her own way,” Amelia said, “may add immeasurably to the happiness of
those concerned. The individual independence of dollars and cents tends
to keep a healthy balance of power in the kingdom of the home. If one’s
time is worth more at specialized tasks--writing, flying, interior
decorating, what have you--it is good sense to put in one’s hours at
such work rather than cooking, cleaning, and mending. Assistants more
skilled than myself can be employed to substitute in the housewife
role without robbing a marriage of its essence. It is fortunately no
longer a disgrace to be undomestic, and married women should be able to
seek, as unrestrictedly as men, any gainful occupation their talents
and interests make available. Thus--for me--can joyful luxuries like
low-wing monoplanes be had--as adding to the sum total of contentment.”
And George Palmer Putnam seconded his wife’s views. GP and AE had a
joint bank account and every month each would put part of his earnings
toward those regularly recurring bills such as household, doctor,
clothes, clubs, automobiles, and trips.
Occasionally some wag would call GP “Mr. Earhart.” “Usually,” George
observed, “it was some nitwit who didn’t care whether or not he lived.”
But on one occasion GP called himself exactly that.
The Putnams went out to Hollywood to join other celebrities in making
a film for charity. In the group were Douglas Fairbanks and Mary
Pickford, “America’s Sweethearts,” whom GP and AE had never met. “I,”
said Douglas Fairbanks, introducing himself to Miss Earhart, “am Mister
Pickford.”
“And I,” said GP, picking up the thread and introducing himself to Mary
Pickford, “am Mister Earhart.”
In 1931 GP gave up publishing and went to work for Paramount Pictures
as head of the editorial board. He had sold his interest in G. P.
Putnam’s Sons to a cousin, Palmer C. Putnam.
GP stayed four years at Paramount. Among his successes was _Wings_,
which promoted Clara Bow, Dick Arlen, and Buddy Rogers to stardom.
Playing a bit part in the film was a tall, gangling youth whose name
was Gary Cooper.
There were many delightful days in the seven years of their marriage
for AE and GP. George spent most of his time working for Paramount in
New York. Amelia flew from her cage in the autogiro and advertised
Beech-Nut. The flying advertisement had been one of GP’s money-raising
ideas. He had many of them.
One, however, Amelia could not accept. It was the “Amelia Earhart Hat.”
AE, George, and Hilton Railey were at the Biltmore in New York. GP
crossed the room and from behind his back proudly produced a woman’s
hat. It was made of russet suède and on the silk band around it was
reproduced Amelia’s signature.
Amelia looked at it and turned it in her hands, pensively. Her smile of
amusement narrowed to disappointment. “Of course, GP,” she said firmly,
“this won’t do at all. You’ll have to cancel it.”
“But I can’t!” George cried out. “I’ve already signed the contract.
They’re already made up.”
“Then tell the manufacturer to _unmake_ them. Tell him at once--right
now!” She pointed to a telephone on a small table. “Phone him,” she
commanded.
Angrily glaring at Railey, GP flailed his arms and stomped about the
room. Amelia waited for the fury to subside.
“Since I can’t very well sue the manufacturer, and you _had_ my power
of attorney, then I shall most certainly sue you--unless!” She was
unyielding; she wanted no part in the scheme.
The matter was settled, and no “Amelia Earhart Hats” were put on the
market. Railey, bringing all his powers of persuasion to bear, had
talked the manufacturer into tearing up the contract.
But there were other, more acceptable, ideas from George Putnam.
Amelia became a woman’s fashion designer for a time, and she modeled
her own original creations--the lines simple, classical, functional.
She devised buttons, buckles, and other accessories; they were adapted
from such airplane parts as a hexagonal nut, a wing light, taillight,
parachute buckles, wing bolts, cotter pins, and ball bearings.
She endorsed the Franklin Motor Car; its engine was air cooled like
that of her airplane. And there was Earhart luggage, light, practical,
and designed for air travel.
Because of his many and varied ideas and activities, AE had a pet name
for George--“Simpkin.” The name came from a book Amelia remembered from
childhood, which told the story of the Tailor of Gloucester who lived
with his cat Simpkin. Simpkin believed in keeping mice in reserve by
secreting them under cups; whenever he was bored, he always had a mouse
to liven the day. Amelia discovered early in her marriage that she was
just another one of the many enterprises that her husband managed. One
mouse at a time was not enough for GP; thus his nickname, “Simpkin.”
