by Susan Butler
On April 24 Amelia wrote to Ruth Nichols, with whom she had been corresponding since the previous fall, with some new thoughts on her pet subject: how to set up a women’s flying organization. The letter, remarkably detailed, is graphic evidence both of Amelia’s enormous capacity for self control and her ability to stay focused:
... let us take up the feminine end of flying with action in view. I propose we make three grades of members in the organization talked of—Honorary, consisting of F.A.I, inactive flyers, like Katherine Stinson; Active, of Transport or Private Operators ... and an Associate, or any women who would like to boost aviation.... As to organization, let us have a governing committee of three, you and I and one of the Honoraries. I think we have to be autocratic about officers, at first, in order to start something. One of us should be chairman, and a secretary and treasurer may be elected later.”
Amelia went through her days at Denison House; more people read her article in The Bostonian. Still no word came.
May 1 was a Tuesday; she was undoubtedly at the monthly luncheon meeting of the National Aviation Association at Department of Commerce headquarters at 80 Federal Street.
On May 2 she wrote to Hilton Railey:
It is very kind of you to keep me informed, as far as you are able, concerning developments of the contemplated flight. As you may imagine, my suspense is great indeed.
Please, however, do not think that I hold you responsible, in any way, for my own uncertainty. I realize that you are now, and have been from the first, only the medium of communication between me and the person, or persons, who are financing the enterprise. For your own satisfaction may I add, here, that you have done nothing more than present the facts of the case to me. I appreciate your forbearance in not trying to “sell” the idea, and should like you to know that I assume all responsibility for any risk involved.
At our next interview—if there is one—I shall have ready the details you ask for.
What made it harder on her was that not only did she not know if she would be chosen, she had been told that there was a possibility that the flight might not come off at all. Not that she let her suspense apparently disturb her life or slow her pace. Quite possibly she slipped off by herself to sit “quietly drinking in the beauty of the sea and shore,” which she found restored her equilibrium. But she had a remarkable number of balls in the air in addition to Denison House—and her response to the pressure was to throw up new ones.
She wrote a letter to the Boston Chamber of Commerce, taking them to task for doing what she considered to be an abysmal job of publicizing aviation.
There is a reckless quality in the letter, dated four days after the one to Hilton—the strain was getting to her:
Why aren’t we doing something notable here? You know there are two ways to accomplishment—one, through doing exceptional things, and another by sweeping to it by force of numbers. Aviation needs widespread support....
A social worker always thinks of ways to raise money so I propose a benefit of some sort.... I’d ask Will Rogers to come on, and pay him a thousand to fill Symphony Hall.
She addressed the letter to Bernard Wiesman, whom she knew from the NAA luncheon meetings; it was perhaps the combination of both letters that so electrified the gentlemen of the NAA that they would in a very short time vote Amelia into office. (The NAA would announce on election day, June 5, “Today the Boston Chapter of the NAA finds that its nominee for Vice-President has flown away.”)
Amelia was also busily trying to become a member of Zonta, a service organization for businesswomen with branches in most of the major cities in the country. Zonta, the first organization for businesswomen in the United States, was founded in 1919 in Buffalo, New York, just as the long campaign for women’s suffrage was ending. It filled the need for a women’s professional organization for the growing number of such women in post—World War I America. Zonta, whose name was the Sioux word for “honest and trustworthy,” was modeled after the Rotary Clubs. Like membership in the Rotary, membership in Zonta was by invitation; like Rotary it was a service organization; like Rotary it met at lunch. “Their luncheon business meetings dealt with the same matters as those of the men in like positions with similar interests who had always been doing business at lunch,” according to its early literature. The first president was Mary Jenkins, publisher of The Syracuse Herald. Significantly, it was not as a social worker that Amelia rated an invitation to join, but because of her flying activities. On her application for membership, she filled in as her employer the Dennison Aircraft Corporation—as her job she wrote, “A director of the Corporation.” She made no mention of her activities at Denison House, listing it only as her home address.
