except one. Florence Barnes, wife of a San Morino minister, misjudged
her landing roll, overran the runway, and crashed into an automobile.
She was rescued, unharmed, from the wreck.
On the night of the fifth day they stayed in Wichita, Kansas; of the
sixth, in St. Louis. When they landed in Columbus, Ohio, the last stop
before Cleveland, sixteen of the original nineteen had made it.
The morning of the eighth day broke clear. Amelia and Ruth Nichols, her
friend from Rye, had been running neck and neck during the entire race.
AE had landed just two minutes ahead of Ruth at Columbus and looked
forward to the last lap to Cleveland. It would be nip and tuck between
them all the way. The girls started their engines and waited for the
signal to move out in interval.
Ruth Nichols, poised at the far end of the runway, gunned her motor for
take-off. Just as she broke from the ground, the right wing dipped,
then hit a tractor parked at the edge of the runway. Amelia blanched.
Ruth’s plane struck the ground, flipped over three times, and stopped
in a shrieking scrape along the pavement.
AE stopped her engine, climbed out of the Vega, and ran toward the
crash. Ruth Nichols was not hurt, but the wings and landing gear of her
plane were smashed beyond immediate repair. The private race between
the two friends was over.
Louise Thaden of Pittsburgh won the race. Gladys O’Donnell, the mother
of two children, from Long Beach, came in second. AE, just nosing out
Blanche Noyes, was third. In the light-plane class, Phoebe Omlie was
the winner.
6. _Developing Air Lines_
The race had whetted Amelia’s competitive appetite, although the event,
generally, had annoyed her because of the unnecessary excitement and
trouble which the women fliers had caused. She would have preferred a
straight and simple race, one in which she could have competed, without
fanfare, with men. This last possibility was out of the question for
the time being; she turned, therefore, to establishing some speed
records of her own. The Vega had yet to prove its mettle at full
throttle.
In November of that same year AE set the new speed record for women
over a one-mile distance; and a few months later she established the
international speed record for women over a 100-kilometer course.
In her fever of activity, Amelia now turned from competitive flying and
magazine writing to developing air lines. With a characteristic burst
of initial energy, she plunged into first one then another aspect of
air-line operation, first with one organization then with another.
But, as with nursing and medicine, and as at Columbia when she was too
impatient to follow a prescribed course of study, she soon tired of the
new activities. There was no occupation on the ground that could hold
her interest for long.
Her destiny, she knew, lay in the air; but she would have to continue
getting more and more flying time before she could finally break the
ties with mundane pursuits. Working for an air line at least offered
chances to fly, even if it meant paying for the privilege by trying to
sell aviation to stubborn women.
Mothers and wives, Amelia was to complain later, were the great
stumbling blocks in her attempt to convince the American public that
flying was safe. It seemed that sons and daughters and husbands were
willing to take to the air, but a matriarchal opposition barred the
way. As she had used her arguments writing for _Cosmopolitan_, so
now AE used them again in speaking tours for the cause of aviation
in general, and for Transcontinental Air Transport, the air line she
represented, in particular.
Amelia flew from point to point on the Ludington Line of TAT and
delivered her talks to women’s groups. Often her mother would go along
with her. AE would point to her mother seated at the speaker’s table
and indicate her proof: if mother and daughter could fly together, the
air was as safe for any woman and her family as the highway and the
railroad. Gradually women began to be sold.
Working on TAT with Amelia were two young men, Paul Collins and Gene
Vidal. They had many progressive ideas about the running of an air line
and were anxious to put them into operation in their own business. They
took AE into the new organization with them as a vice-president.
As she had before, Amelia worked primarily with the women passengers,
finding them, quieting them, convincing them. Again she made many
lecture tours. She always began her speeches by asking for a show of
hands from those who had flown. The career women invariably won out
over their less daring sisters from a college group or a women’s club.
Difficulties of all kinds were encountered in the running of the
line. Irate customers, usually women, complained to Amelia about
cabin temperatures that were either too high or too low. Would the
plane please stop bumping? Did they have to fly into air pockets? One
passenger insisted that she would not pay extra for her thirteen pieces
of luggage; after all, the trains did not set any silly limits at
thirty pounds. A woman bought a ticket for herself and what she said
was a small lap dog: Amelia insisted that the woman sit in the same
seat with the lap dog, which, it turned out, was the size of a small
pony. At another time the same seat was sold to two different people.
