Amelia

by Nancy Nahra

  A Friend Comes First

  Knowing that a busy Earhart was a happy Earhart, Putnam directed his efforts toward keeping her occupied and in the public eye. It was Putnam who smoothed the way for her to become Cosmopolitan magazine’s first-ever aviation editor. The magazine’s pride at having such a famous employee shows up in its letterhead at a time, now preserved by Purdue University. The official company name shows up centered: Hearst’s International combined with Cosmopolitan, it reads. Then only two names appear: Ray Long, Editor is on the left; Amelia Earhart, Aviation Editor, on the right.

  Earhart, who enjoyed writing as much as ever, had no trouble coming up with articles about aviation that might appeal to women. She wrote several articles a year that promoted aviation and encouraged women to fly.

  Obviously still flying herself, Earhart experimented with the controversial autogyro, a type of rotorcraft, or plane-helicopter hybrid, that could take off and land vertically. She was the first woman in the United States to fly one, near the end of 1930. But why stop there? She purchased one, and, within six months, she set a new autogyro altitude record of 18,451 feet.

  She sold her autogyro a few weeks after setting that record, but the Beech-Nut Company, which bought it, handed it right back to her, on loan, with their logo prominently displayed on the side of the craft. They wanted Earhart to fly it everywhere. And she did. Her way. Amelia Earhart made a transcontinental flight by autogyro in 1931. Earhart went on to set a new world altitude record of 18,415 feet, and set a new women’s world speed record of 181.15 miles an hour.

  Flying the unstable craft, however, had been a continuous headache. Government authorities, concerned for her safety, didn’t want to endorse it. To make that point, the Department of Commerce put its reprimand of Amelia Earhart in writing. It looked like time to slow down.

  Then she took up racing. In her first entry in the Women’s Air Derby, a cross-country race from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio – dubbed by Will Rogers as the “Powder Puff Derby,” - Earhart was tied for the lead at the last intermediate stop with her friend and rival, Ruth Nichols. When Nichols’s plane hit a tractor at the end of the runway and flipped, Earhart ran to the wreckage and pulled her friend out. Only when she was sure Nichols was safe did Earhart rejoin the race; the time she lost was the difference between winning and coming in third. Characteristically, she seldom mentioned the incident.

  Thanks to her own determination and hard work plus Putnam’s promotional savvy, Earhart arguably became the most famous woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt. She helped organize several fledgling airlines, including the two that became TWA and Northeast Airlines. She did public-relations work for the Pennsylvania Railroad and Beech-Nut chewing gum, and her image was so respected that any organization she joined could count on being taken seriously.

  When a group of women aviators organizing themselves at Long Island’s Curtiss Field couldn’t figure out what to call themselves, Earhart decided to take a leadership role. Now it was happening. Here was exactly the kind of group she hoped for. Should they call themselves the American Association of Women Pilots, the Ladybirds, Gadflies, or Bird Women?

  After Earhart was voted the group’s first president, she recommended that they call themselves “The Ninety-Nines” in honor of the original ninety-nine charter members. The name fit so well that the club still uses it today, having grown to an international organization with several thousand members, all women.

  Working Twice as Hard

  Earhart gladly accepted speaking invitations for reasons of her own. She meant what she had been saying about wanting to encourage young women to study subjects sometimes perceived as reserved for men. Groups of women – not limited to female aviators – now hoped to have Earhart as a speaker, knowing that she would find a way to inspire them.

  In May 1931, Earhart gave a speech for what sounded like a somewhat bland event. It was the annual dinner of the Barnard Athletic Association to recognize female students who had distinguished themselves in sports. Ordinarily a speaker at such event makes a few pleasant remarks that are seldom remembered the next day, but this was Amelia Earhart. Her talk was written up in The New York Times.

