Amelia Earhart

by Doris L. Rich

  G. P. met Amelia on June 3 at Cherbourg where she had arrived aboard the yacht Evadne the night before and was met that morning by U.S. consul Horatio Moore and Vicomte Jacques de Sibour.‡ Putnam’s ship, the Olympia, was late and he was in none too good a mood. When newsreel cameramen asked the couple to embrace, they were refused. Irritated by G. P.’s surly manner, the Fox Movietone man wrote on his dopesheet that Amelia’s reception was “lukewarm” and the French would not forgive her for staying in England when “she should have come to Le Bourget like Lindbergh.”

  He was mistaken. When the boat train pulled into the Gare St. Lazare it was stopped fifty feet short of the platform by the crowd, which pushed past police lines onto the tracks. On the platform Amelia was separated from G. P. when the crowd swept her and Violette de Sibour toward the embassy car outside the station. Thousands of cheering spectators lined the route to the Hotel Lotti where others stood below the balcony of Amelia’s first-floor suite and shouted until she came out to wave to them.

  Tennis champion Helen Wills Moody, in Paris for a tournament, had agreed to cover Amelia’s arrival for an American newspaper but her feet were too swollen from the day’s match to put on shoes, “so I telephoned and to my astonishment she answered the telephone herself.” Moody got her story.

  During the next five days Amelia was presented to the French Senate and awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor and a medal from the Aero Club of France. In Rome she was received by the Pope and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. In Brussels King Albert presented her with the Cross of the Order of Leopold. For twenty-three days she had been received by national leaders and showered with honors. Yet the most satisfying day for her was the one on which her Vega rolled to a stop on that green meadow outside Londonderry. She was a first-class flier. The praise she liked best came from colleagues, comments like that of Eddie Gorski, who said that anyone who could cross the Atlantic with a cracked manifold and neither altimeter nor tachometer functioning was “a real flier.”

  Vindicated at last, she knew there was a price to be paid. On June 14 she sailed with G. P. on the Ile de France for New York and the reception she had told her mother she could not face alone. Her friend Walter Trumble predicted: “Probably never again can Amelia Earhart walk on the streets of any city with the comfort of an ordinary citizen. She will be pushed and tugged and ever surrounded by the maddening throng.”

  * She asked the NAA for a barograph, which did not arrive until May 16. Although Balchen did not receive the official notice that he was to install it, he did anyway, “a few minutes before the actual takeoff.”

  † NR7952 is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

  ‡ By then friends of both Putnams, the French war ace and his wife, Violette, had flown around the world in a Gypsy Moth between September 1928 and June 1929.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Last of Lady Lindy

  Amelia Earhart’s 1932 transatlantic flight was her rite of passage. The twenty-two-year-old amateur pilot who had called flying a “sport” had become a thirty-four-year-old professional obsessed by it. The obsession was rooted in the little girl who “belly-slammed” her sled down icy hills, the student who kept a scrapbook reflecting the unique accomplishments of women, and the young woman who drove a truck to pay for flying lessons. “I flew the Atlantic because I wanted to,” she wrote. “To want in one’s head to do a thing, for its own sake; to enjoy doing it; to concentrate all of one’s energies upon it—that is not only the surest guarantee of its success. It is also being true to oneself.”

  In the four years since her 1928 flight, the indecisive drifter manipulated by George Palmer Putnam had become, to a large extent, the master of her own fate, setting seemingly impractical goals but reaching them by very practical means. The basic Amelia remained true to herself while the mature Amelia developed new relationships with the public, the press, her colleagues, friends, and family.

  To the public, and the press that conveyed her image to that public, Amelia was not completely honest, revealing none of her resentment of prying reporters and her dread of shouting, shoving, anonymous admirers. In an attempt to evade the official reception scheduled for June 20 in New York she wired Mayor James J. Walker, suggesting that the ceremonies be dropped and the money used for the relief of the unemployed.