Frequently passengers were grounded by the weather and had to be turned
over to the railroads.
Amelia soon fidgeted with an unrest to try something else. The right
to fly at no cost on the air line was too expensive for her energies
when she had to pay for the privilege with so many irritations on
the ground. If she could fly _and_ earn money at the same time, she
could then build up her hours in the air and yet realize enough funds,
finally, to back her contemplated solo across the Atlantic. The dual
opportunity came in the form of the newest experiment in aviation, the
autogiro.
For AE, the forerunner of the helicopter was a challenge to her flying
skill. In 1931, to the surprise of everyone, she learned how to fly
one in just a few hours, and a couple of days later she took it to
18,415 feet and set a new altitude record for autogiros. Because of the
publicity she had gained from the flight, Amelia was approached by the
Beech-Nut Packing Company to fly an autogiro across the country as a
promotion stunt for the chewing gum. She readily agreed: the venture,
although commercial, was the answer to her desire for flying time and
money.
Beginning in May of 1931, and for the next two months, Amelia flew
back and forth from New York to California, advertising the name of
Beech-Nut painted on the side of her plane.
The cross-country flight, although unusual in some respects, was
even more unusual in another. Three months earlier AE had quietly
slipped away with GP, who had divorced his wife, and married him in
Connecticut. And now by leaving on a “business trip,” Amelia had put
the marital shoe on the other foot, that of the male, and had left her
mate waiting for her at home.
For a long time AE had felt that marriage was a cage; but GP, who had
begun his campaign early after the _Friendship_ flight, had finally
overcome her continued reluctance. He convinced her that the cage could
be attractive if the door to it were left unlocked and open.
The marriage was marked by an interesting public reversal of roles. Not
unlike an anxious woman who has been left behind, George waited for
Amelia to finish her new adventure in the air. He worried about her.
She had already sustained one accident in Texas, and had complained
about the accounts of it in the press as much as any righteously
indignant male.
“A fatal accident to a woman pilot,” she wrote, “is not a greater
disaster than one to a man of equal worth. Feminine fliers have never
subscribed to the super-sentimental valuation placed upon their necks.
I am sure they feel they can endure their share of misfortune, whatever
it be, as quietly as men.”
When Amelia was heading back East on her trip, GP went to Detroit to
meet her. She had been scheduled to appear at the State Fair Grounds,
where she was going to give a demonstration flight with the autogiro.
Waiting for her, George stood on the outside of a circle which had been
marked off for AE to land in. Close by stands had been erected, and
from them long support wires had been stretched and staked into the
ground. GP talked with a group of people who had gathered.
“Here she comes!” someone shouted, pointing over GP’s shoulder.
George Putnam turned his head and saw the giro, whirling and clattering
above the treetops. Assured that everything was as it should be, he
resumed his conversation.
Then he heard a loud crash. GP spun around. The giro lay broken in a
cloud of smoke, the rotor blades cracked and splintered, the landing
gear smashed.
He ran toward the wreck. Ignoring the ground beneath him, he struck one
of the support wires. He flew up, over, and down, and hit the ground
flat on his back.
Amelia emerged from the accident without injury. When she saw her
husband sprawled on the ground, and apparently hurt, she ran to him.
She saw that he was winded but otherwise, it seemed, in good condition.
“So flying _is_ the safest, after all!” she teased him. “If you had
been with me, you wouldn’t have been hurt.”
GP turned to get up. His face creased in pain.
He had cracked three of his ribs.
7. _George Palmer Putnam_
George Palmer Putnam II was a man of many accomplishments. Because of
his highly active and extroverted nature, people either liked him or
disliked him. No one who knew him felt an apathetic indifference toward
him.
