Amelia Earhart

by Doris L. Rich

  These were all temporary measures to solve what she considered serious, ongoing problems. A plan for her mother’s support took priority, one that would provide income on a regular basis. Amelia had to arrange it at a time when the world was entering the Great Depression. On October 24, 1929, “Black Thursday” to millions of Americans who had bought stock on a 10 percent margin, the market collapsed in the most catastrophic decline in the history of the exchange. The “crash” started with the dumping of over-inflated airplane stocks, threatening Amelia’s own financial future, but she was determined to establish a regular source of income for her mother.

  Soon after she returned to New York she wrote to Amy explaining the plan: “I am enclosing a check for $100. Hereafter you will receive it right from the Fifth Avenue Bank. I have put all my earnings into stocks and bonds and the yearly income in your name. The list includes the $1,000 bond of yours which you may have … at any time.”

  She also arranged for an accident endowment through the National Air Pilots’ Association in Cleveland, naming Amy as beneficiary “in case I pop off,” and in the same letter assured her mother she was not being deprived of her own comforts: “I am able to live easily on what I make and you may have the other.… I still have a job with Pennsylvania Railroad besides TAT-Maddux. I plan to work very hard this year and do little else but fly.”

  She repeated these reassurances in another letter on February 25, the day after she returned from her second trip to the coast to pick up the plane she had left in Albuquerque: “Please do not think you are taking my hard-earned money even tho I would give it willingly. What you receive comes from what the cash receives from being put into bonds, etc.… extra to what I earn. I am living with Norah and very economically.”

  However, what she earned was not easy to come by. Aviation was a luxury in a depressed economy. Air shows were resorting to sideshow stunts of the previous decade and to the appearances of celebrities in order to attract the public. At a weeklong exposition in St. Louis, attended by one hundred twenty-five thousand spectators: “A Guernsey cow of famous lineage was carried aloft in a tri-motored Ford from the Parks airport and submitted to being milked in the air well above the smoke of St. Louis. The milk in pint containers fastened to small parachutes was dropped over the side.… A pint of the milk is being saved for Colonel Lindbergh who is expected here tomorrow [February 19, 1930] from Los Angeles.”

  Amelia arrived the next day on her way east in her new Vega, in time to fly in an exhibition with Clarence Chamberlin, Frank Hawks, Elinor Smith, “Speed” Holman, and Jimmy Doolittle. In April she was aboard the aircraft carrier Lexington off the Virginia coast observing maneuvers along with Hiram Bingham, the assistant secretaries of Navy and Commerce and members of the Senate and House Naval Affairs Appropriation Committees. Appearances like these were needed to retain the celebrity status that assured her income from lectures, articles, and advertising testimonials.

  Between April and the last week of June she gave more than a dozen talks in as many towns, often two in the same day to different organizations. On April 8 she was the only woman guest at a banquet attended by twelve hundred members of the Society of Automotive Engineers in Detroit. Between May 12 and 16 she spoke in Kansas City, Indianapolis, Chicago, and Detroit, flying to all of these engagements.

  From Detroit she flew to Philadelphia to ferry a delegation from the Philadelphia Club of Advertising Women to a convention in Washington. Elizabeth Townsend, who was one of three passengers on Amelia’s plane, had to leave Amelia at the airport in Washington to meet a welcoming committee but her companions told her that they saw Lindbergh in the terminal building and “were astonished at how much they [Amelia and Lindbergh] looked alike.”

  Never one to abandon any goal she had set, Amelia continued her efforts to persuade the FAI to set up separate classifications for women in altitude, speed, and endurance records. It was a difficult position for her to take. A believer in real equality with no special wages or working conditions for women by law she had to admit that until women had more flying experience they could not compete with men. Women should be allowed special record categories, she claimed, as well as the right to challenge world records.