The marriage of AE and GP produced no children. Nevertheless, it was
a happy one for the most part, although a New York columnist had
reported in 1933 that AE and GP were on the verge of breaking up. Helen
Hutson Weber, who was a house guest in the Rye home, where she was
recuperating from a serious illness, chuckled when she read the item.
For as she did, AE and GP were out on the patio cavorting like two
playful children: George was driving Amelia around in a wheelbarrow,
then dumping her on the ground. AE squealed in delight.
Neither George nor Amelia had to meet the pledge of two years before
and go their separate ways if they found no happiness together.
9. _Solo Across the Atlantic_
Five years to the day after Lindbergh’s famous flight in _The Spirit of
St. Louis_, Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Like
Lindbergh, Amelia had competitors who had tried the solo flight before
her; but, like his, the luck of “Lady Lindy” held out.
Ruth Nichols, AE’s friendly neighbor and fellow flier from Rye, was on
the way for the transatlantic hop in June, 1931, but as she came in for
a landing in Saint John’s, New Brunswick, her overloaded plane cracked
up, nearly killing her. Although she was still encased in a body cast
from the crash, Ruth Nichols was ready in 1932 to try again. But, just
as she was ready to go, she heard that Amelia had made it.
The two women fliers were the friendliest of rivals, and they were
always neck and neck to be the first woman-to-do in aviation. In 1930,
for example, AE had set the speed record at 181.157 mph; in 1931, Miss
Nichols set a new one at 210.685 mph. They had raced together in the
first Powder Puff Derby, until Ruth crashed in Columbus. Each wanted to
be the first woman to fly around the world: AE failed; Ruth succeeded.
For Amelia the flight alone across the Atlantic came four years after
the _Friendship_ venture. She had gained experience in all kinds of
flying, in all kinds of weather. She had flown coast to coast across
the United States four times: twice in Lady Heath’s Avian and twice
in the autogiro. With her Vega she had made numerous flights; one of
them the Women’s Air Derby in which she placed third in the race from
California to Ohio.
AE purchased another Vega; although secondhand, it was in excellent
flying condition, and as added insurance she had a new Wright Whirlwind
engine installed. After nine crack-ups and emergency landings, most of
them because of engine failure, she felt that the new motor was a wise
investment.
One morning in the winter of 1931, the Putnams sat at breakfast in
their Rye home. Amelia lowered the morning paper and looked out the
dining-room window. The light was clear, hard, and bright. The oak
trees out beyond the patio were stark and bare. The air seemed crisp
and clean, as if snow might begin to swirl at any moment.
Amelia brushed her stiff locks with a quick sweep of the hand and
turned to her husband. “Would you _mind_,” she asked slowly, “if I flew
the Atlantic?”
GP was elated with the idea, finally expressed, for he knew the project
had been growing within her, like a child, for a long time. He could
see, as he looked into his wife’s steady gray-blue eyes, that she had
arrived at that point of self-confidence where only agreement with her
was possible.
“Of course I don’t mind,” he said quickly. “I think it’s an excellent
idea.”
Plans began to take definite shape. To avoid any possibility of advance
notoriety, Amelia chartered her Vega to an old friend, Bernt Balchen,
the famous Arctic explorer and an intrepid flier. He had agreed to act
as her technical adviser. It was well known that Balchen and Lincoln
Ellsworth were planning an Antarctic expedition; everyone could now
infer that AE’s plane was going to be used by the explorers.
As with the earlier _Friendship_ flight, when everybody thought the
Fokker seaplane was being made ready for Byrd, thus giving Stultz and
Gordon the necessary freedom for test-hopping the aircraft, so now
Amelia had hour after hour and day after day for checking out the
new Whirlwind motor, for blind flying entirely by instruments, for
preparing for the variable weather over the North Atlantic.
On a Sunday in April of 1932 the Putnams had asked Bernt Balchen to
drive over to Rye for lunch. After a leisurely meal, AE led the way
down over the stone steps outside to her garden. She walked to the
crocuses, blooming in bright dabs of yellow, purple, and white, and
felt their grasslike leaves. Overhead she noted the elms and oaks
beginning to leaf. Bernt and GP had stopped at the croquet rack. Amelia
joined them. They started to play.
At the middle wicket on the turn for home AE dropped the long handle of
her mallet and walked toward the men. “Bernt,” she said suddenly, “I
wanted to tell you....” Her voice trailed inconclusively.
