by Susan Butler
As a matter of fact Amy is less deserving of my assistance than most anyone I know; however, she is my sister and as you say, must be treated as a child. Now, what I am willing to do is to advance her $100.00 per month for a time (a little more or less as you may discover conditions warrant) either from me personally or from The Otis Real Estate Co. (the latter preferred) if it can be satisfactorily and safely arranged; but from whatever source, it must be simply an advance to temporarily tide her over her difficulties.
The next day Mark received a letter from Amy. It frightened him, for in it she took him to task for the hostility he had shown toward her, Amelia, and Muriel. He couldn’t send this letter on to Charles as he had done with her others, because of her accusations that he had conducted himself callously and unfeelingly. But if he denied getting the letter, he would undoubtedly eventually be caught out, since he had positioned himself in the role of long-suffering brother in constant correspondence with his sister. He resolved the dilemma by telling Charles that Amy seemed to be in desperate straits and that he had “immediately wired her to see you, as you have full power to act for me.”
He took another day to write to his sister, assuring her there was no bitterness in his heart toward her or her children, and that she should go to their Uncle Charles, give him a true statement of all her debts, and figure out how much money she needed to tide her over—which sums would be in the nature of a secured loan.
Mark’s advice to his uncle not to worry about any “social obligation” to his sister bore bitter, bitter fruit. The result, if he was ever apprised of it, would have warmed Mark’s heart. For Charles, a socially retiring person to begin with who had been a widower for fifteen years; for his son, James, ten years younger than Amy, a hard-working young lawyer becoming involved in municipal government, married, with three young children on his hands; and for his daughter Maribel, unmarried, who presided over Charles’s house, Mark’s advice relieved them of what would have been at best a difficult and probably unhappy situation. If they didn’t take the Earharts up, then they wouldn’t have to deal with an alcoholic who had brought his family to the verge of destitution. The barest of financial help was the full extent of Charles’s aid.
During the long cold Minnesota winters, skating and the sport of curling (a game played on ice between two teams of four players) were the major social pastimes among the nice families in St. Paul. They were carried out at private clubs, but Amy didn’t have the money for Amelia and Muriel to join the curling club on Selby Avenue, which under ordinary circumstances they would have joined—the one founded by Charles’s father-in-law. No offer of financial help, no kind invitations to join them in club activities were forthcoming from Charles. So Amy, who had thought that as an Otis she would be welcomed in the city where her Uncle George had been mayor and where her “Dear Uncle Charlie” and his children lived, saw her dream shattered. No invitations for Amelia and Muriel to meet St. Paul children were extended by Charles or James or Maribel, no Otis friends called her up. The door that Charles had promised to keep open to Amy “wherever” he was, remained closed, except for the barest crack.
Amy and Edwin had chosen for their residence in St. Paul a house at 825 Fairmont Avenue. It was a bad choice—it was so big that heating it required an inordinate amount of coal that they could ill afford, with the result that in winter much of the house was uninhabitable. Since nothing ever came of Amy’s ad offering “to take charge of two or three girls during the school year,” they rattled around in the large, cold house. To save pennies, Amelia and Muriel shopped for food miles away from their house, sometimes walking to save the bus fare.
Edwin worked fitfully at his menial job of freight clerk, continuing to disappoint his family. His drinking grew worse. At Christmastime Edwin was due home to perform his fatherly duty of escorting Amelia and Muriel to the Christmas party at St. Clement’s, the neighborhood Episcopal church that provided the major part of their social life. Both girls very much wanted to go. They each had a date waiting for them at the party, and they had made quite elaborate preparations, both in terms of clothes and in decorating the house, for they expected that the boys would walk them home when the party was over. But Edwin came home hours late, and dead drunk. They missed the party. Forty years later Muriel would still remember the night with bitterness.
