Amelia Earhart

by Doris L. Rich

  Amelia criticized more than the food when she arrived at Cleveland. The committee had left no time for the fliers to rest. They were up at four every morning, on the field by five and off at six, she said. The early flight was only two or three hours but the remainder of the morning was spent signing autographs and answering questions while guarding their planes from curiosity seekers. Most of the fields had no place to rest and no more than a wooden table to sit on. After flying two or three more hours in the afternoon they had to wait to see that their planes were secured before rushing into town to a banquet and then back to the field to make certain their planes had been serviced.

  She also said there were unruly crowds wherever they went and that trying to taxi along a runway with people running toward one’s plane with its whirling propeller was a frightening experience. Her complaints about the crowds were more than justified. At Columbus, the last stop before Cleveland, eighteen thousand fans overwhelmed the police, swarming onto the runway. A number of these boisterous trespassers leaped aboard the planes the minute they came to a stop and walked the length of the wings. Others poked umbrellas and pencils through the fabric-covered aircraft.

  Amelia came in third in the derby, one and three-quarters hours after the winner, Louise Thaden. Thaden won $3,600 in prize money; Gladys O’Donnell, $1,950 for second place; and Amelia, $850 for third.

  In the closed-course races that followed at Cleveland Amelia entered one of five for women. She asked Blanche Noyes to join her. “There are two Great Lakes airplanes we can get,” she told Noyes. “If you fly one of them, I’ll fly the other.” When Noyes said she had never flown a Great Lakes before, the supposedly safety-conscious Amelia, who had never flown one either, said, “Well, you can learn.”

  Noyes learned during the race. She came in third but Amelia was disqualified for missing a pylon. It was obvious that she did not know how to turn tightly at these markers. Commenting on her lack of skill, the great closed-course racer Edna Gardner Whyte said that Amelia was never a good enough flyer for this kind of contest nor did she have the necessary competitive spirit. Another great speed flier, Mary Haizlip, agreed.

  The day after her attempt at racing, Amelia was the only woman in a glider demonstration staged by the National Glider Association. Frank Hawks, the man who had given her her first plane ride almost a decade before, arranged the event, which he called “The Famous Motored Pilots’ Derby.” When Amelia attempted a turn without sufficient air speed the glider went into a spin. She pulled out of it a few feet from the ground but slammed the aircraft down in front of the grandstand, damaging the undercarriage. Hawks, who held the transcontinental speed record at the time, said that if she had lost her head she would have had a bad crash but “she kept her wits about her and did exactly the right thing.”

  The derby and the races that followed gave Amelia her first extended contact with many of the country’s best women pilots. She listened more than she spoke and avoided gossip, asking for suggestions, and repeating praise but never criticism of one pilot by another. The best of her competitors thought her no threat to their supremacy as pilots and at the same time admired her for her public stand on behalf of their rights.

  In California, before the derby, Amelia and Ruth Nichols had both talked to their colleagues about forming a women pilots’ organization. In Cleveland an informal meeting was held in Amelia’s hotel suite. In New York another group, some of whom worked for the Curtiss Wright Flying Service, had also discussed organizing. The group included Neva Paris and Opal Kunz, both derby contestants, and Frances Harrell, Margery Brown, Fay Gillis, Betty Huyler, and Clara Trenckman. All except Trenckman were fliers. This group sent out an invitation signed by Paris, Brown, Harrell, and Gillis to meet on November 2 in a hangar at Curtiss Field in Valley Stream, Long Island.

  Amelia was one of the twenty-six women from six states who met in the hangar, where they had to shout over the din of airplane motors and drink their tea served from a toolbox wagon. Nancy Hopkins of Boston, who met Amelia for the first time at the meeting, thought she was very shy, even humble, in the company of many of the women who had more flight time than she. “She seemed apologetic over her unearned publicity from the 1928 flight,” Hopkins said.

  Amelia had very little to say during the meeting until discussion turned to a suitable name for the organization; she suggested it be called for the number of its charter members. Her suggestion was adopted. Between November and February of the next year the name evolved from The 86s to The 97s to The 99s, later changed to The Ninety-Nines, Inc.