Bernt and George laid down their mallets. They followed Amelia to a
nearby rock and sat down. AE looked down at Bernt. “I want to fly the
Atlantic, now, by myself,” she said to him. “Am I ready to do it?” she
asked. “Is the ship ready? Will you help me?”
Balchen, a Norwegian of few words, fixed his clear blue eyes on a wire
hoop of the croquet game. His voice still had the trace of a Norseman’s
accent. “Yes,” he said slowly. “You can do it. The ship, when we are
through with it, will be O.K. And, yes, I will help.”
Her questions answered, Amelia returned to the game with renewed vigor
and clouted her opponents’ croquet balls into the bushes.
Toward dusk Bernt returned home. AE, suddenly hungry, went into the
kitchen. She started to make cocoa. Lucy Challiss, her cousin from
Atchison, who had been staying at the house for a few days, came in
with George.
“Can you keep a secret?” Amelia said, grinning, to her cousin.
“Of course,” Lucy answered.
AE went to the table and started slicing a loaf of bread. She reached
out a forefinger, picked up a bread crumb, and placed it on the tip of
her tongue. “I’m going to fly the Atlantic again,” she said. “Alone.”
Incredulous, Lucy stared at Amelia. The cocoa on the stove came to
a quick boil, bubbled, and spilled over the pan onto the floor. GP
sprang for a mop, Lucy for a dishcloth. Laughing, AE reached into the
cupboard for more cocoa.
It was the first time that Amelia had taken into her confidence someone
not directly connected with her flight. Lucy Challiss did not betray
her trust.
Unlike the first flight across the Atlantic in the _Friendship_ plane,
which had three engines, pontoons, and three crewmen, the Vega with its
one engine and fixed wheels would have to go the whole distance with
one pilot. For the next month, therefore, AE sharpened her reactions
in the conditions demanded in blind flying. For hours at a time she
practiced flying by her instruments alone: setting a course to some
distant city, then by following the dial of the gyrocompass and keeping
the Vega straight and level by flying the needle and ball of the turn
and bank indicator, she would compute the time and distance from the
chronometer, and finally look out from the cockpit to see if she had
made her estimated time of arrival at her destination. She would then
turn around and go through the same procedure all the way back to New
Jersey.
If possible, she wanted to be ready for the Atlantic take-off on the
same day as Lindbergh, five years earlier, had left New York. She had
never forgotten the time in Boston when she read about Lindy’s historic
flight and how she had hoped even then before the _Friendship_ venture
that she might, somehow, be the first woman to attempt the same flight.
While she waited at Rye or Teterboro, she often phoned the office of
Doc Kimball at the Weather Bureau office in New York and asked for a
prognosis. The weather conditions that had been forecast for the North
Atlantic were not too encouraging, but she had decided that if there
was the slightest chance to be on her way she would take it.
On the morning of Friday, May 20, AE climbed into her car and started
for New Jersey. She was on her way to see Bernt Balchen at Teterboro
airport. Ground fog, heavy and wet, bubbled on the windshield of the
car; she turned on the wipers. It did not seem to her now that she
would get off this gray day. When she turned onto the George Washington
Bridge she could barely make out the tops of the towers. The Hudson
River below was clouded in mist.
Just before noon at the airport she was summoned to the telephone by
Eddie Gorski, her mechanic. It was GP, calling from the office of Doc
Kimball at the Weather Bureau. “It looks like the break we’ve been
waiting for,” he said. “Doc Kimball says this afternoon is fine to get
to Newfoundland--Saint John’s, anyway.”
Amelia asked for particulars about the weather. A “low,” she learned,
which had threatened the first leg of the flight, had dissipated to the
southeast; and a “high,” which promised good weather, was moving in
beyond Newfoundland.
“O.K.!” she said. “We’ll start.”
In ten minutes she made final arrangements with Bernt Balchen and Eddie
Gorski. They had agreed to fly with her as far as Newfoundland, to make
sure everything was all right before the Atlantic take-off. Amelia
looked at her watch. There was no time for lunch.
Always a fast driver, AE now drove quickly back to Westchester.
Take-off had been set for 3:00 P.M. She had to pick up her clothes and
maps, and then meet GP at the New York end of the George Washington
Bridge. Two o’clock, he had said. She swung into the driveway. She had
driven the last twenty-five miles in fifteen minutes.
She rushed upstairs to her room. In five minutes she had changed into
jodhpurs, plaid sports shirt, and windbreaker. She tied a bright blue
scarf about her neck, then stuffed toilet articles into a small bag.
