On another occasion, Amelia argued that the students should have the freedom to discuss and read anything they wanted. These actions set her apart from the other girls. But, as always, whenever Amelia believed in something, she was willing to “walk alone.”
For Christmas of 1917, Amelia and her mother visited Muriel in Toronto, Canada, where Muriel was at school. One day, as Amelia walked down King Street, she saw something that changed her life. She met four young men using crutches. Each of them was missing a leg.
The young men had been hurt in battle. For three years, there had been war. The Great War, as it was called then, lasted four years. (Almost 25 years later, the Great War was renamed World War I, when World War II began.) The Great War destroyed countries, governments, homes, and lives. Nearly 10 million soldiers were killed. More than 15 million people were wounded.
While at school, Amelia had knitted socks for soldiers. Until she met the soldiers in Toronto, however, she didn’t fully understand the horrors of fighting.
Right then and there, Amelia made a decision. With her mother’s permission, she did not return to school. Instead, she stayed in Toronto and became a nurse’s aide.
She worked from seven in the morning until seven at night, with two hours off in the afternoon. At the hospital, Amelia gave medicine, scrubbed floors, prepared meals, gave back rubs, and wrote letters for soldiers.
When Amelia had spare time, she liked to ride a wild horse named Dynamite. One soldier told her that she rode Dynamite the way he flew his plane. Sometimes the ride was smooth and sometimes it was rough. Amelia stayed on the horse.
Something else caused Amelia to think about planes. One afternoon at an air show in Toronto, Amelia and a friend were watching a pilot doing stunts in the air. Perhaps to tease the girls, the pilot headed for them. Amelia’s friend screamed and ran, but Amelia stood still. She heard the sound of the motor. She felt the wind on her face. She was excited. Years later, she wrote, “I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by.”
When the war was over in 1918, Amelia became ill with pneumonia (say, “new-MOAN-ya”). Muriel had moved to Northampton, Massachusetts. Amelia stayed with her sister and spent nearly a year resting and recovering. She bought an old banjo and learned to read music. Like her father, Amelia played by ear. Once she heard a melody, she could then play it. She also signed up for a five-week course in car repair.
In the fall of 1919, she entered Columbia University in New York City. She wanted to be a doctor. She had always liked science and she did well in her classes. For fun, Amelia took a course in French poetry. And for excitement, she used to sit on top of the Columbia library dome. Somehow, Amelia discovered where the key to the roof was kept. Dressed in her hat and long skirt, she would crawl out onto the roof. There she sat on the sloping roof, hugging her knees and staring at the buildings below her.
By the spring of 1920, Amelia decided she really did not want to study medicine. Her parents had moved to Los Angeles, California, and they asked her to live with them. Even though her father was no longer drinking, they weren’t happy. Amelia wanted to help.
The Earharts lived in a large home and rented out some of the rooms. One of the renters was a young chemical engineer by the name of Sam Chapman. Sam and Amelia spent many hours together. Sam loved Amelia. He asked her to marry him, and for years, he waited for her answer. She always said no.
Sam believed that a wife should stay at home and take care of children. But a marriage like that hadn’t made Amelia’s parents happy. Besides, she insisted, women should have the same freedom as men. More than anything, Amelia wanted to be independent. She wanted a career of her own.
Still, a career in flying was the farthest thing from Amelia’s mind. In World War I, a few thousand pilots took part in the bombing and fighting. But in 1920, stunt flying was about the only thing to do with a plane. For whatever reason, Amelia began attending air shows. Perhaps she remembered the little red plane.
One day, Amelia and her father stood on the sidelines and watched. “Dad, please ask that officer how long it takes to fly,” she said.
Mr. Earhart did. He told his daughter it took five to ten hours to learn.
“Please find out how much lessons cost,” Amelia continued.
“The answer to that is a thousand dollars. But why do you want to know?”
Amelia wasn’t really sure. A few days later, one of the pilots took her up in his plane. From her seat behind the pilot, Amelia saw the ocean. She saw the Hollywood Hills. And suddenly, everything became clear to Amelia. There was only one thing to do. As she wrote later in her book, The Fun of It, “I knew I myself had to fly.”