  Amelia was an avid recruiter. Her methods varied, depending on how well she knew the potential candidate and her interests. One who was drafted was Mary Haizlip, the petite and very competitive young derby flier who lived in St. Louis with her husband, future Bendix Trophy winner James A. “Jimmy” Haizlip, and her widowed mother, Anna Hays. A frequent houseguest of the Haizlips, Amelia sent Mary a note stating that Mary was now a charter member and should reimburse Amelia one dollar for signing her up and paying the membership fee.

  In mid-March Amelia was hostess to twenty-eight members for a meeting at the American Women’s Club on 57th Street in Manhattan. The organization was still without officers after the acting secretary-treasurer, Neva Paris, was killed in January when her plane crashed in a Georgia swamp. Amelia steered clear of office holding in an organization of so many strong-willed, competitive women who had yet to agree on anything more than a central purpose of finding more jobs in aviation for themselves and other women.

  However, a month later she did agree to be chairman of a group of women pilots who met in Detroit to discuss the coming National Air Races in August of 1930. Overtures were made to contest director Maj. R. W. Schroeder, who tentatively offered a special speed race for women pilots comparable to the Thompson Trophy race for men, a “free for all” open to every type of plane. He advised Amelia that if six pilots “of the gentler sex” entered, he would add to the program a similar contest.

  Amelia said she was confident that at least six women would enter but what she wanted was a women’s derby like the one of 1929, in which planes of any classification could be entered with appropriate handicaps for the more powerful. A week later the events were announced. Forty-two of the forty-six would be restricted to small planes with none of the remaining four open to women. There would be two women’s derbies, neither for larger planes. Amelia and four other women—Nichols, Smith, Thaden, and Noyes—refused to compete.

  These members of the “gentler sex” did not intend to protest and then simply disappear. They set August 28 (later changed to August 27) as the date for a meeting of the Ninety-Nines in Chicago during the week of the races, which were to be held there instead of Cleveland, “in order to reach some agreement with the race committee” for the 1931 races. There were nineteen women at the meeting, seven of whom were licensed as transport pilots. The acting secretary-treasurer, Louise Thaden, appointed a committee of three in her place—Amelia as chairman, Jean LaRene of Kansas City, and Gladys O’Donnell of Long Beach. The entire group elected a constitutional committee of three—Amelia, Ruth Nichols, and Marjorie Lesser.

  The seemingly shy, retiring woman who had said so little at the first meeting in November, the loser who had washed out of the closed circuit race, and who had almost killed herself trying to fly a glider in Cleveland had become the acknowledged leader of a group claiming 175 members out of the national total of 285 licensed women pilots.

  * Mary Haizlip was not in the picture. The day before she had been forced down at Washington, Missouri, by a broken fuel line. A farm hand helped her repair it but he was afraid to crank the propeller for her. Barely five feet tall and weighing less than one hundred pounds, Haizlip cranked it herself, then jumped back in the plane and took off for St. Louis, her hometown, where she arrived just before sunset.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Reaching the Limits

  Two days after the first meeting of the Ninety-Nines in November of
1929, Amelia left for California in the Vega she had flown in the derby. While she worked in Los Angeles she intended to trade the plane in for a better one. Accompanied by her newly hired secretary, Norah Alstulund, Amelia stopped first in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where Dorothy Leh, a charter member of the new flying club, put them up for the night. In an interview Amelia gave to a local reporter, she said that she was traveling on business for TAT. She was. Her business was getting free publicity for the airline. He was giving it to her.

  Arriving in Los Angeles on November 8, Amelia, with Norah, was again the houseguest of the Madduxes. Her feisty, charming, forty-two-year-old host, an ex-submariner and car salesman, lacked both high school and college diplomas but his wife Irene had both, as well as considerable social poise and business acumen. A pilot herself, she took over her husband’s Lincoln dealership when his airline interests demanded even more time than the tireless Maddux had. At the sprawling, comfortable house on Fremont Place, Amelia divided her time between working for TAT and shopping for her next Lockheed plane at the plant in Burbank.

