Dr. Ernst F. Tonsing was born in Topeka, Kansas, and studied at Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, Nebraska, then joining the United States Navy as an officer. After several cruises, he became an instructor in the Naval Intelligence Communications Schools at Little Creek, Virginia.

Subsequent to the Navy, Tonsing studied at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California, and later at the University of California, Santa Barbara, earning a second master’s degree and a doctor of philosophy degree.

Tonsing came to California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks in 1974 and retired in 2003.

Title by Ernst F. Tonsing

  • by Ernst F. Tonsing

    • Released: June 2021
    • Genre: Memoirs

    Ernst Tonsing’s grandmother was Amelia Earhart’s cousin. In Cousin Amelia, he relates stories about her youth that he learned from his grandmother, from Amelia’s other relatives, and from visits with her mother and a conversation with her sister, Muriel Earhart Morrissey.

    Learn about Amelia’s life in her grandmother’s house in the early 1900s, her remarkable mother, her brave great-grandmother, her adventurous great-grandfather, her brilliant aunt, and her cousin who got women the vote in Kansas. Many of these stories about her youth and remarkable family have never been told outside the family.

    Finally, you will learn about Amelia’s most important flight—it was not her last!