Newspaperman, mayor, publisher, explorer, author, promoter, manager,
publicity man extraordinary, he was tall, good-looking, aggressively
masculine, brilliantly informed, and he married some of the most
charming women of his day. (GP’s four wives were Dorothy Binney, Amelia
Earhart, Jean Marie Cosigny, and Margaret Haviland.) In appearance he
was deceptive: he looked like an intellectual, a scholar, a college
professor, perhaps because of the rimless glasses that he wore; yet he
was very much the man of action, the man of constant activity in many
fields at the same time.
“Lens louse,” photographers later dubbed him, as he managed to get
into picture after picture with Amelia. He loved the limelight and as
much publicity for himself as he could manage, yet he would do many
charitable things for people which he would absolutely forbid them to
mention. “The meanest,” some called him; others said, “The kindest.”
Born in 1887 into a family of wealth and position, George Putnam was a
gentleman, a _gentle_ man, yet was capable of an irritability easily
aroused by what he considered stupidity in others. He was capable with
the right provocation of changing from a person of charm and grace into
one of explosive anger and violent fury.
In his lifetime GP wrote ten books in his spare time. He could produce
a book “with his left hand,” while with his right he went about his
daily business of publishing and promoting. His books reflected his
many interests: four on travel, four biographies, and two novels. With
the eye of a close observer he recorded a perceptive understanding of
the land and the people of Central America, the Oregon country, the
Arctic, and Death Valley. His ability to see through the deceptive
surface and into the reality of his own life and the lives of others
produced the biographies of Salomon August Andrée, the gallant Swedish
aeronaut; of Amelia Earhart, his famous wife; of Captain Bob Bartlett,
“the mariner of the north”; and _Wide Margins_, the story of his own
life. Combining his knowledge of people and places, he wrote the novels
_Duration_, about an older man and his son, who are both involved in
World War II, and _Hickory Shirt_, which is laid in the Death Valley of
1850.
Frequently charming, kind, generous--anything but the tough guy he
wanted people to believe he was--George Palmer Putnam would rather be
hanged than have anyone discover he was soft behind the hard shell.
Typically, he was ever quick to respond to distress in others.
Blanche Noyes, a famous woman flier, who is now chief of the Air
Marking Staff, National Aviation Agency, remembers the George Putnam
who didn’t want to be found out. She writes:
The thing that I shall always remember of “G.P.” was my first
public appearance after my husband’s death, when I was mistress of
ceremonies in New York at a large luncheon, at which time I was
to introduce these celebrities without benefit of notes. However,
this time I felt a little shaky and asked “G.P.” to write my
introductions for me, which he did, but swore me to secrecy. It was
quite annoying, after the luncheon, to have two people come up and
thank me for the lovely things I said about them, but each said
that the only thing that spoiled the luncheon was the fact that
they sat next to “G.P.,” the man they disliked intensely. I wanted
to tell them that all the flattering things I had said about them
were “G.P.’s” thoughts and words, not mine, but he had sworn me to
secrecy. Someday I am going to tell them how wrong they were in
their thoughts of this grand person....
Grand indeed. When Mrs. Noyes’ husband Dewey was killed in 1935, AE
had insisted that Blanche come with her and GP from New York to the
West Coast and stay with them as long as she could at their home near
Toluca Lake, California. From time to time on the trip Amelia would
see Blanche crying in the back seat. Husband and wife up front would
whisper; then they would detour off the main highway, sometimes to see
a rodeo, to see a friend whom they thought Blanche might enjoy, or to
spend the night at some interesting historical spot. AE was like that,
and so was GP.
When George was a boy, his father, Bishop, and his two uncles, Irving
and Haven, were the publishing firm of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. In their
time, George Palmer, the founder, and George Haven, his successor,
were the deans of American publishing. Authors on the Putnam list
were famous; they are now required reading in any course in American
literature: Washington Irving, James Russell Lowell, James Fenimore
Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Cullen Bryant, Francis Parkman.
GPP II at the time when his father and uncles were running the firm
had little interest in the classics of literature, either British or
American. He was having a marvelous time growing up.
Like the elder Putnams, GP went to Harvard, but he soon transferred to
the University of California at Berkeley; then, like Francis Parkman
before him in the 1840’s, he went to the wilds of Oregon. The road was
mud, ruts, potholes, and bumps; but up and beyond, as far as his eyes
could see, was the most magnificent scenery he had ever seen. Rolling
hills to the east, the Cascades on the west, California’s valleys to
the south, and rock-rimmed ruggedness all the way to the Columbia River
to the north.