  As soon as the FAI created these special women’s classifications Amelia decided to make a try for speed—this time with all necessary documentation. She started by asking George Fritsche of the Detroit Aircraft Corporation, a holding company that had bought Lockheed, to cable the FAI’s American representative organization, the NAA, the following: “Please send book of rules showing proper procedure conducting world record flights. Is barograph needed for three and one hundred kilometer flights? Is electric timing necessary for three kilometer flights?… How many times must three kilometer and one hundred kilometer flights be run? Where can we procure two certified timing watches?” The NAA contest committee, of which she was still a member, replied there was no copy of FAI rules, but sent her two typewritten, single-spaced pages of rules.

  After another week of sending telegrams and awaiting replies Amelia could wait no longer. She flew the trials in a Vega registered as CN974, lent her by Lockheed, between June 24 and July 5. During the next twelve months more than fifty cables and letters were exchanged by her, Cooper, the NAA office in Washington, and the FAI in Paris. As late as ten months after the trials one official wrote another for affidavits signed by the pylon observers, asking him to send them immediately because “Miss Earhart feels quite strongly about this.” Miss Earhart did and Miss Earhart prevailed. One year after the trials the FAI entered on its official roster these three records for Amelia Earhart:

  June 25, 1930. Women’s world speed record for 100 kilometers at 174.897 mph. (No load.)

  June 25, 1930. Women’s world speed record with payload of 500 kilograms over a distance of 100 kilometers at 171.438 mph.

  July 5, 1930. Women’s world speed record over 3 kilometer course of 181.18 mph.

  Proud of her new records, Amelia was just as enthusiastic about aviation as a practical means of transportation. Before the summer was over she helped to organize a new airline, the New York, Philadelphia, and Washington Airways, which opened on September 1. As vice-president in charge of public relations she was on the second plane leaving the New York terminus on that first day of operations. The three-city line was commercial aviation’s first version of the modern shuttle, its slogan, “On the Hour Every Hour.” Paul F. Collins, the general manager, and his assistant, Eugene Vidal, were both former officials of TAT who were fired by Clement Keyes when TAT merged with Maddux.

  Amelia first met Collins in St. Louis when both were with TAT. Arriving alone at Lambert Field in her Vega, Amelia mentioned she was on her way to Washington. Collins said he and his assistant, Don Bartlett, were also going there. When she invited them to fly with her, Collins hesitated. He had been one of the first airmail pilots, one of the few who survived, a typically nervous passenger who had never been piloted by a woman.

  Apparently she sensed my reluctance to fly with her principally because I knew that the cockpit in a Vega was completely shut off from the cabin and there could be only one pilot … and no way of exchanging seats. She then asked me if I’d like to fly the Vega myself while she and Don sat in the cabin.… This was the first insight I’d had into Amelia’s kindness, her generosity and her beautiful character.

  After a night’s layover in Columbus, they left on the second leg of the flight, but a malfunctioning compass and poor visibility caused Collins to lose his way. He was saved from admitting it by sighting a railway and finally, a rooftop sign reading “Fredericksburg.” “I never mentioned my predicament to Amelia and neither did she. Whether or not she sensed the situation, I’ll never know. If she did, it was just another illustration of her understanding.”

  Collins’s friend and assistant in the new airline, Eugene Vidal, was a handsome West Point graduate, a former Army pilot, ex-Olympic athlete, and son-in-law of Sen. T. P. Gore of Oklahoma. Two years Amelia’s s
enior, he also met her while working for TAT: “She was an interesting person; a tomboy who liked all men’s games, enjoyed being with mechanics working on airplanes, and yet was like a little girl.… Although often in trousers, she was very feminine and quite romantic in many ways. She wrote poetry for magazines under another name and often showed me the poems before mailing them.”

  With Collins and Vidal running it, Amelia doing the public relations, and financial backing from Philadelphia financiers Charles and Nicholas Ludington, the line became a successful one, although not without initial difficulties. On one occasion soon after opening the line, three planes landed at the Philadelphia airport at one time, one from Atlantic City, one from Newark, and one from Washington. Some of the passengers were changing planes and others got out to stretch. In trying to get all of them back on the planes the dispatcher put ten of the Washington-bound passengers on the Newark-bound plane, returning them to the airport they had just left.

