Amelia Earhart

by Doris L. Rich

  At the close of this letter Amelia said she would try to get to Philadelphia to see Amy, who was visiting relatives, but that she was “full of antitetanus serum so not feeling up to snuff.”

  There can be no doubt that she was “not up to snuff.” No matter what his faults, Amelia had never stopped loving her father. His death was a painful loss, coming at the close of a year of exhausting work in a kind of perpetual motion. She had met all her goals, fulfilled all her contracts, kept all her promises. Spokesperson for her colleagues, airline officer, lecturer, writer, and breadwinner, she was now in the records books of the FAI. She had been named by famed journalist Ida Tarbell as one of the fifty living women who had done the most for the United States, showing ability “to initiate and create, lead and inspire.” A commemorative column to her had been unveiled at Burry Port, Wales, in honor of her Atlantic crossing. But the pace was a killing one, so demanding that she might not have been able to maintain it alone.

  Help was being offered. George Palmer Putnam, the man who had “discovered” her, managed her, and published her, wanted to marry her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Marriage of Convenience

  On December 19, 1929, Dorothy Putnam divorced G. P. Within hours reporters were calling Amelia, asking if she would be the second Mrs. Putnam. They were given a curt denial. Twenty-five days later, when Dorothy Putnam married again, there were more calls and more denials from Amelia. “There is nothing to the rumor,” she said. “I am not engaged to anyone. Mr. Putnam is my publisher—that’s all.”

  When she saw Marian Stabler in New York in January she told her, “Everyone thinks G. P. and I are going to be married.”

  “Are you?”

  “No.” Amelia replied. “I think the divorce is a shame.… A marriage that’s lasted eighteen years with two children shouldn’t be that easy to break up.”

  Amelia did not want to marry G. P. or anyone else. To a friend she wrote: “I am still unsold on marriage. I don’t want anything all of the time.… Do you remember in ‘If Winter Comes,’ how Mabel was always trying to get her husband a ‘den,’ how he hated it? He said he wasn’t a bear. A den is stuffy. I’d rather live in a tree.”

  During the next two years G. P. proposed six times but, like Simpkin the cat with whom Amelia compared him—storing up numerous spare mice for other meals—G. P. did not neglect numerous other projects he had planned. One of them was working with Byrd’s agent, Hilton Railey, on an upcoming Putnam publication, the explorer’s second book, Little America. G. P. monitored the script, as he had Amelia’s Twenty Hours Forty Minutes, to make sure the book would be in the stores while the author’s name was still in the headlines. He arranged for Byrd to write much of the book before his return from the Pole and for Railey to meet Byrd at the Panama Canal Zone and bring whatever was finished back to New York.

  In July G. P. gave a luncheon at the Barbizon-Plaza, ostensibly for Byrd, at which he announced the forthcoming publication of seven books on the expedition to be published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Not long after, Putnam’s friendship with Byrd ended, as well as his own affiliation with G. P. Putnam’s Sons. G. P. said his difference with Byrd arose from his suggestion to the admiral that Byrd offer the contributors to his expedition a rebate from profits he was making on book royalities and lectures. “Dick,” Putnam said, “didn’t see it. He felt that as he took the risks, he was entitled to the rewards.” Putnam’s departure from the firm his grandfather had founded followed the death of its president, his uncle, George Haven Putnam. G. P. sold his shares to his cousin, Palmer C. Putnam.

  Already an artists’ representative with offices in the Seymour Hotel at 2 West 45th Street, G. P. joined publishers Brewer and Warren, which soon became Brewer, Warren and Putnam. He also wrote a biography of Salomon August Andre, pioneer arctic balloonist who was lost in 1887 and whose bones were found in 1929 on a desolate arctic island. The book, dedicated to “a favorite aeronaut,” came out on October 27.