She stopped at the window that looked out on her garden. The dogwood
trees were in full flower, white and pink in the sun. She turned,
picked up her leather flying suit and the folder of maps, and fled out
of the room and down the stairs.
At 2:55 P.M. AE and GP reached Teterboro. Bernt and Eddie were waiting
by the plane. Eddie and Amelia climbed through the door into the waist.
Bernt crawled up on the wing and descended through the hatch into the
cockpit. Balchen had convinced AE that he should fly the first leg so
that she could conserve her strength for the long solo.
The red high-wing monoplane with gold stripes along the fuselage lifted
off the runway at 3:15 P.M. Amelia looked out the small window in the
door. On the ground below, standing on the edge of the pavement, was
George Putnam, waving. She waved back. For a change, a man would wait,
anxiously, for his woman to come home.
The Vega cruised over the coast of New England to Cape Cod. Behind the
big fuel tank in the cabin Amelia was sleeping, stretched out on the
floor of the fuselage, her leather flying suit under her head. Three
hours and thirty minutes later Bernt Balchen brought the plane into
Saint John, New Brunswick.
Early the next morning they flew to Harbor Grace, Newfoundland. Amelia
found detailed weather reports from GP waiting for her when she
arrived. While Bernt and Eddie made a final check of the aircraft,
she pored over the predictions. The weather outlook was not too good
but held the promise of something better. She decided to leave that
evening. That settled, she found a cot, lay down, and took a nap.
At dinnertime she was awakened. There were more telegrams from GP. Her
decision to leave that night, she learned, had been a good one. The
weather seemed to be clearing on her route. Amelia put on her heavy
flying suit, picked up her maps, and went out to the field.
Bernt had already warmed up the engine. Awkward in her clumsy gear,
Amelia plodded out to the plane. She reached a hand out to Bernt, then
to Eddie. They helped her up the side of the fuselage onto the wing.
She let herself down through the hatchway into the cockpit. She grinned
through the side window and waved.
“Okeh,” said Bernt with characteristic brevity. “So long. Good luck.”
Amelia took command of the plane. She looked over the instrument panel,
her “dashboard,” and checked the engine gauges. Four new instruments
had been installed in the plane to help her find her way: a drift
indicator, an aperiodic and a magnetic compass, and a directional
gyro. She taxied to the end of the only runway. The wind was from the
northeast, nearly perfect for take-off.
At 7:13 P.M. the Vega broke from the ground and rose into the air. It
was May 20, 1932. Amelia headed out to sea, to fly the Atlantic Ocean
for “the fun of it.” A few hours later it would be anything but fun.
Amelia eased back on the stick and climbed to 12,000 feet. She
leveled off. She looked out the narrow windshield to the right. The
sun, beginning to set in the west, sprayed out in a multicolored fan
of gold, yellow, orange, and red. This was beauty, and adventure:
the excitement and romance of flight. She looked quickly across the
instruments, then out the other side of the windshield. The moon, like
a disc of butter in whipped potatoes, sat on the top of a bank of
clouds.
The nose of the plane felt a little heavy against the stick. She
reached down and rolled in a little trim. She then held the wings
straight and level, and trimmed the rudder against the torque of the
propeller. The turn-and-bank indicator responded promptly: needle and
ball aligned in the center of the instrument. The steady rhythm of the
motor was like another heart; and the wings and fuselage were like
extensions of her arms and body and legs. She was one with her plane.
10. _Other Atlantics_
“If you follow the inner desire of your heart,” she had said in a
magazine article, “the incidentals will take care of themselves.” For
four long years she had waited to justify herself to herself. She
wanted to prove that she deserved at least a small fraction of all
the nice things people had been saying about her as a flier. She had
the credit, to spilling and overflowing, for already having flown
this ocean; she now wanted to make the credit good by making a large
deposit, by flying the Atlantic alone.
“Illogical?” She tried to explain with reasons from her heart.
“Perhaps. Most of the things we want are illogical!”
Under the left wing she watched a ship knifing slowly through the water
toward Newfoundland. She reached for the light toggle and blinked her
navigation lights. There was no answer from the ship.
Amelia swallowed. Her mouth was dry. She reached down for a can of
tomato juice, punched a hole through the top with a screw driver, and
inserted a straw. She sipped slowly, letting the juice moisten her
tongue and the inside of her mouth, then she swallowed a mouthful.
