East to the Dawn

by Susan Butler

  Her choice of clothes for her wedding was amazingly similar to that of her mother, thirty-six years before: both wore brown traveling suits, brown shoes, and stockings. It was also remarkably similar to what she wore every day. Following the ceremony, Amelia, as her mother had a generation before, donned a brown hat and a brown fur coat.

  The New York Times had an article on the event, probably supplied by George himself—it has his touch.

  The ceremony itself, performed by Probate Judge Arthur Anderson of Groton, Ct, [a family friend] consumed but five minutes. The only witnesses were Mrs. Frances Putnam, Mr. Putnam’s mother; Charles Faulkner, his uncle; Robert Anderson, the judge’s son, and twin black cats.

  As Mr. Putnam slipped a plain platinum ring on Miss Earhart’s finger the cats, coal black and playful, rubbed arched backs against his ankles.

  Just before the ceremony, Amelia’s fear of finding herself tied down by marriage resurfaced. She borrowed some of Mrs. Putnam’s stationery, slipped off by herself, and put her thoughts down for George. The resultant letter doesn’t seem to have bothered him:

  Dear GP;

  There are some things which should be writ before we are married. 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 be best 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 myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all 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....

  AE

  George hid the letter away, only revealing its existence after she died, then writing that it was “a sad little letter, brutal in its frankness, but beautiful in its honesty. At length I have decided it has a place, contributing to these pages something of the structure of a character and a gallant inward spirit.”

  He may have hoped, that morning of the marriage, that she didn’t mean what she wrote—that it was an excess of apprehension and plain fear that drove her to make such a dramatic statement. He may well have thought that, for his later analysis—that it was a sad little letter—is so far off the mark: there is nothing sad about demanding sexual freedom. It was in fact a breathtakingly independent statement, couched in diplomatically acceptable terms, which George accepted.

  Amelia wanted to make sure that George didn’t take her to be an ordinary bride. The letter is not so much a declaration of the rights of a married woman, as a declaration that although married she would continue to behave as if single—when it pleased her. It is hard to believe that any bride or groom, when handed such a letter the day of the ceremony, would go through with the ceremony. But George did. Her career first, over him, she wrote: marriage may “shatter” chances in work “that mean so much to me,” so he better watch out. Sexual freedom was obligatory—a fascinating and radical notion: she demanded the right to be unfaithful. He acceded, of course, at what cost to himself one can only guess. For the rest, she demanded that each had their own spheres of work and play and if everything became too much, she might need a private bolt hole.

  It is an extraordinary statement. It rips her mask off and shows her as a much stronger, much more fearless, much more self-assured person than she let on. It shows the steely hand in the velvet glove, the raw power that lay at the heart of her soul; it shows that her emotional courage was the equal of her physical courage. It becomes apparent at this point that she in fact really didn’t know the meaning of fear. Of failure, yes, but not of fear.

  Some of her biographers maintain that Amelia’s and George’s was not a love match from the start, that she had simply married her manager, as Gore Vidal phrased it. But as her wedding statement makes clear, nothing could have been further from Amelia’s mind than the thought that she was entering into a marriage of convenience—a “smart” marriage. Far from assuming that one of the pluses to matrimony would be having George’s constant professional help, she was afraid that his constant presence (read: demands) would “shatter” her career. And if she wasn’t marrying him for practical reasons, then she was marrying him for love. Certainly, to agree to such terms, George had to be truly mesmerized. He was a man who loved women, who loved the marital state—he had married at a young age, divorced and remarried, was single long enough to attract Amelia, remarried eighteen months after she disappeared, and remained happily married till he died, but for Amelia he abdicated the ordinary male role and put up with the conditions she imposed.

  A companion gesture to Amelia’s written declaration of rights—a small gesture but equally significant—was her refusal to wear her wedding ring. She never wore the platinum band that George put on her finger at their wedding.

  And yet with it all—her unusual strength of character, her deeply feminist beliefs—she still managed to be the likable, supportive, gutsy, intelligent person that everyone wanted as their friend. Carl Allen would describe her admiringly as “a curious mixture of boyish naivete and feminine guile.” As their lives meshed, George became the fall guy of the team. He was the one who had to keep her on schedule, who fended people off to give her space and a little peace and quiet, who was delegated to say no. That was one reason he was nowhere near as well liked as she, but there were plenty of others. Where she was reserved, he was bold; where she was thoughtful, he was careless; photographers noticed that he always tried to put himself into the pictures they took; reporters noted that he was always trying to manage the angle of their stories and then get rid of them, while Amelia, left to her own devices, would like as not invite them to share a meal with her. George loved celebrities above ordinary people; her friends disliked him on that score. He was forever (brusquely) rushing her off from one event to another. The result was that whenever anything went wrong, he was assigned blame. What was true was that the irrepressible George couldn’t seem to leave her alone: he was always getting involved in her affairs. But she was the one in control.