  Twelve days later a marriage license was issued to George Palmer Putnam and Amelia Earhart. On Saturday, November 8, Amelia was met at the Groton, Connecticut, train station by G. P. and taken to the house of his mother, Frances (Mrs. George Bishop) Putnam, in nearby Noank. The license was issued by Probate Judge Arthur F. Anderson, a friend of G. P.’s who accompanied G. P. and the town clerk, Henry L. Bailey, to Mrs. Putnam’s house for Amelia’s signature. But when Amelia found out that G. P. had alerted the press she left in a huff early the next morning for New York and flew to Washington later that same day.

  On Monday the Associated Press reported that Amelia denied she and G. P. were married. Carl B. Allen, aviation reporter for the World (later for the New York World-Telegram), who was a friend of Amelia’s, called G. P.’s mother. Frances Putnam said she did not know if they were married yet but “newspapers up here published all sorts of garbled reports.” G. P. could not be reached at his Sutton Place apartment.

  When Allen called Amelia in Washington and asked if a license had been issued, she evaded his question with, “I have not been married.” Did she plan on being married immediately, Allen asked. “Well, not immediately,” she replied. In New York G. P. would answer only two of Allen’s questions. Was he married? “No.” When would he be? He didn’t know.

  Allen wrote that the Putnam-Earhart story would be a trilogy. The first volume, covering Amelia’s withdrawal from Noank to Washington, he titled, “Amelia Goes Voyaging.” (David Putnam’s first book for boys had been David Goes Voyaging, written when he was twelve years old, after accompanying an expedition to the Galapagos Islands as the ship’s cabin boy.) The second volume Allen called “G. P. in Baffle Land,” parodying David Goes to Baffin Land. The third, Allen concluded, “may be expected any day now.” He was wrong. Rumors that there would be no marriage were soon circulating.

  In late December, after a press conference on a proposed flight by Amelia, she telephoned Allen at the World. “I need some advice,” she told him “and I need it today.” She wanted to talk to him and another aviation reporter-friend, Lauren Dwight “Deke” Lyman of the New York Times. Could they come to her apartment? They could.

  After receiving their promise of confidentiality, she told the two men that although she had “squelched G. P. in denying reports of the marriage,” and he “sulked about it a while,” he had apologized for alerting the press, “and he still wants to marry me.”

  Should she, she asked, marry Putnam? Allen and Lyman were stunned. They had never discussed her personal life with her and did not like being forced by competing newspapers to cover the marriage story. After a long, embarrassing silence, Allen answered. “It seems to me, Amelia, that the question you have just asked Mr. Lyman and me really contains its own answer: either you should be able to make up your own mind or you should put off getting married until you yourself can decide.”

  As they were leaving Amelia extended one hand to each of them in a “firm and prolonged triangular leave-taking,” while she told them that just talking it over had helped. In a later recollection of that meeting, Allen wrote that he told Amelia that Putnam loved the reflected public glorification that she received and was certain that he had helped to create it. “It may be,” Allen added, “that you need him as much or more than he needs you—and one of the supposedly solider cornerstones of marriage is mutual need and mutual respect.”

  There was nothing in Allen’s assessment of G. P. that Amelia did not know. The charming, erudite editor counted among his friends and acquaintances many who were famous and few who were not. G. P. liked celebrities.* Amelia also knew that G. P. was a hard-bargaining, often penny-pinching, volatile, hot-tempered man who shouted profanities (although not at her) when frustration induced one of his choleric rages. Her cousin, Lucy “Tootie” Challis, who was working as an editor in New York, commented that “keeping an eye on him would apt to make one cross-eyed. Tho I have always been fond of him, he is unpredictable to say the least.”

  G. P. admitted to b
eing bossy, saying he “deluged Amelia” with instructions about her clothing, her hats, and her speeches. But years later his fourth wife, a beautiful and intelligent woman who never knew Amelia, said, “He could be arrogant, but only with his equals—not with a brick layer or gardener.… He was a charming man, a great raconteur, who had marvelous manners and a wonderful sense of humor.”