Twenty-three years old, and with three hundred dollars in his pockets,
GP settled in the valley of the Deschutes River at Bend. He was soon
elected mayor of the town. The previous incumbent had died; he had
fallen out of a second-story window of a bawdy house and landed on his
head. GP had needed the job, for he had prevailed upon a young lady in
Connecticut to come out to Oregon and marry him. Dorothy Binney came
northwest, and became his bride in October, 1911.
In the seven years that GP continued to live in Bend, he became the
father of a son, David Binney, and the editor of the local newspaper,
_The Bulletin_. One of the best stories conjured up by George to fill
space in his paper was the tale about Lucy, the tame trout. Lucy had
been kept in a shallow pan, until she spilled out all the water and
somehow learned to live by breathing air. GP would take her to one of
the local bars to perform. One day he forgot to close the door where
Lucy was kept; and having walked halfway across the foot-bridge over
the Deschutes River, GP looked back to see Lucy flapping along after
him. Then, before George could get to the fish to help her across, Lucy
lost her balance, fell into the river, and drowned.
After serving in World War I, GP, his father and brother having died,
now took his place in G. P. Putnam’s Sons. In the beginning his
selections of manuscripts for publication were happy choices. Under the
Putnam imprint were issued, among others, Alexander Woollcott’s first
books, Rockwell Kent’s _Wilderness_, and the novels of Ben Hecht.
One of the cleverest of George Putnam’s literary coups was _Bobbed
Hair_; it was a novel, and it was victorious on all fronts. The book
was a twenty-author production. GP conceived the plot; then, with the
help of ten women authors and nine men writers (Putnam was the tenth),
each to do one chapter, the mongrel fiction was given birth. The novel
was serialized in _Colliers_, published in book form, then made into a
movie. Included in the assembly-line production were Louis Bromfield,
Sophie Kerr, George Agnew Chamberlin, Bernice Brown, John V. A. Weaver,
Alexander Woollcott, George Barr McCutcheon, Carolyn Wells, Rube
Goldberg, Edward Streeter, Kermit Roosevelt, and Frank Craven.
For George Putnam these were fabulous times. Franklin P. Adams, Harold
Ross, Marc Connelly, Heywood Broun, Herbert Bayard Swope, Ben Hecht,
Alexander Woollcott, Maxwell Anderson, Laurence Stallings, Sidney
Howard, Louis Shipman, Burton Rascoe, Christopher Morley: all were
enjoying the first of their many successes. GP was in their midst, and
like cut glass catching and refracting a brilliant light, he shone
among them.
During this period George scored smashing results in publishing books
on exploration, and he was a publisher who practiced what he preached.
In the Putnam stables of authors were Charles Lindbergh, Richard Byrd,
Amelia Earhart, Martin Johnson, William Beebe, Roy Chapman Andrews,
Knud Rasmussen, Lincoln Ellsworth, Bob Bartlett, Rockwell Kent, Robert
Cushman Murphy, Merion Cooper, Larry Gould, William A. Robinson,
Fitzhugh Green, Sir Hubert Wilkins. But GP was not content simply to
publish books on exploration; he had to be an explorer himself.
In 1925 he organized and led an expedition into Greenland for the
American Museum of Natural History. The exploration was also a writing
and publishing success that produced books by Knud Rasmussen, Bob
Bartlett, and David Binney Putnam, GP’s first son. David Binney’s
_David Goes to Greenland_ was a tremendously successful boys’ book. It
was a successor to his equally famous _David Goes Voyaging_, written
at the age of twelve after an expedition to the Galápagos with William
Beebe. For the boy the Arctic Circle was as full of thrills and
adventure as the equator; happily, the son had his father’s talent for
recording new, unusual, and exciting experiences.