  Lunches consisted of hardboiled eggs and saltines, thought to be the least likely food to induce air sickness. However the smell of exhaust fumes in a cabin with closed windows and no air conditioning brought about frequent use of cardboard cartons, not always successfully. Nevertheless passengers on the new line were airborne for shorter times than on TAT with less devastating effects than those reported by Ben Howard: “When TAT reached only 75 percent air sickness we thought we’d passed a point in aviation history.… People were so sick they used rubber matting instead of carpeting on the floor of the plane.… They used to say passengers didn’t get out of a plane, they slid out—skated down the aisle.”

  Collins and Vidal were determined to prove an airline could be profitable without revenue from airmail. They cut costs ruthlessly, using tri-motor Stinson monoplanes that cost half as much as Ford transports. They saved fuel by instructing pilots to taxi to the line on one motor, and after taking off on all three with high-test aviation gas, to switch to cheaper automobile gas once airborne.

  During the first ten days of operation the line carried 1,557 passengers. Too cautious to give his own name to the airline, Charles Ludington, chairman of the board, said it was too early to say whether passengers were traveling for curiosity or business. At the end of the first year he changed his mind and the corporation became the Ludington Line after the books showed a profit of $8,073, hardly an overwhelming sum but impressive for an airline without mail subsidies during a year of deepening economic depression.

  In the report to the press on the first ten days of operation, the vice-president in charge of public relations said that a little less than half of the tickets had been sold to women, adding, “I know one woman who came up from Washington on an early plane, completed her shopping in New York and returned to Washington in time for dinner.” She not only knew her, it is likely that Amelia talked her into taking the trip.

  Janet Mabie, a Christian Science Monitor feature writer whom Amelia invited on one trip, wrote that Amelia rode a portion of the route at least once every two days. “She keeps her hands still and her voice down and economizes her energy,” Mabie claimed.

  Amelia certainly needed to “economize her energy.” Within a week of starting to work in earnest on the new airline in August she wrote to her mother:

  I saw Dad on the coast and he is desperately ill and starving to death. There is a stricture of some kind which prevents his taking much nourishment. His mind is clear and he says he’s better … ask Pidge to write his doctor for a summary of the case. Mrs. Earhart is almost breaking under the strain so I said I’d help out in monthly payments so she could rest.… I want to have a good doctor see Dad if the report doesn’t seem adequate.”

  She added that she would like to find time to see Amy who was summering at Marblehead but that she was working very hard and was not feeling well.

  On September 3 she forwarded to her mother a cable from Edwin’s physician, Dr. C. M. Hensley of Eagle Rock. The doctor wanted a guarantee of $175.00 for blood transfusions. Amelia pencilled on it, “of course I guaranteed.” She had also received a wire from Helen Earhart reporting that Edwin weighed eighty pounds and was sinking rapidly. Hensley had written Muriel that Edwin had cancer of the stomach and an operation would hasten his death. The transfusions would be done but there was little hope for the patient’s recovery.

  Two weeks later Amelia wrote again, apologizing to Amy for the delay because she was so busy on the new airline:

  I received a telegram from Dr. Hensley saying I must come soon. Also Mrs. E [Helen Earhart] wired that Dad was perfectly rational and anxious to see me. It is so hard to get away, so expensive, that I am almost staggered with the thot of going west. However, I feel I must grant [his] wish and will probably shove off tomorrow. One thing, he is not suffering.… I suppose he is too weak for an operation but it seems as if I’d prefer that risk than starving as he is now.

  Edwin’s illness was not all that worried Amelia. Muriel was not getting along with Albert Morrissey, and Amy, who was living with them, was embroiled in this miserable domestic situation. Amelia offered to get Amy a room in her hotel in New York, commenting on Muriel: “I do hope Pidge moves out of her hole. I feel as you do it’s bad for health and morale. All the middle-classness of the family heritage bursts into bloom.… All the fineness—for there is some—is squashed. It would be unless you were around. These are sad times.”