  Putnam claimed, “Amelia Earhart knew me better, probably, than anyone else ever can,” adding that their tastes were often the same but their temperaments were not. She was calm. He was not. She hated to hurry. He always did. She wanted to do one thing at a time. He wanted to do many. She remained poised under pressure. He stamped and shouted. He had to be busy. She “was subject to seizures of idleness, times when she was determined not to see anyone and to do absolutely nothing but stay by herself and think.”

  In January Amelia made up her mind. If G. P. needed to bask in her limelight, she needed him to maintain that limelight. He had other interests that allowed her the freedom she needed. Her absences in pursuit of her career he would understand. As her manager he would arrange for most of them. He would take care of the “grubby” work.

  Her decision to marry was opposed by her mother who said G. P. was “twelve years her senior and a divorced man.” (Actually he was ten years older.) Amelia ignored Amy’s protest and did not tell her when she would be married. Three days before the ceremony she wrote, “I shan’t be home over this weekend.… I’m due in Washington tonight and have a luncheon at Newark today.”†

  She married G. P. three days later, on February 7, 1931, at Frances Putnam’s house in Noank. Present for the ceremony were G. P.’s mother, his uncle, Charles Faulkner, Judge Anderson who officiated, the judge’s son, Robert, who was Mrs. Putnam’s lawyer, and twin black cats. Young Anderson, two years out of law school, recalling the day in November when she signed the marriage license, thought that she was “devoted to George” but that she was afraid that changing her name somehow would diminish her stature. He was right. On the eve of the wedding she wrote to G. P.:

  There are some things which should be writ before we are married … you must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work which means most 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. On our life together, I want you to understand 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 avoided should you or I become interested deeply or in passing in anyone else.

  Please let us not interfere with the other’s work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disappointments. I may have to keep some place where I can go to be by myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.

  I must exact a cruel promise, and that is that you will let me go in a year if we find no happiness together. I will try to do my best in every way and give you that part of me you know and seem to want.

  A.E.

  Before the ceremony young Anderson sat with Amelia on a couch in a small sitting room at the back of the house. He thought her much more attractive than depicted in the press, “quite delicate looking, with beautiful color.” She told him about the autogiro, a new type of aircraft she had flown for the first time in December. After her brief exchange of marriage vows with G. P., she returned to the couch and resumed her description to Anderson of the new aircraft!

  When Judge Anderson came forward to wish her happiness, calling her “Mrs. Putnam,” she told him she would continue to use her maiden name in her work. A month later the New York Times used “Mrs. George Palmer Putnam (Amelia Earhart)” for the first and last time. After that she was Amelia Earhart Putnam.

  Amelia sent a telegram to Muriel asking her to “break the news gently” to Amy who was in Philadelphia, where her sister, Margaret Balis, was dying of cancer. The bride was childless but not without a dependent family. As early as four months before her marriage Amelia had written to Amy about the monthly checks she sent to her: “I know how easy it is for you to give it [the money] away to Pidge and the Balises. However, I am not working to support either.… I don’t know when I shall get over to Philadelphia for a visit. I come over fairly often on business.” She did not visit her mother or her aunt and when Margaret Balis died in January, Amelia did not go to the funeral, claiming the telegram had not reached her until after the services.

  Amelia insisted that Amy use her allowance for herself and to regard Muriel’s needs as a separate issue. When Muriel and Albert asked for a loan for the purchase of a house, Amelia wrote to Amy that she might ask her to look at it and give her opinion, but, she added, “If she [Muriel] hasn’t mentioned it to you, don’t say anything.”

  Amy redeemed herself momentarily by her public statements regarding Amelia’s marriage. Amelia wrote, thanking her for the interview she had given in Philadelphia and invited her to come and stay in the Putnams’ new apartment at 42 West 58th Street [the Wyndham Hotel] where she had “two canaries,” just as she had always wanted. She also told her mother that she had sent Muriel twenty-five hundred dollars so that she could “move into a decent house,” and had asked Muriel to come to New York “before she becomes too tied down.”