  Her friend, Viola Gentry, a Ninety-Nine member serving on the welcoming committee, said that Amelia’s request was refused by Walker who insisted that the reception would “cost nothing.” The charming, if somewhat corrupt, “Jimmy” had a keen sense of what his constituents wanted. They needed proof that human courage could triumph over fearful odds. Amelia was a symbol of that courage at a time when ten million of her fellow Americans were out of work in the worst depression of the twentieth century.

  The New York homecoming was even more overwhelming than she had expected, matched only by that given to Charles Lindbergh in 1927. Thousands turned out to see her ride down Broadway through a blizzard of tickertape and pages torn from telephone books. Unlike the demonstration for her in 1928 this one was rightfully hers. She was no longer “Lady Lindy,” a woman who deprived Stultz and Gordon of the acclaim owed them because she looked like Lindbergh and went along for the ride.

  The daylong celebration began when the Ile de France loomed out of the fog off Quarantine and dropped anchor with a thundering blast of its siren, soon joined by the shrieking whistles of tugs, ferries, and pleasure craft crowding the harbor. When Amelia crossed the narrow gangplank to board the city’s welcoming boat, the Riverside, she was unable to shout above the noise. She smiled and reached out to greet David Putnam and as many others as she could, among them Eugene Vidal, Paul Collins, Bernt Balchen, and the backer of her first flight, Amy Phipps Guest. High above the Riverside were nine Army planes and flying beneath them three heavy Douglas observation planes, losers in a competition for attention with three Navy Curtiss Fledglings. Only once did Amelia reveal any tension. When the Fledglings swooped so low that daredevils Frank Hawks and Al Williams, who were standing on the deck next to Amelia ducked, she gasped, “Gracious! I wish they wouldn’t do that!”

  After being escorted to a cabin at the stern of the Riverside Amelia faced the press calmly, answering questions with what one reporter described as “a happy faculty for choosing the right phrase.” She posed for photographers, urging the women aviators who had come out to meet her to join her for more pictures at the ship’s rail. Once ashore and seated in a processional car with Charles L. Lawrance, president of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce and the man who had designed the motor of her first airplane, Amelia pulled off her hat, smiling and waving at the cheering crowds. At Wall Street her admirers broke through the police lines, cutting the procession in two until reinforcements restored a semblance of order just before the parade reached City Hall. Inside the hall, Walker presided at one ceremony, followed by a second outdoors on the steps. A third followed at Bryant Park, where two thousand spectators gathered to see Amelia receive the Cross of Honor from the United States Flag Association.

  From Bryant Park she went to the Waldorf-Astoria where one thousand members and guests of the New York Advertising Club were waiting in the ballroom for a luncheon in her honor, followed by another ceremony at which three members of the Society of Woman Geographers presented her with a scroll notifying her she was to be awarded the society’s first gold medal. After an hour’s rest there were more press interviews and just enough time to dress for the dinner given by the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce.

  The next day she left on a Ludington plane for Washington to receive the National Geographic Society’s gold medal. She was accompanied by G. P. and David, her cousin Lucy Challis, Paul Collins, and Bernt Balchen. The Society’s president, Gilbert H. Grosvenor, met her at the Washington airport and took her to the White House for what is now called a “photo opportunity.” Amelia and President Hoover, who was to present the medal that night, did several “takes” for newsre
el cameramen in which she spoke her lines nicely but he became flustered, addressing her as “Miss Earhart, ahem, Mrs. Putnam, I mean.…”

  After lunch at the Society she was taken by Grosvenor to meet the secretaries of state, war, navy, and commerce, then on to the Senate and House. The Senate was recessed while she stood in the well of the chamber, her old friend Senator Bingham presenting her to the members who filed by to shake her hand. Fannie Kaley, who had seen Amelia fly the autogiro in Denver and was in the Senate gallery that day, wrote to Amy Earhart, “Never have I seen such a greeting as your daughter received. Everyone was on their feet immediately and cheered lustily.”