  She did enjoy living in a real house, and as she began thinking of her family’s possessions, she pestered her mother to send her the family heirlooms. “I should like the old quilts etc. and the things which were Grandma‘s,” she wrote Amy shortly after the marriage, directing her mother to send her grandmother’s old music books. (A bit later she berated her mother for sending only two of Amelia Otis’s music books when “I remember three.”) She also asked for and received the family silver and linen, some family books, a walnut table that had been in the Otis family, and various other objects. “The candlesticks were sweet. I’ve had ’em on the table ever since they came,” she wrote, thanking Amy. And she softened to the extent of buying herself two canaries, something she had wanted “for ever so long.”

  One has the impression that if ever she thought of having a baby, it was now, right after her marriage. She was never again quite so home-minded as when she first moved into George’s house in Rye.

  Within a year she was working on a second book. She wrote about her youth, giving the reader a cheery look at the uneventful childhood of an adventurous tomboy, and about her early flying adventures. She included a bit of history about famous women fliers and tried to gather information (not too successfully) on women who managed to make a living out of flying. Certainly it was because of George that her thoughts were so directed.

  He delighted in playing the injured husband role.

  When Ninety-Nines’ business seemed to consume too much of Amelia’s time, George
announced that he was forming the 49.5 Club, composed “of the lesser halves of the 99 Club.” When Frances Marsalis and Helen Richey broke the women’s world endurance record in 1933, George sent them a teasing telegram.

  CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU BOTH. NOW THAT YOU HAVE DEMONSTRATED HOW LONG WOMEN CAN STAY UP IN THE AIR, WILL YOU ENTER ENDURANCE CONTEST TO BE UNDERWRITTEN BY 49.5 CLUB? OUR ORGANIZATION PROPOSES OFFERING APPROPRIATE TROPHY FORWOMEN FLYERWHO ESTABLISHES 1934 ENDURANCE RECORD OF LONGEST CONSECUTIVE SOJOURN IN HER OWN HOME.

  Many people—including many ofAmelia’s pilot friends—didn’t like George Putnam. They didn’t think he was “good enough” for her. They didn’t like the way he always puffed her up—sometimes at the expense of others. They didn’t like his brusque manner and his rather obvious lack of interest in other women pilots—he literally only had eyes for Amelia. He even gradually centered his business life on her, to the point that he lost interest in his own projects—while he was married to her, his own authoring came to a stunning halt. He was a prolific writer and the author of twelve books in his lifetime, but five were published before he and Amelia were married, and seven afterward. He published nothing from 1931 until she disappeared.

  He was an unusual combination: a huckster, but one with impeccable taste. What he was pushing was his favorite person in the world. He arranged Amelia’s lectures, published her books, promoted her interests, and last but far from least, cultivated important people. Nor was he self-effacing; a bit of a ham, he craved center stage for himself as well as for her. He had always lived in a world of celebrities and excitement, and ordinary people leading pedestrian lives simply bored him. In a word, he was spoiled.

  There were those who thought Amelia put up with him merely because she needed him to showcase her. But in fact observers of their home life indicate that it was much more than a marriage of convenience. They had fun together. They enjoyed the same things. It would be said in later years that she had grown tired of George and the busy schedule he set. And yet no one, certainly none of her Ninety-Nine friends, none of the students and faculty at Purdue, where she later spent so much time, would have thought of her that way. For she had an aptitude for handling people and handling her husband, and the way she handled the pressure he put upon her was just an indication of that. Quite obviously, like any relationship, theirs had its moments of strain. But Amelia was sufficiently independent to balance her personality and wishes against his wishes, as he appreciated: “No client of any counselor ever received counsel more reasonably—or on occasion, refused with more firmness to act on it. For, endowed with a will of her own, no phase of her life ever modified it—least of all marriage.”

  George was always nearby, always joshing, always part of the action. He was always intimately concerned with every detail of her flights and usually was the last person to say good-bye to her and the first to greet her when she landed. Moments before takeoff in Oakland for Honolulu, with the Electra ready to go at the end of the runway, Paul Mantz had to throttle down the powerful engines so that George could climb up on the wing “for a final farewell with his wife,” and even after the farewell George and William Miller, of the Bureau of Air Commerce, in Miller’s car, chased after the plane as it roared down the field. After the accident, the first thing she did was call him. And yet he learned to share her with others.

  After the wedding, Amelia was back at work the following Monday. To be fair, she had announced immediately that Monday would find them both back at their desks. They were.

  14

  The Lindbergh Trail

  • • • • Ruth Nichols had been news for most of 1931; that was the year she became the top American aviatrix. In March she flew her Vega to 28,140 feet, taking the altitude record away from Elinor Smith. In April she flew it 210.74 miles per hour, taking the speed record away from Amelia—25 miles an hour faster.

  In the spring of that year she announced that she was “going to follow the Lindbergh trail” and be the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic to Paris. From then on Ruth was definitely front-page news.

  Ruth’s aeronautical adviser was Clarence Chamberlin, the pilot who flew Levine’s Bellanca to Germany in 1927 right after Lindbergh. Chamberlin put a new, powerful 600-horsepower Wasp engine in Ruth’s Vega and, to save weight, replaced the landing gear with a gear that was ultralight but had a safety factor of only three to one. Clarence’s flight plan called for Ruth to fly to Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, the favorite jumping-off spot for transatlantic flyers, the closest point to Europe, and take off from there.