  In a logbook Amelia had started on July 20, she wrote that she tried out a new Vega in Burbank on November 9, the day after she arrived in Los Angeles. However, she was no more accurate in keeping a written account of her flight time than she had been as a novice, writing to Bert Kinner for an estimate. At the beginning of the log book she wrote that her total time to date, that is to July 20, 1929, was 559 hours and 46 minutes. It is difficult to see how she arrived at such a precise figure. The woman who was meticulous in financial matters, keeping records and receipts and demanding them from others, was amazingly casual in recording flight time and destinations. She had written in the new book that she flew her first Vega, “the clunk” she bought in New York, to Los Angeles between August 2 and August 8. No mileage, time, or stops were recorded. For her second Vega, which she flew in the derby, she made entries like the following one:

  Sept. 3, 1929 (thru November 5) NC31E [the plane’s registration number] Cleveland-Buffalo-Rochester, NY.

  In referring to her search for her third Vega she wrote:

  Newspapers kept a better record of what Amelia was doing. On November 21, after she flew a mile course at the Metropolitan Airport with Lt. Carl Harper, chief test pilot for Detroit Aircraft Corporation, in accordance with NAA rules, she announced she would attempt on the following day to break the women’s speed record of 156 MPH held by Louise Thaden. She did it pushing a wooden-bodied, Executive SF Lockheed, a demonstrator owned by Detroit Aircraft and registered as 538M, to an average speed of 184.19 MPH over four laps. Her fastest lap was 197.80, according to the NAA’s official timer, Joe Nikrent. However, in spite of Nikrent’s careful timing with two chronometers sent on to the NAA in Washington for calibration, the NAA refused to acknowledge the record.

  When Norah Alstulund wrote for confirmation of Amelia’s record the following February, Maj. Luke Christopher, secretary of the NAA Contest Committee replied: “You will please advise Miss Earhart that there is no category in the FAI rules recognizing speed trials over a one mile straightaway course. The shortest course that is recognized by the FAI is three kilometers and this course is only for world maximum speed records.”

  “Only for world maximum” meant no category for women. Although Christopher referred to her as “my good friend, Amelia Earhart,” and attached a list of recognized speed records to his letter, neither his claim of friendship nor Amelia’s status as the newest member of the NAA’s contest committee helped to affirm her record.

  Amelia had no intention of abandoning her pursuit of official recognition for a speed record but let the matter rest while she continued to shop for a new Vega. She looked over everything Lockheed had, including Lindbergh’s new Sirius, built with the special modifications requested by him. Lindbergh was not present for its maiden flight made by Carl Harper but on his last flight of the day in it, Harper took Amelia along as a passenger in the rear control seat.

  Amelia could not afford a new, custom-built Sirius like Lindbergh’s but she learned all she could about Lockheed’s planes before she picked the one she could afford. It was another Vega, serial number 22, built before her derby plane in December of 1928, and previously used as a demonstrator on the East Coast. Although it was not registered to her as NC7952 until February 18, 1930, she had taken possession of it by the end of November and made repeated trial flights in it during the two months she was with the Madduxes.

  A few days before she left for New York, the Lindberghs arrived at the Madduxes. Anne Lindbergh, who had previously reported to her family that Amelia was “likeable, intelligent, nice and amusing,” when they first met the previous July on the inaugural flight of TAT, now wrote to her sister, Constance, that Amelia was “an amazing person—just as tremendous as C. [Charles Lindbergh].” Noting that Lindbergh had not spoken with Amelia at any length, Anne wrote that she thought the two were very alike. “She has a clarity of mind, impersonal eye, coolness of temperament, and balance as a scientist. Aside from that,” Anne added, “I like her.”

  Amelia later wrote that during their stay at the Madduxes Anne told Amelia she had decided to learn to fly even before she met Lindbergh. Amelia thought Anne’s dominant characteristic was “a fine courage to meet both physical and spiritual hazards with understanding.”