  “Women are physically as qualified for aviation as men, but have to work twice as hard to get the same amount of credit.” That was the initial eye-opening salvo - from a woman who weighed 115 pounds. She was not finished. Keeping in mind her own education and her own work experience, usually with men as colleagues, she went for the root of the problem, observing that the system of education was “based on sex not on aptitude.” To explain, she described many young women as being “shunted off” into courses to teach them domestic skills, like cooking and sewing. Not denigrating those abilities, she objected that it was done “simply because they are girls.” She talked about boys she knew who “should be making pies” and even proposed offering girls a chance to take manual training. And then her language became even more direct: “There is no reason why woman can’t hold any position in aviation providing she can overcome prejudices and show ability.”

  The year 1932 marked five years since Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight to Paris, leading people interested in aviation to assume that some aviator would reenact his success to mark the anniversary.

  In 1932, many regions of the world remained unexplored and inadequately mapped; isolated populations maintained ancient practices. The Society of Woman Geographers sought to create opportunities to share information that came from exploration of different kinds. Margaret Mead belonged to the organization and referred to it with zest: “This is my gang!” And that prestigious organization invited Amelia Earhart to its annual dinner in 1932, months before what Earhart counted as her first notable flight.

  In Fighting Trim

  Those who knew Earhart, particularly if they also knew Putnam’s penchant for staging dramatic events, suspected that she might be planning another transatlantic hop, this time solo. And indeed she was. True to form, Putnam was urging secrecy, and this time it worked. Not even Earhart’s closest friends knew that she planned to take off from Newfoundland on May 20, the exact date Lindbergh had begun his flight from Long Island five years earlier.

  Earhart trained for her feat as if she were an athlete. She ate healthy foods, got plenty of sleep and exercise, avoided negative thoughts, and worked at remaining calm.

  George Putnam, experienced at planning for his own outdoor adventures, now added his expertise to Amelia’s own talent for planning. Her efforts apparently reassured her, nearly everyone who saw her at home in the weeks before the transatlantic, commented on how serene she seemed. Wanting to offer unquestioning support, George co-operated in efforts to keep her calm. Again and again in those pre-flight weeks, Earhart suggested that she and Putnam work in the yard of their Rye, New York, home. So they raked leaves, then raked some more.

  A good friend before he became her husband, Putnam also understood the importance of seeing friends. Amelia loved being around people; when the couple’s home became a magnet for visitors, Putnam could see the success of his efforts at publicity. He could also see a particular visitor showing up more and more frequently.

  Handsome, graceful and extremely charming, Gene Vidal - who was to become the father of writer Gore Vidal - was the kind of man that women fell in love with. Earhart had liked Vidal instantly when she had met him a few years earlier. They had worked together at two airlines, TAT and NYWPA. A pilot himself and an activist in the cause of aviation, he wanted to collaborate in Earhart’s efforts and in her success. First, though, she had an important flight coming up.

  Bernt Balchen, a well-known pilot adventurer, engineer, and a friend of Putnam helped with the planning for the big flight that so few people knew about. Always optimistic, Earhart decided against packing a parachute - too heavy, she said. Her ultra-modern Lockheed Vega 5B was modified to accommodate the extra fuel required for the long flight.

  Earhart and Balchen took pains to make sure s
he began the flight well rested. She even let Balchen fly her to Newfoundland, a decision that turned out to be auspicious.

  “Any Landing on Land Is Good”

  If meticulous planning could guarantee a good flight, Earhart would have arrived in France safely and on time. But she didn’t, and the foremost problem was the weather, or more precisely, the weather information. “Doc” Kimball, a well-known weatherman, told Earhart at the start of her flight that the weather would be all right, not the best, but all right. He knew a storm was in the making, but he expected it would be to the south of her route. Kimball’s information was disastrously misleading. Earhart would run into monstrous weather - high winds, icing conditions, and near-zero visibility - after only a few hours of flying.

  Her plane had started giving her trouble before the severe weather hit. The altimeter stopped working, forcing her to guess how far above the water she was flying by looking outside. Her guesswork was useless once the conditions interfered with her sight.