“Adventure,” she had always felt, “is worth while in itself.” Even when
she was a little girl in Kansas, playing with her sister Muriel and her
cousin Lucy Challiss, she had often gone to play “bogey” in the barn
in back of the house in Atchison. The three girls would sit in the old
buggy. Amelia would pick up the mildewed whip and crack it over the
heads of the imaginary horses. They would ride wildly over a cobbled
road, the buggy swaying. The horses galloped; the girls were in a hurry
to get to Vienna. A knight in shining armor came riding out of the
woods--toward them.
“Who’s that?” Lucy shrieked.
“Dispatches, Sir Knight!” Amelia shouted at the man on horseback; she
was not afraid. “For the Congress of Vienna of Treves, in favor of the
Holy Grail.” Undaunted, she continued, “Crusade about to start--unless
we get through, the Pagan may prevail!”
The knight put up his lance and let them pass.
“Women can do most of the things men can do,” she had written. “In
anything that requires intelligence, coordination, spirit, coolness,
and will power (and not too heavy muscular strength) women can meet men
on their own ground.”
She grinned as she remembered. She had once climbed upon a delivery
horse, had explored the caves in the cliffs overlooking the Missouri
River, had invented a trap and caught a chicken, had jumped over a
fence that no boy her own age had dared to try, had even popped bottles
off a fence with a rifle. If it was new and if it was different, she
couldn’t wait to try it, especially if some boy dared her.
She had twenty-eight different jobs in her life and she hoped to have
two hundred and twenty-eight more.
The restless urge. Better than any college education was it to
experiment, to meet new people, to find out what made them tick.
Adapt, please, anger, study: these were better than any classroom.
The unexpected by adventure became the inevitable. Even the small
things, if they were an invitation to hop out of the rut, meant just as
much--as flying the Atlantic.
She stamped her feet on the floor of the cockpit. Then quickly she
lifted herself from the seat and tried for a more comfortable sitting
position. The motor purred steadily. The phosphorescence of the numbers
and dials of the instruments was the only light. Outside it was night.
The moon shone over plane and sea.
There had been many “Atlantics” before--things she had wanted very
much to do, against the opposition of tradition, neighborhood opinion,
and so-called “common sense.” There had been the time she left Ogontz
School before graduation to become a nurse in Toronto. Learning to fly
in California had ostracized her among the more conventionally minded
girls. By driving a truck to deliver sand and gravel, to earn money to
fly and buy her own plane, she had become a simple nobody. Such things
were simply not done, not by a girl.
“The girl in brown who walks alone.” Now she was the girl in brown
leather flying suit and helmet, flying alone across the Atlantic Ocean.
She looked at the smooth and worn leather of the arm of her suit, and
grinned as she remembered her first flying jacket, how she had slept in
it so it would have a used look. At first she had been shy about flying.
11. _Flying in California_
California was a wonderful place for flying. In the summer of that
year--it was 1920 and she was an exuberant twenty-two--Amelia had
dragged her reluctant father from his Sunday newspapers and persuaded
him to take her to an air meet at Daugherty Field, out on the far
stretches of Long Beach. By the time they arrived, Mr. Earhart was hot
and uncomfortable. He ran a long finger under his wilted collar, and
mopped the sweat and dust from his face. He could not understand his
daughter Millie’s enthusiasm for airplanes. After you had seen one, he
affirmed, you had seen them all.
Amelia was fascinated at the sight of the old Jennys and Canucks. They
were the same kind of planes she had seen at Armor Heights in Toronto.
A man in uniform with an “official” badge pinned to his coat passed in
front of her. She took her father by the arm. “Dad,” she asked, “please
ask that man how long it takes to learn how to fly.”
Mr. Earhart went to talk to the official; then he returned to his
daughter. “He says it’s different with different people.” Then he
added, “The average time is between five and ten hours.”
Amelia reflected on the report. “Please ask him how much lessons cost.”
Unwillingly Mr. Earhart went to the official again. When he came back
he said, “The answer to that question is one thousand dollars.”
All the way home Amelia thought about the $1,000. It was more money
than she had ever had, and she wondered where she could get such a
large sum. Her father did not seem to share her interest, and she did
not know how her mother would react to the idea of her taking flying
lessons. She would begin her campaign by first asking her father if she
could take just one ride in a plane.
She finally coaxed him into taking her out to Rogers Airport. They ate
a hurried breakfast then took the streetcar to the outskirts of town,
to an open space at Fairfax and Wilshire boulevards which was the
airfield.