  As for Charles Lindbergh, Amelia had unlimited admiration for his aviation expertise but may have liked him less as a person. In writing about her departure for New York with Norah and thirteen pieces of luggage that comprised their winter and summer wardrobes, plus what Amelia called her “itinerant office,” she noted that Lindbergh watched with disapproval:

  During our explanation, I sensed he was making a comparison with the impedimenta of a typical Lindbergh journey.

  He turned to his wife with a grin. “Don’t you get any foolish ideas from this,” he admonished.

  Lindbergh, a devoted husband, was also a traditional one. No husband of Amelia’s would have been permitted to tell her how much luggage to bring along.

  Some of her reservations about Lindbergh may have been the result of his strange practical jokes. On a night when Anne and Amelia were drinking buttermilk at the Madduxes’ kitchen table after a movie, Lindbergh, who was standing behind them, began to drip water from his glass onto his wife’s silk dress. Anne got up and went to the door where she stood with her back to them, her head resting on her arm. Aghast at the possibility of gentle Anne driven to tears over her ruined dress, Amelia was soon delighted to see Anne wheel around and douse her husband with buttermilk. Lindbergh also thought it very funny.

  Not every victim was as able to retaliate. During a later visit of the Lindberghs, nine-year-old Jack Maddux, Jr., who thought Amelia was a nice lady but whose idol was Lindbergh, was approached by the great man. Clad in his pajamas, the boy was saying goodnight to everyone. “How would you like to make a quarter?” Lindy asked. Jack said he would. Lindbergh made a paper cone and put the smaller end of it inside the front of the child’s pajama pants. Then he gave him a quarter and said, “See if you can shut your eyes, hold the quarter up high, and drop it down into the cone.” When the boy closed his eyes Lindbergh took a pitcher of ice water and poured it down the cone. The surprise was total, the pain excruciating.

  On January 9, Amelia left for New York in her new Vega with Norah and the thirteen pieces of luggage. They spent the first night in Albuquerque at the Alvorado Hotel where a reporter telephoned Amelia’s room at 8:15 P.M. and asked if he could see her. After muffled sounds of stuttering and laughter he heard her say, “I’m afraid not. I’m in bed, reading.” However, she was willing to give him a telephone interview, most of which was about TAT. When he asked her how Lindbergh liked his new plane, she suggested he ask Lindbergh himself “when he comes through Albuquerque before long.”

  The next day she took off in freezing weather, attempting to reach Las Vegas, but was forced back to Albuquerque by a winter storm that had grounded all air travel east and wes
t. Amelia had to leave her new Vega at Albuquerque and return to New York with Norah on a train. Leaving the new plane behind was a disappointment but she could not afford to wait for the weather to break. There were commitments to fulfill, magazine articles due, personal appearances scheduled, and family problems to be mitigated, if not solved.

  Edwin, whom she had seen in California, was gravely ill. Muriel, pregnant with her first child, was also ill and Albert Morrissey was proving as difficult a husband and miserable a provider as Amelia had feared. Amy Earhart, with little of her own money left, lived with the Morrisseys in an uneasy and depressing household. Even before Amelia’s return from the Coast, she had written her mother that it would be best to stay with Muriel and try “to keep out of Albert’s way. I’m sorry she’s [Muriel] having such rotten luck,” she added, although she had always thought the marriage was more bad judgment on Muriel’s part than bad luck.

  In November on the day she broke the speed record Amelia had gone to see Edwin, who was remarried and was living in a cabin on Eagle Rock in the foothills behind Los Angeles. Although his wife, the former Helen McPherson, earned a small salary as a salesperson for a jewelry company and Edwin had made a down payment on the cabin, he was worried about keeping up his mortgage payments. He had closed his office in town and for much of the legal advice he gave to neighbors and friends he was reluctant to send any bills. “I’m long on friends,” he told Amelia, “but short on cash.”

  Amelia paid the mortgage of about two thousand dollars and had a lawyer draw up a life tenancy freehold giving the property to her father and, in the event of his death, to Helen. Amelia retained title to the house. Soon after, she wrote to Muriel that she had made her the ultimate heir. In the same letter she reported, “I’m afraid Dad may not enjoy his cabin too long, Pidge … he looks thinner than I have ever seen him and Helen says he has no appetite at all and tires very quickly now.”