  From the day in April when the story hit the papers, Ruth was dogged by reporters and overwhelmed with fan mail, to such an extent that she hid away for several days to adjust. She gave optimistic, detailed interviews, telling one reporter that she believed her chances were “98 percent” in favor of success, and that “at Newfoundland I will await definite word of good weather from Dr. Kimball.” She decided it would be a good idea to have Hilton Railey at her side to help her cope in Europe.

  Hilton sailed for France. Ruth took off on the afternoon of June 22 for Harbor Grace, with a light load of gasoline, planning to make one stop along the way. After flying four hours, she found herself over the St. John’s airport in New Brunswick as scheduled. She circled the small, rock-enclosed field, studying it none too happily, only too aware of her delicate landing gear and the tight landing pattern the field demanded. She had no choice but to land—it was getting dark, and she didn’t have enough fuel to go further. She made her approach and, worried about her landing gear, touched the wheels down too gently and too late—and couldn’t stop before hitting the cliffs at the end of the field. She wrecked the plane and broke five vertebrae in her back.

  She was tough. Her plane was repaired, her back mended in a cast, and as fall approached, she was flying again. She and her orthopedist worked out the optimum posture angle for her cockpit seat, and she hoped to make another attempt before fall storms began. But by the time she and the plane were ready, the weather was getting dicey, so instead of flying the Atlantic, she decided to rack up the women’s long-distance record—the only one she was missing. She won that handily, flying the 1,950 miles from Oakland, California, to Louisville, Kentucky, her broken back encased in a steel corset. When spring came, she and Clarence Chamberlin were ready for another transatlantic attempt; by mid-May it appeared that she would take off any day.

  Elinor Smith planned to beat her out. Three years before, as a photogenic seventeen-year-old brunette, she had hit the headlines in New York when she flew, on a dare, under each of the East River bridges. It had been easy, she said at the time, but there was a navy destroyer right in her path as she flew under the Brooklyn Bridge, and she had to make a quick vertical bank to get through. Actually, pilots flew under the East River bridges all the time, and the George Washington Bridge as well. But they didn’t do it dodging ships; they waited for clear space. And they didn’t have newsreel cameras photographing it. The Department of Commerce, definitely not impressed, grounded Elinor for fifteen days for the escapade.

  Now she was twenty, seasoned, with a commercial license under her belt; she announced on the eighteenth of April in an NBC radio interview with Grantland Rice that she was going to fly from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Dublin, Ireland, sometime in early May in her Wasp-powered Vega. She had been preparing for a transatlantic flight since the previous August. In fact, she too was on the Lindbergh trail—her flight plan, filed with the Department of Commerce, was to fly to Newfoundland, Ireland, and France—but by announcing for Ireland she took some of the pressure off herself.

  Laura Ingalls, another expert pilot, was also in the running. She was an aerial acrobat—so fearless, she had casually set a record of 714 consecutive barrel rolls over St. Louis and 980 loops over Muskogee, Oklahoma, explaining, “the chamber of commerce paid me a dollar a loop, expecting me to make maybe fifty or sixty, so I just kept looping until I ran out of gas.” Her backer, the Atlantic Exhibition Company,
had chosen Laura as the most likely candidate to successfully fly their Lockheed Air Express from New York to Paris to win the title “Lady Lindbergh.” She too spent the winter of 1931-32 getting ready.

  Amelia, serenely leading her life in Rye, enjoying her luxurious home and married life, was off on a different tack. She spent 1931 flying Harold Pitcairn’s autogiro.

  Harold Pitcairn knew that if he could seriously interest Amelia, future sales would be assured, so in early December, just weeks after the first production models rolled out of his plant, he arranged for her to come out to Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, and take a ride with Jim Ray, his chief test pilot. On December 19 she soloed, stating that she found the craft easier to handle than she expected.

  She and Pitcairn and George, getting along so well, decided that Amelia would go for an altitude record in the autogiro, a challenge for Amelia and great publicity for the PCA-2. On a spring day in April, while her confreres were concentrating on emulating Lindbergh, Amelia was back at Willow Grove, having accepted Harold Pitcairn’s invitation to establish a “ceiling” for the new windmill plane. Not a “stunt altitude flight,” she hastened to say, because such things were unpopular, but that is exactly what it was. Luke Christopher, there as official observer for the NAA, installed a sealed barograph, and there was an oxygen tank, but otherwise it was a standard PCA-2. Shortly after noon she took the autogiro aloft and in an hour and a half nursed it up to 18,500 feet, but at that altitude trouble developed in the fuel line, and she came down. She had a light lunch and a nap while one of the Pitcairn test pilots worked over the engine, then decided to make another attempt. Loaded with forty-two gallons of gasoline, she took the autogiro aloft and held it ascending until it wouldn’t go any further—at which point her altimeter registered 19,500 feet. The actual record, when the barograph was examined, was 18,415 feet, which became the official altitude record for autogiros and stood for years.