  Another potential disaster appeared when Earhart saw flames coming from her exhaust manifold. It wasn’t necessarily catastrophic, but she had to make a judgment call: Fly on consuming fuel or turn back? She chose to keep going.

  The real trouble appeared when she found herself in the storm she had been warned about. Assuming that the information she had been given about the location of the storm was reliable, she reasoned that she had strayed from her course. Then, her visibility got so poor that she had to fly on instruments, a skill she had mastered only recently.

  Running low on fuel in a plane with a faulty engine and being forced to stay close to the water makes for a grueling flight. Earhart had no choice but to fly under those conditions for hours. Somehow she escaped the storm and finally saw land. It wasn’t France, as she had planned, but she was grateful to land anywhere. She found herself in Ireland near Londonderry.

  Earhart’s account of the landing near a field of flax sounded as if nothing at all had gone wrong: “I pulled up in a farmer’s back yard.” And when a farmhand asked how far she had flown, she simply said, “from America.” When Earhart’s sister Muriel heard about the landing in Ireland, her reaction was sage and succinct: “Any landing on land is good.” A year later, the Ulster-Irish Society of New York presented Earhart with a roll of fine linen, woven from the flax of the field where she had set down.

  Never a complainer, Earhart emphasized the successful aspect of the adventure when she spoke of her epic flight. But in photos taken soon after her landing, she appeared exhausted. After calling her husband, she spoke to the British press. Cool and unflappable as always, she dryly explained her motives for the flight:

  When there is a traffic jam on Fifth Avenue, men always comment, Oh, it’s a woman driving, Mrs. Putnam said. And I have gone up in the air with a mechanic who didn’t know the controls from an altimeter, and when I came down I heard people say he did most of the flying.

  So I determined to show them. [But] outside of demonstrating that a woman can fly the Atlantic alone, I don’t see that I have added anything to the science of aviation or anything else.

  Woman really is capable of standing strain better and longer than man. Give her time to work up a problem before her and she will stand the gaff as well and better than any man.

  But what I did was not a great draft on my strength. I have danced all night lots of times and flying all night isn’t very much. . . .

  “Flying All Night Isn’t Very Much”

  This time, Earhart had no misgivings about the endless attention that followed her flight. The first woman to fly the Atlantic alone and the first person to fly across the ocean twice had earned the recognition. She had captured the record for the fastest crossing, thirteen hours and forty minutes, and the longest distance ever flown by a woman. The celebration went on for weeks.

  Flown to London, she stayed with the American ambassador and visited the Prince of Wales, whom she had met the first time she flew in from America. This time, their conversation proved so engaging that the heir to the throne lingered, prolonging their encounter beyond the royal schedule. Then the prince’s father sent his greetings and congratulations by telegram. British high society eagerly lined up to meet this extraordinary young American. Lady Astor shared her privileged access by inviting Earhart to the derby at Epsom Downs where the refined audience greeted the aviatrix with delight.

  Earhart’s celebrity treatment didn’t stop there. Her achievement opened doors of every kind: She was escorted to a special meeting with the elderly George Bernard Shaw, at that time one of England’s most esteemed writers.

  Any achievement provokes jealousy from people who do not see sufficient reasons for praise. Earhart’s extraordinary accomplishment had its detractors. But seeing the expression of such pettiness is a pointed reminder of attitudes about gender roles in the 1930s. Comments like these continued to dog Earhart for her entire career. Here, in its entirety, is a report that showed up in the New York Post, soon after she landed in Ireland, and not Paris, as planned: “As we go to press, it appears that Mrs. Amelia Earhart Putnam has landed in Ireland after a non-stop flight from Newfoundland. She didn’t make Rome, as she hoped, or Paris, as Lindberg did. We think it an almost entirely silly and useless performance. About all she has proved is that well-known phenomenon of nature that a girl can’t jump quite as far as a boy can.”