In May of 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, alone, and it
was G. P. Putnam’s Sons that published _We_. In June of 1928 Amelia
M. Earhart flew across the Atlantic, as passenger, and it was again
Putnam’s that released _20 Hrs., 40 Min._
George Putnam admired Colonel Lindbergh for his accomplishment but
accused Lindy of having a “mechanical” brain and a “one-track” mind.
Unfortunately, George did not live to read _The Spirit of St. Louis_;
if he had, he would have changed his mind.
The girl from Kansas who looked like Lindbergh, however, became his
wife. “Amelia Earhart,” he wrote later, “knew me better, probably, than
anyone else ever can. With her discernment, why she married the man she
did was often a matter of wonder to me. And to some others.”
8. _Marriage_
Before the wedding of GP and AE in February, 1931, there were warnings
given to both. Why did they want to marry? Why did GP want to become a
hero’s husband? Of all men why did Amelia Earhart choose George Palmer
Putnam?
No one, perhaps, understood heroes better than George Putnam. Himself a
writer, publisher, explorer, and promoter with, as _Time_ said of him,
“the dangerous combination of literary ability, business acumen, [and]
energy,” he was to the young Amelia Earhart the fitting opposite to her
essentially modest and retiring nature. He was, in brief, her kind of
man.
Soon after the _Friendship_ flight AE realized that she needed a man to
protect her, to help her continue as the symbol that she was. GP was
the man to clear the way for her, to find the money, to stand beside
her in the press of circumstance, to support her in every venture.
Although many men could fill such requirements in a husband, Amelia
felt that she could find happiness, if it were possible to find it with
anybody, only with George Putnam.
For GP his first wife, Dorothy Binney, had given him many good years
and two sons. But the Oregon years were in the distant past and by
1928 they had become cool and aloof toward each other. Dorothy Binney
divorced him on a formal charge of “failure to provide,” and moved to
Florida. George continued at Rye. He was never long without a wife.
The marriage of AE and GP was, to employ a metaphor from flight, a
delicate combination of solo and dual. George was forty-two years old;
Amelia, thirty-two.
Before the ceremony at the home of George’s mother in Noank,
Connecticut, on February 8, 1931, AE gave GP a letter that defined an
attitude for the future course of their life together:
Dear GP, there are some things which should be writ. Things we have
talked over before--most of them.
You must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I
shatter thereby chances in work which means so much to me. I feel
the move just now as foolish as anything I could do. I know there
may be compensations, but have no heart to look ahead.
In our life together I shall not hold you to any medieval code
of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you
similarly. If we can be honest I think the difficulties which arise
may best be avoided....
Please let us not interfere with the other’s work or play, nor let
the world see our private joys or disagreements. In this connection
I may have to keep some place where I can go to be by myself
now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the
confinements of even an attractive cage.
I must exact a cruel promise, and that is you will let me go in a
year if we find no happiness together.
I will try to do my best in every way....
The letter was signed simply “AE.” Willing but reluctant, Amelia
Earhart effected the agreement--it would have been too demanding for
most men--and became Mrs. George Palmer Putnam.
She had refused marriage at least twice before, and as late as 1930 she
had written to a friend, “I am still unsold on marriage.... I think I
may not ever be able to see marriage except as a cage until I am unfit
to work or fly or be active--and of course I wouldn’t be desirable
then....”
Amelia’s mother, Amy Otis Earhart, had been opposed to the marriage. At
Greenwich House in New York, where Amelia was occupying the top floor
as a celebrity in residence, AE and Mrs. Earhart discussed Amelia’s
plans. The mother argued in vain; her daughter had made up her mind.
Hilton H. Railey tried to dissuade GP from his plans. For his efforts
Railey was accused of being in love with Amelia himself.
Amelia was often asked her opinion on the marriage-career question.
“Marriage is a _mutual_ responsibility,” she would answer. “And I
cannot see why husbands shouldn’t share in the responsibility of
the home. By that I mean something more detailed--and for as long
as it takes them to get used to the idea, perhaps more arduous,
even uncomfortable to the men--than merely keeping a roof over the
collective head and coal in the furnace.”
As for her career and its effect on her marriage, she wrote: “It
seems to me that the effect of having other interests beyond those
exclusively domestic works well. The more one does and sees and
feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be
one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love and
understanding companionship.”