4
Top Speed
Amelia turned over in bed and crackled. With each toss and turn, she crackled some more. The next morning, she looked at herself in the mirror. It was better. Still, she slept in it another night.
It was 1922 and Amelia had just bought a real leather jacket. Now, she looked like a true flyer. But the other pilots’ jackets were worn. Hers was too shiny and new. So, for three nights, Amelia slept in her coat. “There just had to be some wrinkles,” she explained.
Soon after her first plane ride, Amelia signed up for lessons. She expected her parents to pay for them. They didn’t. Mr. and Mrs. Earhart didn’t mind if Amelia wanted to fly. But they didn’t have a thousand dollars to spare.
Amelia didn’t give up. She took a job in the post office. To earn some extra money, she did some photography work. She also found a flyer who would teach her and let her pay when she had the money. Her teacher’s name was Neta Snook and she was one of the first women pilots in the world. Like Amelia, she wore a leather jacket, wrinkled.
When Amelia flew, she also wore a padded leather helmet, goggles, shirt, scarf, tight-fitting pants, and leather boots that laced up to her knees. One reason she dressed this way was because she wanted to look exactly like the other pilots, or aviators, as they were called. (“AY-vee-ay-ters.”) A woman pilot was called an aviatrix (“ay-vee-AY-tricks”). But the main reason she dressed this way was because flying was dirty, dusty, and rough.
In those days, runways weren’t concrete; they were dirt or grass. At every takeoff and landing, there was a whirlwind of dust. Up in the air in open cockpits, aviators felt the snow, sleet, rain, and hail. In cold weather, they smeared grease on their faces to keep them from freezing. Leather coats and helmets protected aviators from the weather and from bumps and scrapes during rough rides. Goggles kept bugs and dirt out of their eyes.
At first, airplanes were known by their British name, “aeroplanes” (“AIR-uh-playns”). They were also called ships. In a way, they sailed in the air just as boats sailed in the sea.
These aeroplanes were very light. On the ground, aviators pushed them around by their tails. Planes didn’t have a metal body. Instead, they were covered with cloth. In the air, top speed was 80 miles per hour. This is not much faster than the speed limit on today’s highways.
Aviators steered their “ships” with their hands on a control stick and with their feet on a rudder bar. They made the aeroplanes go up and down by moving the control stick forward and backward. They turned their planes from left to right by moving the control stick from side to side.
They also turned the plane by pressing on the rudder bar with their feet. This bar was attached to the rudder, a wooden flap on the tail of the plane. In the air, the rudder bar shook and shivered and throbbed. In fact, it vibrated so much that after a few minutes, Amelia’s feet always went to sleep.
She loved every minute of it. “It’s so breathtakingly beautiful up there,” she explained. “I want to fly whenever I can.” Soon, other aviators were calling Amelia a natural. Not only could she fly, but she could also repair a plane’s engine and sew up the rips in the plane’s body.
But in those days, women were not supposed to fly. Plenty of people, including Sam, reminded Amelia that women should be ladies. They should pin their hair neatly i
n a bun, get married, and stay home.
No doubt, Amelia worried about the proper way to act. In the end, however, she made up her own mind. In the summer of 1922, she cut off her long hair. Then she bought a bright yellow secondhand Kinner Canary Aeroplane. She spent all of her savings and all of Muriel’s savings. She even used her mother’s money to buy the plane.
And, she earned the only kind of flying license issued at the time. There were possibly twelve women in the entire world with such a license. Amelia Earhart was one of them.
That fall, Amelia set her first air record by becoming the first woman to fly at 14,000 feet. A few weeks later, she was trying to fly higher, when trouble hit. Blinded by snow and clouds, Amelia had no idea if she was flying right side up, sideways, or upside down. She spun the plane nose down, turning over and over for 12,000 feet. At 3,000 feet, the clouds broke and Amelia could see. When she landed, she was shaking. As she told her friends, good pilots don’t worry too much.
