by Susan Butler
Thea’s dunking in the Hudson had brought forth a spate of articles about women daring to fly and being unprepared. Immediately following Thea’s crash landing this time, Amelia climbed into one of the field’s Waco 10’s and proceeded to entertain the onlookers with what the papers called “an excellent demonstration of flying” to prevent the same negative reaction. Harold Dennison undoubtedly thought the point of her going up was to distract the waiting, worried crowd. That was only his idea, it turned out; Amelia had another goal—to negate any resurgence of antifeminist feeling. Upon landing, she stated her mission to the waiting reporter. “Miss Earhart wanted to prove that Miss Rasche’s mishap was unavoidable and no fault of her own; that women are quite as capable pilots as men, and quite as daring” dutifully reported the newsman on the scene. She had finally found her public voice. Soon, the whole world would be listening.
In the first months of 1928 Amelia had the clever idea of writing an article about flying for The Bostonian, the fashionable magazine that all Boston read, and she had the nerve and self-confidence to charm its editor, Katherine Crosby, into publishing it.
Undoubtedly Katherine gazed approvingly at Amelia’s casual style and lack of makeup, so in keeping was her look with that of the proper women of Boston, who were brought up to regard the cultivation of external glamour as cheap artifice, as Cleveland Amory would write. The Bostonian was the magazine that kept tabs on the “knowns” of Boston—those whose families had been there for generations. If it reported on the “unknowns,” it was likely to be aristocratic unknowns—usually English. The magazine studiously recorded the summer comings and goings of the English diplomatic community, which in those days before air conditioning regularly fled Washington for houses on the North Shore. For an “outsider” like Amelia to be accepted with such alacrity into the sacrosanct inner circle was highly unusual. But Amelia was perfect in looks, unaffected in manner, and modest in demeanor—the ultimate hallmarks of Boston breeding.
Katherine Crosby was effusive—in print; having been charmed, she wanted the rest of Boston to be charmed too. She wrote of Amelia as a “real thoroughbred,” her highest accolade, and recounted how it all came about: “a curly headed girl ... curled up on the couch in The Bostonian’s sitting room and wondered if she could write us an article about flying.... All she wanted was to make flying interesting to women.... Amelia Earhart impressed us all at the time as having the least vanity of any girl we had met in a month of Mondays.... I had to persuade her to allow her name to be signed to the article.” And again her face was before the public—this time a remarkably faithful line drawing of Amelia in the flying outfit in which she had been photographed the previous spring. The article, titled “When Women Go Aloft,” appeared in the May issue. In it Amelia gently stated her case.
“While women are hopelessly adventurous, they seem content to take their thrills vicariously, and watch men do things a long time before they attempt to do them. I have hope that this year will see many more women flying. Will it help my bright little hope to blossom into a bouncing reality if I give some aspects of flying from a feminine point of view? In the first place, I shall repeat what I said about beauty. There is the beauty of adventure, as in all sports; and a beauty of the earth, impossible to get in any other way.”
She went on to describe the thrills of flying, some common misconceptions of its danger, and closed with a neat encapsulation of her beliefs: “There is no door closed to ability, so when women are ready there will be opportunity for them in aviation.”
Boston is a small town, but in those days it was even smaller. Amelia was becoming newsworthy enough that in April the aviation department of The Boston Evening Transcript asked her to fill out a biography for their files. She contributed the following (as usual lying about her age). “Pilot rating; only F.A.I, [license given out by the Federation Aéronautique Internationale]. Born July 24, 1898, at Atchison Kansas. Educated, Ogontz School and Columbia University. War Service, V.A.D. Canadian Red Cross. Occupation, social worker. Flying activities, tumbling around a little for sport. Director Dennison Airport Corporation and subsidiary corporations.”
Amelia had as a matter of course joined the Boston chapter of the National Aeronautic Association the previous year—part of the “reawakening” of her interest in flying. In this organization too, made up in large part of aviation-minded male “establishment” businessmen such as Gardiner H. Fiske, vice-chairman of the municipal air board of Boston, retired Rear Admiral Reginald Belknap, Harold Dennison, and others involved in flying, she was making an impact. The members were an active, growing group; plans were afoot to begin weekly aviation talks on WLOE, the local radio station.
Her presence at the monthly NAA luncheon meetings in the Chamber of Commerce Building on Federal Street the first Tuesday of each month would have weighed in her favor (a charming, interested, attentive young woman in the midst of all those men), but it was a letter she wrote sometime that spring that particularly marked her out. She was venting her feelings on what seemed to her to be NAA inaction in comparison to Los Angeles, where aviators, including herself when she had been there, were always putting on air meets to publicize themselves and raise money. Here in Boston she was so effortlessly becoming famous; she wanted to put her new-found public relations expertise to work, as she wrote the men. “The cause of the following outburst is the receipt of notice of dues from the N.A.A. I began to think what the organization should stand for and put some of the thoughts down. Notice of dues comes only once a year, so you may feel safe from another attack for some time.” She continued, “N.A.A. should co-operate with all types of business men. Perhaps women are chief offenders.... Should they have their own organization? There should be advertising. I’d even be in favor of a billboard on a main highway, announcing that Boston was air-minded.