Blocked from every other social outlet, the church provided Amelia with friends and activities: she joined the Altar Guild, was a member of the Junior Auxiliary, and sang in the choir. Each Sunday she and Marion Blodgett, a student a year ahead of her at high school who lived a block away on Osceola Avenue, walked to St. Clements together. As members of the Altar Guild, they ran errands, learned how to set the altar for services, and helped wherever they were needed. They polished the silver chalice that held the wine, the paten, upon which the wafers rested, and before Christmas and Easter services, they scrubbed the marble floor between the altar rail and the altar. However, appreciative as Amelia was of the companionship and activity—something she had taken for granted in earlier years—her heart was no more in cleaning up at church than in cleaning up at home. Marion would remember the times when what Amelia had done had to be redone by someone else. Marion would also remember how much Amelia loved singing in the choir, and that the two of them sometimes giggled so loudly they drew a reprimand. It didn’t bother either one of them. Marion thought her “lots of fun.”
In those areas of her life where she functioned on her own—at school and at church—Amelia’s concentration and enthusiasm carried her through. At the St. Paul Central High School she took advantage of the extensive range of courses offered. She took physics, maintaining an 85 grade point average for the year, and she did even better in Latin, achieving an 88 grade point average. She started German, which should have made her father happy, and she did quite well in this course too, in fact achieving her best mark for the year, a grade of 91. She played basketball, making the basketball team, which she enjoyed, writing her Atchison school chum Virginia Park, “You miss much by not having Gym.” The letter to Virginia, written in the spring of 1914, as usual replete with arch phrases and spellings, is remarkable for its high spirits and feeling of normalcy:
Blessings on thee, Little Ginger—
How goes everything mit Innen (mit governs the dative).... Of course I am going to B.M. [Bryn Mawr] if I have to drive a grocery wagon to accumulate the cash. You see I’m practicing growing boy language because if I use up all my money going to grand “Hopery” why—Ill be minus later that’s all. I wish you were up her because Parsifal and I don’t know what are coming here. I suppose they will be in K.C. I’m all thrills. Did you hear Paderewski.... I wonder if he played Chopin Funeral March down at St. Joe as he did here....
All the girls are so nice it’s a joy to be with them don’t you know. I am doing my best to get some of them to go to B.M. with Ginger and Millie.
Your letter was scrummy. So long and joysome. I’ll send you the translation of your Cicero. I’m a shark. That Maulian law is the hardest old mess I’ve had in ages. Your letter was very funny
I lawffed ex’cessively.
Speaking of funny things, my dear freshman of a sister spoke very importantly of “forum” in their class meeting (All those lambs attend their meeting religiously) completely mystifying the family until mother had the happy thot she meant quorum....
It’s so hot today I am just baked. I want this reading matter to go off on the next mail so I’ll cease.
Love, Mill.
I’ll write you a sensible letter someday. You needn’t ans. this communication unless you have nothing else to do. All contributions, however, are thankfully received at this end.
Still, in spite of the brave front, the anguish of her home life made it increasingly hard for Amelia to concentrate, and her marks inched down as the school year progressed. Her 91 grade point average in the first term slipped to an 85 in the second.
4
Teenage Years
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� • • • They left St. Paul as they had come, in disarray. Edwin thought he had found a job in the claims office of the Burlington Railroad in Springfield, Missouri, so they packed up and boarded the train to Springfield en famille. Upon arrival Edwin went into the Burlington claims office at the station, to find there had been a terrible mistake; there was no job. They spent that night at a cheap railway boarding house hard by the tracks.
For Amy this was the last straw. The stress of the year in St. Paul had been enormous; she was so exhausted and nervous that the slightest noise made her jump, and several times she had shivering fits during which her legs stopped working. Amelia, on whose shoulders Amy’s care had fallen, was so worried, she went to discuss Amy’s symptoms with their doctor, who told her that Amy was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and needed rest and quiet. Old friends, the Shedds, had previously offered to take them in until Edwin could get back on his feet. Before, it hadn’t seemed like a reasonable idea because it meant splitting up the family, the thing Amy and Amelia and Muriel dreaded above all else, but now even her daughters could see that Amy needed a change—a respite—so it was agreed: Amy and Amelia and Muriel would go to Chicago to live with the Shedds and then possibly find a modest place of their own; Edwin, alone, would return to the house on Fairmont Street in St. Paul. It was a painful time.