For the next few years, Amelia worked during the week and flew on the weekends. After all, there weren’t any careers for women in flying. She was flying for the sheer “fun of it.” Then, once again, something happened that changed her life.
In 1924, Amelia’s parents divorced. They were no longer happy together. Edwin remained in California. Amy wanted to go East to Boston, where Muriel was in school. Amelia sold her plane and bought a bright yellow roadster, a type of car with a cloth top. In the 1920s, there weren’t any paved highways, just dirt roads. There weren’t many gasoline stations and no fast-food restaurants along the way.
Late in the spring of 1925, Amelia and her mother headed East in Amelia’s car. They set out to cross the entire country, alone. This trip might have stopped some people. It didn’t stop Amelia.
5
The Important Question
Amelia and her mother rolled into Boston. Their car windows were full of stickers from all the places they had visited.
Within a week, Amelia was in the hospital. For years, she had suffered from terrible headaches. Flying had made them worse. In the Boston hospital, a piece of bone was removed from Amelia’s nose. This operation helped her sinuses to drain and made her head feel better. Unfortunately, however, any time Amelia was under stress, she got a headache.
But a little pain never stopped Amelia for long. Soon, she was ready for work. She found a job helping families who were new to the United States. She taught the children English and other useful skills. Since many of them had never ridden in a car, Amelia often drove the children around the block.
People liked Amelia. She was quiet and pleasant. But in 1927, Amelia Earhart was an unusual woman. Though few people at work knew it, Amelia was spending her spare time with planes. She flew them, repaired them, and talked about them with other pilots. Some of her family thought she was odd. Only her mother encouraged her. Years later, Amy wrote, “I realized that if she wanted to be a flyer someone in the family had to be interested.”
Certainly Sam Chapman didn’t understand Amelia. He changed jobs and followed her to Boston. To Sam’s way of thinking, it was time for Amelia to become his wife and stop these foolish ideas of having a career. After all, she was thirty years old. Amelia told her sister, “I know what I want to do and I expect to do it, married or single.”
But more than likely, Amelia had no idea what she wanted to do. One afternoon in 1928, when she was teaching, she received a phone call. “Tell ’em I’m busy,” Amelia said.
“Says it’s important,” came the reply.
When Amelia picked up the phone, a man asked her a question which changed her life.
She agreed to meet with the man and some of his friends that evening. Their talk centered on the important question, “Would you like to fly the Atlantic?” There was only one answer for Amelia. “Yes,” she replied.
In 1928, only seven planes had successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean. No woman had ever made the trip.
Mrs. Amy Guest of England bought a plane and hired a crew. She wanted to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Her family was afraid for her to make the trip. She asked George Palmer Putnam of the American publishing company to find a woman pilot to take her place.
The year before, Putnam’s company had published the pilot Charles Lindbergh’s story, We, about his own flight across the ocean. Putnam was eager to sell another book and make some more money. He found a woman pilot—Amelia Earhart.
Mrs. Guest paid for the flight. She made Amelia captain of the plane, and said that Amelia would make all the decisions during the flight. However, Amelia would not fly the plane since she did not have as much experience as the crew. And she would not get any money. The pilot Wilmer (Bill) Stulz received $20,000 while the mechanic Lou (Slim) Gordon received $5,000.
Amelia agreed to Mrs. Guest’s rules. Amelia knew that this flight would open doors for her later, both in writing and in flying. Besides, Amelia explained, she wanted to do it for the fun of it.
For its time, the plane, named the Friendship, was gigantic. With huge tanks of gas, the 3-engine plane weighed more than 5 tons. In some places, the wings were 26 inches thick, with a total wing span of 72 feet. (The wings were about as long as 5 of today’s midsize cars.) So that it could land on water, the landing wheels were replaced with huge boat-shaped parts called pontoons. And just in case the plane went down, it was painted bright orange, making it easy to spot.
The crew did their work in secret. They didn’t want another woman pilot to hear of their plans and beat them. And if their flight failed, they didn’t want the whole world to know about it.