  Other leading figures who met Earhart came up with ways to honor her while advancing plans of their own. Gordon Selfridge, whose family owned the eponymous London department store, saw Earhart’s achievement – and her presence - as an opportunity with commercial possibilities. He arranged to have Selfridge’s take the lead in marketing a women’s fashion line that Earhart helped design. Recalling the challenge of figuring out how to dress for her own early flying lessons, Amelia had helped create clothing for active women. Now Selfridge wanted that “look” in his store. He went as far as exhibiting Earhart’s plane in his store.

  Exploiting the moment further, Selfridge presented the famous American with an expensive wrist watch. Amelia, with requisite courtesy, gave Selfridge the watch she had worn both times she had flown over the Atlantic. Everything that happened in England was adding to Amelia’s fame. Dignitaries as well as huge crowds gathered in a frenzy of appreciation that touched her. Or so Amelia thought until she saw Paris.

  Pilots know that airports need advance information about incoming flights. Amelia knew that the farmer’s field in Ireland where she landed had never been her destination; she had set out for Le Bourget airport, just outside Paris. Because she now understood that her unrealized plan had already made unusual demands on the target airport, she wanted to express her gratitude and go to France before going home. An enthusiastic fan from the aircraft industry had arranged her travel (by water, not air). By that time, George Putnam had arrived in the north of France, where Earhart now joined him before they went on to the capital together.

  In Paris, she was given the French Cross of the Legion of Honour. Knowing the importance of appearance in the world’s fashion capital, Earhart presented herself to the French Senate dressed as a correctly stylish and thoroughly modern woman. Meeting the same high-level officials who had honored Lindbergh just five years earlier, she now received the same medal they had conferred on him. Photographs show her captivating the senators who look delighted by the exotic lady who stood taller than many of them. The cheering crowds that greeted her everywhere in France were huge and ecstatic.

  Somehow, even before she left England for France, Earhart managed to finish her second book, The Fun of It. Thanks to guidance – and pressure – from Putnam, she had written most of the manuscript before she left.

  The book’s final chapter could qualify for the world’s shortest summary of a particularly long flight: “Starting from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, on the afternoon of May 20, 1932, I landed near Londonderry in the north of Ireland the next morning, thirteen and a half hours after the takeoff. That, briefly, is the story of my
solo flight across the Atlantic.”

  But the point of that succinct account was not lost on anyone who read her first book. It had described her experience as a passenger aboard Friendship in 1928, the flight that left her knowing she must make a solo transatlantic crossing. That book’s title was 20 Hrs. 40 Min., Our Flight in the Friendship. In Earhart’s second book, the speedy account of her solo flight invites a comparison to the earlier one. As modestly as possible, she points out how much faster she flew alone.

  In a promotional coup, Putnam arranged to have a recorded version of Amelia’s speech when she landed in that farmer’s field in Ireland. As he planned, early copies of Earhart’s second book included the recorded speech, packed inside the back cover. Also thanks to Putnam’s planning, The Fun of It would be on bookstore shelves within weeks of the flight’s completion.

  Since Earhart’s flight had symbolically joined two continents, other countries in Europe moved quickly to invite the world’s most famous American woman. After France, Italy wanted to be part of the euphoria and show its appreciation of a modern marvel. At the invitation of Benito Mussolini, Earhart visited Rome and also the Vatican, where she met the pope. Next she went to Belgium to receive that country’s highest award, the Cross of the Chevalier of the Order of Leopold. While there, Earhart had lunch with the king and queen.

  On June 15, Earhart and Putnam sailed to the United States on the Isle de France. The reception was enthusiastic. Parades and cheering came first, then an invitation from the White House. Numerous newspapers reported that President Herbert Hoover would present Earhart with a gold medal from the National Geographic Society.

  A front-page story The New York Times noted the importance of the moment for women, even if the headline could have been mistaken for a tame announcement from the society page: “Geographic Society Honors Mrs. Putnam.”