The men were riveted by the activist, competent, good-looking young woman who at one and the same time offered them fund-raising expertise and threatened to resign and form a rival women’s organization.
Historically predisposed as Boston was to accept female achievers, what might have been considered an inappropriate letter was taken seriously and weighed on its merits by these Bostonians. Her letter was in fact so well received that on May 29 she was nominated for vice-president because, “with her unusual interest in aviation and her recognized ability, her selection would greatly strengthen the work of the Chapter.” It was a great honor; she would serve with Commander Richard Byrd, honorary president; Sumner Sewall, U.S. air ace who held the Distinguished Service Cross, the French Legion of Honor, and the Croix de Guerre, president; and lastly Bernard Wiesman, secretary of the Committee on Aviation for the Boston Chamber of Commerce, as secretary-treasurer. She became the first female officer in the NAA.
Amelia was not the least bit intimidated by the men she would be serving with. Another of her pronouncements was, “The air-mail industry seemed to be as strong a dose of aviation as Boston could stand at the time, and Sumner Sewall was having to hold her nose while he spooned that in.” She was on the committee of the National Playground Association chosen to judge the upcoming Boston model airplane tournament. This, too, was a measure both of her industry and of her stature, for such tournaments were major events throughout the country. On the national level, chairmen included all the famous names in aviation, from Orville Wright to Charles Lindbergh; on the city level, all resident aviation luminaries pitched in—and as a result of the enthusiasm of fliers and children alike, the number of young people joining the model airplane clubs and participating in the contests was skyrocketing all across the country.
Two years before, Amelia had been in the depths of despair—unable to get her life going, unable to accomplish anything, unable to even finish a letter to her friend Marian. Now there had been a total transformation. A different person came forward. Her perspective was set, and she was at ease in the public eye; she stepped onto the world stage.
PART TWO
8
Dreams of Glory
●●●● While Amelia was becoming more and more attuned to life in Boston, the flying world took a giant leap forward: the North Atlantic—the Mount Everest of flight—was conquered.
It was the spring of 1927 when Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris, having flown the Atlantic in thirty-three hours. His achievement changed the world. “I woke that afternoon,” he would later write, “a little stiff but well rested into a life which could hardly have been more amazing if I had landed on another planet instead of Paris.” He collected the $25,000 prize Raymond Orteig had put up for anyone who could accomplish the astounding feat. The New York Times paid him the unheard-of sum of $125,000 for the story plus $50,000 more for a goodwill tour.
Columbus of the Air, he was called. Fame and riches were instantly his. While he remained abroad, ambassadors attended to his needs; kings and queens, princes and ministers, presidents and parliaments took their turns honoring him. The president of the United States dispatched a navy ship to fetch him home. When he arrived in New York, he was given a ticker-tape parade up Broadway, and the city dissolved into a frenzy not seen since the armistice. He went to Washington next. It, too, went wild. He addressed a joint session of Congress, and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Flying Cross. And as he traveled around the country, the adulation never stopped. It was as if aviation were beginning all over again. “An epoch in air history was closed by the flight of Lindbergh and with it an epoch begins,” proclaimed The North American Review.
Overnight he had become the most famous man on earth. Wrote Walter Lippmann, giving voice to what everyone felt, “Our publicity machine will illuminate whatever we point it at.... Point it at Lindbergh and it will transfigure the mundane world with young beauty and unsullied faith.”
His flight, according to serious, knowledgeable aviation people, “marked the end of the early pioneering period of aviation and the beginning of the industrial period.” But most people didn’t care. It was the adventure and the daring that drew their attention.
The challenge of flying the North Atlantic would remain irresistible for years following Lindbergh’s achievement. It became, actually, even more irresistible—and much deadlier. In the history of adventuring, to fly the Atlantic must go down as one of the most deadly quests. For an adventurer, it was the supreme adventure; for a seeker of glory, it was the surest path.
Lindbergh’s success opened the floodgates. For if the first and greatest challenge had been met—the solo, nonstop North Atlantic crossing—there were still other aerial firsts to be won, other tantalizing prizes. There was the challenge of flying east to west, against the wind—a longer and tougher trip requiring additional gasoline. There was the challenge of winning one of the $25,000 prizes put up by the cities—London, Ontario, to London, England; Philadelphia to anywhere in Europe; anywhere in Europe to Boston.
And finally there was the challenge of being the first woman. The dangers of flying across the Atlantic were perceived as so great, the risks so incomprehensible, the act so brave, that that first woman would become instantly internationally famous.
In the twelve months following Lindbergh’s flight, fifty-five airminded adventurers in eighteen planes attempted to fly the Atlantic. Three planes succeeded, one came close; the rest failed. Out of the fifty-five, eight achieved their goal; fourteen died. Five of these aerial adventurers were women, and in that time span, of the five, three died—either killed on impact, incinerated, or drowned.