  Amelia’s second trip to the White House that day was for dinner, an occasion G. P. described as formal, “with a kind of Victorian elegance.” He meant dull. Always rather somber and reserved, Hoover was not overjoyed to have a man at his dinner table who had just published a book criticizing him and his party during an election year. Amelia, wearing a pale blue crepe gown, looked frail and very tired. Although the greater part of her earnings came from public speaking, she always dreaded it, so much so that on her lecture tours she customarily asked to be left alone for a few minutes before going on stage. On this night, when she was to describe in detail her Atlantic flight to one of the most discerning audiences she had ever faced, she had to spend the preceding ninety minutes at dinner making conversation with strangers.

  From dinner the party went to Constitution Hall where Amelia received the Geographic Society’s medal from Hoover before the fortunate thirty-eight hundred who had tickets. Ten thousand had applied. She was the fifteenth person and first woman to receive it, since its first presentation to Commodore Robert E. Peary by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. In her speech, broadcast over NBC’s thirty-eight-station network, Amelia repeated familiar themes. She made the crossing for her own personal satisfaction. It added nothing to the advance of aviation. The reward was out of proportion to the deed. She would be happy if her “small exploit has drawn attention to the fact that women are flying, too.”

  The wan, frail heroine observed in Washington may have felt the worst was over once she had delivered her speech because she seemed to have recovered the following day. Back in New York, she was honored at three affairs—an Explorers Club luncheon, a Zonta tea, and a dinner at the Astor Hotel given by fifty womens’ clubs and attended by one thousand guests. A friend of Muriel’s, commenting on how graciously Amelia accepted the praise given her, wrote that she “charmed everybody.” Home from the dinner by midnight, she went to a luncheon given by Standard Oil executives the next day before leaving with G. P. and David for Cleveland. The following day they were in Chicago for another parade.

  After a single day of rest, the “circus” resumed on June 27 when the towns of Rye and Harrison gave an all-day civic reception. Although Amelia and G. P. used Rye as their address, the house in Westchester was on property that lay in both townships and both claimed her. Amelia tactfully told her audience that she raised her vegetables in Rye and ate them in Harrison.

  On June 29 she arrived in Boston, accompanied by Lucy Challis and Hilton Railey. Amy and Muriel were at the airport but all Amelia had time to say was “Hello, Ma! How’ve you been?” and “Hello, Sis!” before the official party made off with her. The program that followed left only one hour to see her mother at Muriel’s place in Medford between a celebration at Braves Field in the afternoon and a dinner that night at the Copley-Plaza.

  When she returned from Boston her book, The Fun of It, which she had written before the flight with the exception of the last nine pages, was on sale. G. P. released it at the close of her first week of homecoming ceremonies so that in addition to reviews, which were generally complimentary, photographs of the author appeared in the rotogravure sections of newspapers throughout the country. These included pictures taken with Mayor Walker, President Hoover, and the king of Belgium. In each copy of the first edition was a small record of her BBC-CBS speech from London. Exploiting every sales possibility, G. P. made a special offer to members of the New York chapter of Zonta, an autographed copy for all those who ordered through the club.

  There was one more banquet, one Amelia actually pleasantly anticipated, to be given July 8 by the Southern California chapter of the National Aeronautic Association in Los Angeles. The guests would include many old friends meeting in a city she had loved from the time she first lived there in 1920. She could now talk with pilots as a colleague of proven ability. The California members of the Ninety-Nines would be there and her former instructor, Monte Montijo, already had his ticket.

  Arrangements for the banquet were being made by Pancho Barnes. Pancho was hostess to pilots and film stars at parties reputed to offer drugs, drink, and sex. However, she was also one of the organizers of the Motion Picture Pilots Association, a union that wrested from tight-fisted film producers an acceptable scale of fees for life-threatening stunts. An expert stunt flier herself, she owned a Travel Air Mystery S (for ship) in which she had broken Amelia’s speed record in 1930. If teetotaler Amelia disapproved of Pancho’s social life, she admired her skills as an aviator and an organizer. Years later, when Pancho was proprietor of the notorious Happy Bottom Riding Club at Edwards Air Force Base and friend to a young Chuck Yeager, Yeager’s wife Glennis observed that Pancho liked men but “there were very few women she would speak to.” Amelia was one of the few.