Not even Amelia’s family knew about the planned flight. In case she died, Amelia wrote a will and left letters for her parents. To her father she wrote, “Hooray for the last grand adventure! I wish I had won, but it was worthwhile anyway.” She wrote her mother, “My life has really been very happy and I don’t mind contemplating its end in the midst of it.”
Finally, after months of work, everything was ready. Amelia carried a toothbrush, a comb, a handkerchief, and a tube of cold cream. She didn’t even bring a change of underwear. She wore her old favorite flying clothes, including her leather jacket. She borrowed a heavy fur-lined jumpsuit.
On the morning of June 4, 1928, Amelia and her crew huddled in the Friendship. The engines roared to full power, but the plane refused to fly. They pitched out 6 of the 5-gallon cans of gasoline, leaving themselves only 2 cans. Again they tried. No luck. Another pilot, Louis Gower, had hoped to go with them. Without a word, he got his bag and jumped off the plane.
For the third time that morning, the engines roared. The plane struggled. Then slowly but surely, it flew. They were off. Headlines splashed across the Boston newspapers: Girl Pilot Dares the Atlantic. The secret was out. The world was watching Amelia.
Their plan was to stop briefly at Trepassey, Newfoundland, for more fuel. When they arrived, the weather was terrible. Fog covered the island. A cold Arctic wind blew in. The Friendship was trapped.
They stayed two weeks. For fun, Amelia and Slim played cards. The pilot got drunk. G.P. Putnam sent a telegram to Amelia: “Suggest you turn in and have your laundering done.” Amelia replied: “Thanks fatherly telegram. No washing necessary. Socks underwear worn out. Shirt lost to Slim at Rummy. Cheerio. AE.”
At last the weather changed. By 6:30 on the morning of June 17, Amelia and her crew were in the plane, ready to leave. The waters were rough. Once again, the plane refused to fly. To make it lighter, they threw out everything they could spare—the movie camera, a thermos of cocoa for Amelia, extra gas, life jackets. Three times they tried. At 11:40 A.M., the plane shook violently and rose from the sea. They were in the air.
The Friendship headed east toward the British Isles. Fog, snowstorms, rainstorms, and thick rolling clouds met them head on. Each time rain hit the engines, they sputtered and coughed. Bill did most of the flying. Amelia never flew. Instead, she remained in the back, kneeling beisde a window and keeping notes on t
heir flight.
At 8 o’clock that evening, the Friendship lost all radio contact. Bill held the plane on course by watching the control panel and by looking at the stars. It was freezing cold. The engines roared in their ears. The black of night surrounded them. They were all alone.
Day dawned and still the Friendship flew. And then an engine stalled. The gas tanks were almost empty. At 8:50 A.M., Bill nosed the plane down to get a better look.
A ship! Where were they?
Bill tried the radio. It didn’t work. Slim wrote a note, which Amelia tied to an orange. Leaning out the cargo door, she tried to bomb the boat with the orange. It plopped in the sea. Should they land beside the ship or should they continue on their course?
The Friendship flew on. Slim bit into a sandwich.
And then he saw something. He pointed it out to Bill. What happened next is best described by Amelia. “I think Sam yelled. I know the sandwich went flying out the window. It was land!”
6
Tomato Juice and a 20-Dollar Bill
It was an unusual welcome. Bill, Slim, and Amelia sat on the plane and waited. No one came. For a straight 20 hours and 40 minutes, they had flown 2,000 miles over the Atlantic Ocean. In all that time, Amelia had eaten 3 oranges and a handful of malted-milk candy balls. None of them had slept much. Now they sat on the plane while it rocked gently in the water. Rain pattered on the metal roof. Amelia yelled and waved at the fishermen. The fishermen waved back and went on with their work.
The silence did not last long. In a few hours, they went ashore and learned that they had landed at Burry Port, Wales. The next morning, they flew on to Southampton, England. Here they met Mrs. Guest, the woman who had made their trip possible. And suddenly, everyone wanted to meet Amelia.
Mona Kerby & Eileen McKeating Page 2