When, as an adult, Amelia spoke of her youth; she drew a curtain around these years so cleverly that in her lifetime no one knew of the trials of the Earharts. She made it sound artless:
The family rolled around a good deal during my father’s railroad years, Kansas City, Des Moines, St. Paul, Chicago—forward and back. What we missed in continuous contacts over a long period, we gained by becoming adapted to new surroundings quickly. I have never lived more than four years in any one place and always have to ask “Which one?” when a stranger greets me by saying “I’m from your home town.”
Upon their arrival in Chicago that summer of 1914, they were dutifully taken in hand by the Shedds. But before they really settled in, Amelia, alone, went to visit her cousins, the Challisses, in Atchison. She arrived at the train station, with trunk, on August 6. Returned to home territory, she sank back into Atchison to do as she had done all her life before—returned to her old haunts, picked up with her old friends, fell into her old pastimes. She told no tales of woe, expressed no fear about the future, shed no tears, asked for no sympathy, and none was given. She acted as she always had, played as she always had, gossiped as she always had, and fitted in as before.
Seamlessly she wove herself into the Challiss family. She was treated like a sister by Jack, Tootie, Katch, and the baby, Peggy, and like a daughter by James and Rilla, all of whom immediately involved her in whatever they were doing.
It is from Katch’s diary that a record exists of Amelia’s visit. It details the lazy relaxed summertime pursuits in the small town. For Katch it was just like old times—the only difference she could see in “Mill,” now that she had moved away, was that she seemed “awfully grown up.” If there had been any conversation or worries about Amelia’s lack of clothes, or clothes that looked threadbare, Katch would have remarked on it. If there had been any “serious” conversations between Rilla and “Millie,” as the Challisses called Amelia, Katch would have noticed it. But there was apparently nothing out of the ordinary: Amelia just seemed normal to this observant, interested record-keeper who let no change of dress, no change of plans, no expedition go unnoticed.
Rilla and Katch met her at the railroad station, took her home, and installed her in the old nanny’s room, and she settled in. As soon as she unpacked her trunk, she went over to see Ginger Park, who being Katch and Lucy’s friend also already knew that she was there. Another friend of her cousins and an old friend of hers, Katherine Dolan (known to one and all as Dolan) gave an afternoon whist party in honor of Amelia, gathering together enough girls for eight tables.
Katch spent a lot of time those first days just “fooling around” with Amelia, taking advantage of the fact that Toot was out of town. When Rilla took Katch to Kansas City for the day, to buy handerkerchiefs, a panama hat, and yellow ribbons, she took Amelia, too. On Sunday morning Amelia went to Sunday school with Katch. She stayed for the service and sat in the old Otis pew (and went back the following Sunday). With Katch in tow she went next door into her grandparents’ house, now silent and empty, looked around, and brought out, “some books and stuff”—an act Katch thought quite daring. “The little devil,” Katch wrote after the escapade. One moonlit evening, following a walk with Rilla, Amelia and Katch wandered in the garden in their nightgowns, drinking in the beauty.
Toot came back, and she and Amelia picked up their friendship. “Toot” gave a card party too; it was the thing to do in spite of the summer heat. Hers had two tables of teenage girls, and “auction” and rummy were the favorite games. Katch, too young, was at the Park house playing jacks with Ginger’s younger sister Annie. Pineapple sandwiches, jelly sandwiches, ripe olives, and lemonade were served. The one afternoon Toot was busy, Katch snatched Amelia back: “Mill and Peggy and I went over to Ginger P’s.” One morning Toot didn’t want to go in swimming so, entered Katch in her diary on August 28, “Mill and I went—had packs of fun.”
Amelia slept late, spent long mornings reading, or swimming, or playing tennis with Toot, or making fudge, and whiled away many peaceful evenings with the family sitting on the porch listening to James Challiss playing the guitar or competing in games of cribbage or hearts or parcheesi. Many days she and Toot just “fussed”—Katch’s word for hanging out.
Occasionally they went to parties, or dated. A young man named Charles came to see Toot, and a boy named Dutch came for Millie. (Katch’s reaction was “ugh.”) Sometimes they all played cards. One of the last nights, Amelia begged off going to a party and stayed home, so Toot stayed home too. They sat on the porch after dinner and talked.