Amelia’s application for membership, complete with the obligatory signatures of two “active members in good standing” who were recommending her, was formally dated, signed by her, and submitted to Zonta on May 8, two days after her letter to the Chamber of Commerce, six days after her letter to Hilton Railey.
Suddenly she was invited to New York City to be interviewed. She arranged to spend the night before the interview with Marian Stabler in Great Neck. She told the Stablers only that she had confidential business in the city. If the prospect of the flight excited her, it didn’t show at the Stablers’, but then, Amelia was never visibly excited, never appeared anything but calm and collected, according to Marian. (The only thing that betrayed her excitement to Marian was that when she left for Boston, she very uncharacteristically forgot her coat.)
The day after her arrival, Amelia went into the city to see George Putnam, whom she took to be in charge of the search. Over six feet tall, good-looking, with dark brown hair, a rugged physique, a square jaw, and rimless spectacles, the veritable prototype for Clark Kent, he was behind his desk apparently very busy, “making one telephone call after another.” He was sizing her up while he talked—a tall skinny girl, probably again wearing her brown wool suit, but she had a certain presence. Just that fall she had described herself as “a social worker who flies for sport, and am on the board of directors of an aeronautical concern. I can not claim to be a feminist but do rather enjoy seeing women tackling all kinds of new problems—new for them, that is.”
Her most arresting feature was her direct, wide-set, level gray eyes. Here, as George was just about to learn, was a bluestocking who flew. A girl with a head on her shoulders—he couldn’t help but perceive it. She had high cheekbones, a generous mouth (although there was a gap between her two front teeth when she smiled), a high forehead, and freckles on her surprisingly fair skin; her bobbed hair was blond with a blondness almost dark, but still suggesting blond. Boyish looking, many people thought, and looking even younger than the twenty-nine she admitted to. Amelia proudly showed George her pilot’s license, the first FAI license granted an American woman, but according to Amelia, he acted unimpressed. Nevertheless he took her over to 787 Fifth Avenue to see David Layman. Of course George was putting on a bit of an act; from the first moment he saw her, he was sure Hilton Railey’s discovery would be perfect. David Layman recalled later his first impression of Amelia: a pleasing-looking girl, tall, fair, well mannered, quiet voiced. As they talked in his office, she appeared a little nervous, he remembered, “but that was natural and she was controlling it well.” She told him about herself, her career, and her flying. He told her the circumstances of the flight, about Amy Guest, who was financing the trip “from first to last,” about the plane, and about the pilot and co-pilot already hired.
“Why do you want to fly the Atlantic?” he asked at one point. Layman said she looked at him for a moment, then smiled. He liked the smile. “It was nice to see,” he recalled.
“Why,” she replied, “does a man ride a horse?”
“Because he wants to, I guess.”
“Well then.”
And then, according to Layman, they laughed together. He asked her if she wanted recompense, to which she answered, “No, thank you.”
She had won hi
m over, so he took her into the next room to meet John Phipps, who had the final say. She won Phipps over, too, but so entirely and unexpectedly that there was a moment where she almost overdid it; she noticed that he appeared too concerned for her welfare. As self-conscious as she was, as preoccupied as she was with making a good impression, “if I were found wanting on too many counts I should be deprived of a trip. On the other hand, if I were just too fascinating the gallant gentlemen might be loath to drown me. Anyone can see the meeting was a crisis.” She had assessed John Phipps correctly; David Layman later said that he had had to allay Phipps’s fears for Amelia’s safety.
It would have seemed the next step would be for her to meet and be inspected by Amy Guest, but the instigator of the enterprise had left already, according to David Layman. “The Phippses had gotten her a suite on a steamship and waved her ‘bon voyage.’ She would be in England for her daughter’s presentation at Court, but please God by benefit of Cunard liner.”