  Muriel was about to be “tied down” by a pregnancy of which Amelia disapproved because Muriel’s husband failed to give her an adequate household allowance. Amelia, who had given Muriel a book on birth control, The Doctor’s Manual of Marriage, when she married Albert had hoped Muriel might make use of it.

  In April Amelia was still annoyed with her sister, complaining to Amy that Muriel had not sent her a properly drawn second mortgage: “I am not Scrooge to ask that some acknowledgement of a twenty-five hundred loan be given me. I work hard for my money. Whether or not I shall exact repayment is my business.”

  While differences over money contributed to a growing gulf between Amelia and her mother and sister, her marriage brought a new and pleasant family relationship as stepmother to seventeen-year-old David Binney Putnam. The woman who had said she had always put off having a child, “for the air races or something else,” proved an interested, understanding friend to David. Young Putnam, who visited his father more frequently than his nine-year-old brother did, had known Amelia since the summer of 1928 when she lived in Rye while writing Twenty Hours Forty Minutes. Her handsome, tall (six feet, three inches) stepson, an aviation enthusiast, admired Amelia’s courage and was fascinated by her boundless curiosity. “She was interested in everything and wanted to know about everything,” he said. He also thought her very attractive, “long-legged and graceful,” with “a lovely head, like a beautiful choirboy’s,” yet very feminine. “She looked like a bag of bones in a bathing suit, she was so thin,” he said, “but she had beautiful clothes and she knew how to wear them. When she was all dressed up, she didn’t look like she had tried to be all dressed up.”

  When Amelia wrote to Amy that she worked hard for her money she did not exaggerate. She was back at her desk the Monday morning after her marriage. G. P. thought skipping a honeymoon might reassure her that marriage would not interfere with her career, and she reported to her mother, “I am much happier than I expected I would ever be in this state.… Of course, I go on in the same way as before as far as business is concerned. I haven’t changed at all and will only be busier I suppose.”

  One of her projects, the new Ludington airline, which was launched three months before her marriage as the nation sank into a deepening financial depression, continued to demand time and effort. Bedridden the previous October with a severe throat infection, Amelia was on the road again for the airline by the first of November and at Thanksgiving reported to the newspapers that seats had been sold out for all stops for the two previous days. By January, business was not that good and manager Eugene Vidal, who had appointed her vice-p
resident in charge of traffic, switched her back to public relations, asking her to meet with the publicity staff once a week in Philadelphia and to handle all complaints and general contacts with the public. She did so and whatever else she could to generate free newspaper publicity for the airline. She took an eye test at the top of the Empire State Building and commented on the impracticality of parachutes for airline passengers after Will Rogers suggested it in his newspaper column. With little or nothing coming in from the airline she gave lectures to earn money, continued to write her column for Cosmopolitan, and was paid to endorse the Franklin automobile, along with Lindbergh, Frank Hawks, and Donald Douglas.

  In April she was elected vice-president of the NAA, the first woman to become a national officer. However, there were by then 453 licensed women pilots, 39 of them with transport licenses, and at least a half dozen better pilots than Amelia. In January, Bobbi Trout and Edna May Cooper set a new women’s endurance-refueling record of 122 hours, 50 minutes. Already holder of two previous solo records, Trout had asked Amelia after the 1929 derby if she would like to partner an attempt at an endurance record that fall. Amelia said she would like to but was “just too busy.” Trout, who was certain she could fly any plane made, credited Putnam for keeping Amelia busy. “If I had a promoter like Putnam,” she declared, “I could have done the things Amelia did.”

  Amelia had other rivals. Laura Ingalls, a licensed transport pilot and record-holding aerial acrobat, set a transcontinental speed record of 25 hours, 35 minutes in 1930. Twenty-year-old Elinor Smith had set a women’s altitude record of 24,418 feet at Valley Stream, Long Island, in March of 1930 and narrowly escaped death (but not headlines) a year later when she tried again, losing consciousness and diving five miles before recovering in time to land.