The last week, Amelia got out her camera and took pictures of all the Challisses, and then at her request they took pictures of her with them. She left on Monday, September 7. By that time Toot and Amelia, now woven together by the strong threads of adolescence, made Katch, so much younger, feel left out. Adolescence was a world she could not yet enter. This alert child, who had written when her younger sister Peggy was born, “I lost my place as the youngest child,” now observed, in her diary entry for Monday, September 7, “Mill left this morning at 10:00 and I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t very sorry to see her go. Toot and I cleaned the house up wonderfully.”
She had her sister back.
The plan had been for Amy and Amelia and Muriel to live somewhere in the Morgan Park district of Chicago near the Shedds and for Amelia and Muriel to go to the Morgan Park high school with the Shedd daughter. When Amelia, however, saw the school, she was appalled by its low standards (she likened the chemistry lab to a kitchen sink) and refused to enroll.
The Chicago public school system operated on the “neighborhood” concept—one went to the high school in the district where one lived. So when Amelia chose Hyde Park High School, in the Hyde Park district, it meant they had to find lodgings there.
Amy had never been a match for Amelia. Even when Amelia was young, she had been able to bend her mother to her will. As a tot, she had succeeded in dawdling for over an hour over a glass of milk to keep Amy reading Ivanhoe because her mother had promised to read until the milk was finished. Now no more than before could Amy stand up to her, even though she wanted to live near her friends and Muriel had her heart set on going to the same school the Shedd daughter attended.
Hyde Park was the best public high school in Chicago. Located near the University of Chicago, challenged by the infusion of the bright, motivated children of University of Chicago faculty, Hyde Park excelled in all disciplines and offered extensive extracurricular activities. Its student body was notable for the high percentage who went on to attend top colleges, as well as for the extraordinary number of alumni and alumnae who would become distinguished
musicians, artists, scientists, and athletes—among them, in later generations, TV personality Steve Allen, jazz vocalist Mel Torme, economist Paul Samuelson, and Olympic medalist Jim Fuchs.
But Amelia made no friends and participated in no activities. She was seventeen when school opened that fall of 1914. She never made the slightest effort to fit in. In contrast to the exuberance she had exhibited the previous spring, enabling her to rise above her disastrous home life and take part in the various activities in St. Paul, Amelia participated in none of the organized student activities at Hyde Park. She arrived that fall the outsider in the senior class, and she remained the outsider. Each day when classes were over, she left and went home and cared for Amy.
Hyde Park was a school way ahead of its time. The sports facilities were not only superb but were available to girls as well as boys. The glorious sports she had worked so enthusiastically to master and to teach her friends to play when she had been at College Preparatory School—basketball and baseball—were played with full teams and official rules by girls as well as boys. There was even a girls’ indoor baseball team. Here was an incredible cornucopia of riches—and Amelia took no part. She played on no team at all.
Nor was that the extent of her nonparticipation in school activities. Hyde Park had dozens of extracurricular student clubs covering every possible activity. Amelia was among the few who belonged to none—not the Dramatic Club, the Discussion Club, the Civics Club, the Choral Society, the Camera Club, Honor Society, Pythagorean Club, or the Glee Club, to single out a few.
In The Aitchpe, the senior class yearbook, there is a very odd description of Amelia, as well as a very odd picture. The description reads, “Meek loveliness is ‘round thee spread.” It is so far off the mark that it indicates beyond question that she had remained an unknown quantity to her classmates who produced the book. The square space next to her photo—which for other students contains a list of achievements, hopes, and interests—is a blank. For the first and last time in her life, Amelia was too preoccupied to interact with her peers. There is a picture of her in the yearbook: her hair is attractively piled on her head, and she is wearing a ribbon choker. She looks collected, and composed—serious and very mature—but old for her years as she stares off into the distance. And different. There is a hint of primness, a sense of tenseness—she is unlike her usual self. The painfully neat clothes bear witness that, depressed as she was, she allowed no chink in her armor. Among the many things her classmates did not know about Amelia was that her family was so poor, she and her mother and sister were living in rooms in an apartment belonging to two spinster sisters who made their life miserable. And she went home to those rooms every day after school to be with Amy.