  Amelia left the next day on TAT, arriving in Los Angeles on September 19 and remained with Edwin for four days before boarding a return flight for New York. At Tucson, eight hours after her departure, she received word that Edwin had died. During her stay with him she had listed his debts and paid some, arranged for his burial and written his obituary. She did not return for the funeral. Instead, within a few hours of arriving in New York from the two-day-and-night trip on TAT she flew her Vega from Newark to Norfolk, Virginia where she had a lecture scheduled for the same day—September 25.

  Coming in for a landing at the Naval Air Station she crashed. Edna “Eddie” Whiting, the thirteen-year-old daughter of station commander Capt. Kenneth Whiting, saw the plane from the upstairs window of their house before the crash trucks arrived: “Runways had not been invented. The air station field was reclaimed land pumped up out of the waters of Hampton Roads.… As a result the field had a number of potholes and puddles. As Amelia landed she saw a pothole or puddle. She slammed on her brakes in an effort to miss the hazard.”

  The latch on the door to the cockpit, which was part of the back of the pilot’s seat, gave way, throwing her backward. At the same time, Carl Harper, who was in the back of the plane, leaped forward to close the cockpit door, leaving the rear end without his balancing weight and the plane nosed over.

  As usual Amelia told the press it was one of those “little things,” but she did admit to “over-application of the brakes.” Veteran airman Ben Howard, who had not yet met Amelia but read the news report, said her admission was unheard of among pilots of the time and that he thought “that gal must be something.”

  Harper’s only injury was a broken finger. Amelia was treated for a scalp wound by the station flight surgeon, who fashioned a bandage that looked like a white turban. Eddie’s mother added a rhinestone pin to it and Amelia kept her speaking engagement with the Norfolk-Portsmouth Traffic Club.

  During the four days Amelia stayed with the Whitings, young Eddie observed that she slouched or draped herself in chairs and had “the longest legs I had ever seen.” She made a great many long-distance calls, some of them to George Palmer Putnam. Asked to relinquish her room to the unexpected guest, Eddie was not overly impressed with Amelia, especially after she heard what Amelia was reported to have said to her father. When Captain Whiting asked Amelia what she wanted done about the Vega, she said, “It’s your problem. You take care of it and ship the plane back to New York.”

  If the captain interpreted her comment correctly, his houseguest who had been so frequently praised by hosts for her courtesy showed him very little. She did wri
te a thank you note to Mrs. Whiting on September 30 from New York:

  You were very kind to take in so cordially a broken down (up) aviatrix. I appreciated your hospitality and think sometime I’ll try to land in your front yard. I have been very busy since my return, carrying on of an airline is certainly a time-occupying occupation.… I hope your daughter had a swell time at Annapolis. Please thank the Captain, your husband, for sending Carl Harper and me to Anacostia.

  Fatigue and sorrow may have caused her lack of courtesy in regard to the plane but the Whitings were told nothing about the death of her father or of the eight days with little or no sleep that preceded the crackup at Norfolk. In a letter to her mother on October 2 Amelia was more honest about her sense of loss but not about the accident in which the Lockheed was so badly damaged it had to be shipped to the Detroit Aircraft Corporation in Detroit to be completely rebuilt. To her mother she wrote:

  I have just returned from Dad to have a little crackup due to a mechanical failure.… I wasn’t hurt much and neither was the Lockheed. About Dad. The diagnosis was correct.… He grew thinner and thinner and waited for me to come and change doctors or get him to a sanitarium or change diet because he didn’t want to go. I tried and had X-rays to please him and he hoped until he could not move his poor hands. He didn’t miss [me] when I left as we gave morphine at the last so he wouldn’t worry about [my] leaving.

  His big case [a law suit he hoped to win] was lost and we told him he won. He couldn’t have stood the disappointment so it was for the best. I wrote up the little history and paid the hundred little debts he always had.… He asked about you and Pidge a lot and I faked telegrams for him from you all. He was an aristocrat as he went—all the weaknesses gone with a little boy’s brown puzzled eyes.