speedy, and a 1938 reprint included a foreword from Earhart, who embarked on her last flight three days after writing the piece; she disappeared while flying in 1937.

Art and design career After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and with the dissolution of her third marriage, Kalep began a new business venture in the American toy market. She designed a doll named Patsie Parachute which, when thrown into the air, would fall down slowly as a parachutist would. The dolls were produced in a New York factory where Kalep herself was forced to work to sustain the business. Her health deteriorated, however, and her profits from the business were spent almost entirely on medical costs; she was forced to close the factory in 1946. She had recovered by 1950 and made a living by selling patents for toy designs to larger businesses. One of her successful designs was Scribbles Dolls—toy dolls with blank faces that could be individually decorated by children—which was inspired by the 50,000 doll heads she had left over from the closure of the Patsie Parachute factory.

In the 1960s, while living in Palm Beach, Florida, Kalep began creating leather artworks which she sold to her neighbours to make a living. She created three-dimensional paintings made out of small pieces of coloured leather imported from France. Throughout the 1970s she showcased her art in exhibitions across the United States and sold works to high-profile customers including Eugene Ormandy.

Death Kalep died on 15 August 1989, aged 90, in the Regency Health Care Center of Lake Worth, Florida. She had lived in the facility since 1986. She had been married three times but had no surviving family at the time of her death. Obituaries for Kalep were published in the Florida newspaper the Sun-Sentinel and Vaba Eesti Sõna, an Estonian-language newspaper published in New York.