It didn’t matter that each of the women had men aboard to help her pilot her plane—it didn’t really matter to each woman if she failed (as long as she survived)—just daring the impossible, would make her a superstar. These five women made no bones about national honor or scientific achievement. Each was courageous, and each just wanted to be famous. Three tried immediately after Lindbergh, that summer of 1927. The first was an English princess; her plane disappeared. The second was a Viennese actress; her heavy plane never became airborne. The third was an American beauty contest winner; she was rescued at sea. The fourth, a bit later, was another American woman, a niece of Woodrow Wilson, whose plane wasn’t ready till winter; she took off two days before Christmas; her plane also disappeared.
The North Atlantic in the throes of winter put a stop to further flights. Spring came reluctantly, that March 1928, as flyers on both sides of the ocean stood poised, waiting for the weather to break.
The fifth to try was England’s most glamorous aviatrix, the Honorable Elsie Mackay. The dark-haired daughter of Lord Inchcape, famous for her gowns and jewels and silver Rolls-Royce as much as for her flying escapades, took off from an airdrome in Lincolnshire, England, on March 13 accompanied by one-eyed English air ace Walter Hinchcliffe, who was so good his fellow pilots said that he could just about fly to Paris, Amsterdam, or Cologne with his one eye shut. As the black and gold Stinson Detroiter, powered by a single powerful Wright Whirlwind engine, rolled down the icy field, it threw up spumes of snow; two parallel tracks remained on the white ground as it disappeared to the west.
Front-page headlines on both sides of the Atlantic heralded Endeavor’s departure and route. The New York Times gave it a three column head: “Hinchcliffe Takes Off for America with Daughter of Lord Inchcape; Passes Ireland and Heads Out to Sea.”
Fliers were stunned that they had started already because it wasn’t cold just in England—the freezing temperatures extended across the ocean to Newfoundland—and ice was a plane’s deadly enemy. Excitement grew to a fever pitch. If the fliers made it, they would join the pantheon of the gods, for it would be a double first—not only would Mackay be the first woman to fly the Atlantic, but the two of them would be the first to do it the long hard way, flying against the wind, east to west.
Ships at sea and lighthouses up and down the eastern seaboard of North America signaled and searched the skies. Thousands of people waited at Mitchell field on Long Island. And waited.
It turned out that they had barely begun their quest before disaster struck. Days later, parts of the plane were found, washed up at Donegal on the northwestern coast of Ireland.
Mabel Boll, a striking brunette with lots of money and a penchant for publicity, wanted to be the sixth. She came from Rochester, New York, and claimed to be an heiress, but her father, George Boll, was clearly listed as a bartender in Rochester city directories. She was an adventuress, unabashedly ambitious, totally without pretense, searching for fame. She knew that no matter what the world crisis, a woman taking wing across the ocean would always command the banner headlines of newspapers all over the world. “I have no wish to pilot an airplane, for that is man’s work,” she was quoted as saying. She merely wanted “to have the honor of being the first woman passenger to make the transatlantic trip.” Because she usually wore two huge diamond rings, one of 62 carats and the other of 48 carats, as well as other lesser baubles, the press dubbed her the “Queen of Diamonds.”
Mabel lived her highly public life in France, where she divided her time between a mansion in Paris and a chateau in the country. Her transatlantic quest, duly chronicled by the newspapers, actually began in August 1927, when she offered 100,000 francs to any pilot who would take her across. She promised reporters she would be wearing a vest fashioned of gold links with buttons made of diamonds and a collar made of platinum. The newspapers loved her gaudiness. As The New York Times commented, “Just to be photographed in that sweater on Mitchel Field at the end of the flight over the ocean appears to be her one great ambition.” She hoped to fly in the Columbia, a Bellanca owned by Charles Levine, the plane that had been Lindbergh’s first choice, the only plane besides Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis to successfully fly the Atlantic that summer. It was still in Europe after its record flight, sitting at Le Bourget. Mabel’s proximity to the plane so worried Levine that he had it padlocked. Undeterred, she set out (the press following her progress) to get Levine to change his mind: “Offers Levine $50,000” ran the headline in The
New York Times. When Charles flew to England shortly thereafter, Mabel followed by boat, first announcing her pursuit to the press, who obligingly printed the story. Gradually and with the press in attendance, she wore him down, and at a joint press conference in September in London, she triumphantly announced (he in silent acquiescence) that she would indeed be a passenger on a transatlantic flight in the Columbia, but first the plane had to return to America—she would fly from America to England.
Mabel Boll returned to the United States in October. “Queen of Diamonds Arrives with Gems” ran the headlines. In January 1928 she was at Mitchel Field, Long Island, with Charles Levine, talking of an April transatlantic flight. The press, whom she had notified, turned up at the field and obediently reported that she was wearing her two diamond rings, a rope of pearls around her neck, and a diamond pin on her hat. She, in all her finery, and Levine went up for a spin in a Ford trimotor.
On March 5, when Charles and his pilot Wilmer Stultz made the first nonstop flight from New York to Havana, Cuba, in the Columbia, a 1,600-mile flight, Mabel Boll was with them. Never mind that she had to sit on an improvised seat in back of the main gas tank; never mind that the crowds at the Havana airport were disappointingly small—she was aboard a first flight, and this time her picture was on the front page of The New York Times: she was truly famous.