  Aiming for a transcontinental speed record on her way back from Los Angeles, Amelia left G. P. and David there when she took off for Newark a few days after the banquet. A faulty gas line forced her down at Columbus, ruining her plans for a nonstop trip and giving her a lapsed time of nineteen hours and fifteen minutes with almost eighteen hours of actual flying time.

  It was evident from her press comments that she would not accept this failure, but before trying again she returned to California to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross on July 29 and to attend the summer games of the Tenth Olympiad. Two days before he opened the games, Vice-President Charles Curtis presented her with the DFC. It was awarded by a joint resolution of the 72nd Congress for “displaying heroic courage and skill as a navigator at the risk of her life … by which she became the first and only woman to cross the Atlantic ocean in a plane in solo flight.” In a magazine article that was on the stands three days later, she wrote that one of the reasons she made the flight was to prove that “women can do most things men can do,” not everything, she added, but “jobs requiring intelligence, coordination, speed, coolness and will power.”

  Amelia, G. P., and David were all sports fans. In a letter to her mother she wrote that the games were wonderful, the weather ideal, and added, “You know what a track fan I have always been.” The track fan met two of her heroes, Paavo Nurmi, Finnish gold medalist in 1924, and the great Jesse Owens. The letter to Amy did not mention receiving the DFC nor the celebrities with whom she was photographed, among them Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaian swimmer and gold medalist in 1912 and 1920, actress Fay Wray, who would long be remembered as the object of King Kong’s affections, comedian Harold Lloyd, and Hollywood’s most famous couple, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Amelia, G. P., and David were dinner guests at Pickfair during the games, but to Amy Amelia wrote only family news and that she expected to return east “in a week or so.” She did not tell Amy she planned to make a second attempt at a nonstop, cross-country record.

  She did it, on August 24–25, in nineteen hours and five minutes, the longest continuous time she had ever flown alone. She also set a women’s record for distance—2,447 miles. G. P. and David, who had returned to New York earlier in the week, were not there to meet her. Instead, a shouting, pushing crowd of fans threatened to knock her over when she climbed down from the cockpit. Dressed in wrinkled brown jodhpurs and a crumpled orange silk shirt she motioned wearily, pleading, “Don’t come near me. If you knew how I feel.…”

  How she felt may have been more dreadful than her admirers could guess. In addition to fatigue, air sick
ness from gasoline fumes, and her abhorrence of being touched by strangers, there may have been another reason she wanted to remain at a distance from the crowd. A Newark aviation mechanic confided to an aeronautical designer there that after one of her long-distance flights her plane had reeked of urine. This may have been the flight to which he referred. Relief tubes designed for men were useless to women. In view of her nearly fanatical fastidiousness, to be in such a state would have been an agony for her.

  Before the crowd could reach her the police intervened and a few minutes later she had recovered sufficiently to smile for the photographers and talk to reporters. When one asked why her husband was not there to meet her she explained that he regarded her flying as a routine affair. Not everyone did. Charles and Anne Lindbergh wired, “Splendid flight. So pleased at your success.” In her brief account of the flight Amelia said, “If I had had the weather I had on my first attempt, I might have broken the men’s record.” If she had, it would not have been for long. She was referring to Frank Hawks’s time of seventeen hours and thirty-five minutes. Four days after her flight Jimmy Haizlip flew from Los Angeles to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn in ten hours and nineteen minutes, little more than half Amelia’s time.

  Much as she wanted to try again, she could not. After flying for “fun” for the better part of 1932 it was time to go to work. Before she left for Washington to receive the National Geographic medal, she had told reporters that she was ready to capitalize on her Atlantic flight “in any legitimate way that comes to hand. Any woman who wishes to should be able to do so without stigma.” She was “willing to lead the way” but “wouldn’t do anything false.”