So when John Phipps appeared to be satisified, she had passed the last hurdle.
Next, they told her the details: that if she were chosen, she would receive no money even though the pilot and co-pilot were being paid (Wilmer Stultz was to get $20,000 and Lou Gordon $10,000); that she had to sign away any right to damages; that she could lecture and write about the flight and, “consistent with the dignity and integrity of the sponsor and the undersigned,” sign contracts about it; but all moneys received had to be returned to Amy Guest to help defray expenses. She could endorse no commercial products “whatsoever.” Finally she was told that they would let her know.
She thanked them and, smiling slightly, left.
After the interview Putnam took her to Grand Central Station and put her on a train to Boston. (Much, much later, the careful Amelia noted to her sister that he did not offer to pay her fare and did not seem interested in her.)
Neither David Layman nor John Phipps nor George Putnam saw or made inquiries about anyone else.
David Layman spent the next ten days making discreet background checks, cabling all the information to Amy, and working out the logistics as it became evident that Amelia was going to be acceptable and that the enterprise would definitely go forward. Finally everything was in place; Amy cabled that she wished the personnel Godspeed. He telephoned Amelia. “You may make this flight if you wish under the agreed conditions,” he told her. Because she had impressed both David Layman and John Phipps so favorably, Amelia now found out that not only had they decided on her, but that once they took off, she would be in charge.
On June 1 she wrote to Marian Stabler to thank her for letting her spend the night. She was one of Amelia’s best friends, but Amelia divulged nothing to her.
The Fokker was as powerful as any plane of its day. Byrd thought it the most powerful, reliable plane available. He had used a Fokker, the Josephine Ford, for his attempt to fly over the North Pole, and another Fokker, the America, to fly the North Atlantic. He had ordered this last Fokker for his forthcoming assault on the South Pole and changed his mind only after Henry Ford offered him a Ford trimotor free if he would use it. (Byrd’s use of the Ford would make it instantly famous.) Since a fully equipped trimotor cost $100,000, and $1 million still had to be raised for the expedition, Byrd, after demanding extensive modifications, had accepted the offer and put the Fokker up for sale.
The Fokker was the perfect plane for a transatlantic flight. This model was an F7 that had been modified to give it greater lifting power and enhanced load-carrying ability. It had a larger wingspan than the stock F7, measuring 72 feet from tip to tip, and a stronger undercarriage, enabling it to carry four 95-gallon gas tanks on the wings instead of the usual two, and two additional elliptical tanks in the cabin (shaped to permit passage between cockpit and cabin), each with a capacity of 246 gallons, for a total capacity of 872 gallons. At 6.12 pounds to a gallon, that meant carrying over 5,300 pounds in fuel alone, almost double what the plane itself weighed. It had a cruising speed of 106 and a maximum speed of 129 miles per hour. The skin was plywood, the engine housings aluminum. It was powered by three of what were generally considered to be the best airplane engines of the day, the Wright Whirlwind J5 9-cylinder air-cooled engines designed by Charles Lawrance. Lindbergh had had one powering his much lighter plane; the Wright Aeronautical Corporation claimed that they averaged nine thousand miles to a failure—an incredible record. Lawrance had been awarded the prestigious Collier trophy just that February, which the NAA awarded annually “for the greatest achievement in aviation in America.” Amelia must have felt a bit of vindication at the choice of engines and must have commanded the respect of her confreres for having chosen, back in 1921, a plane powered by one of the first engines that the then-unknown Lawrance had turned out.
But accepted as the absolute best in 1928 or not, even air-cooled Whirlwinds were no guarantee of success. Whirlwind engines had powered the two planes carrying American women who attempted transatlantic flights the year before—Ruth Elder’s plane had suffered engine failure and landed in the sea near a passing freighter; she lived. Frances Grayson’s plane had disappeared; she died.
When Amelia first saw the Fokker, it was in the shadows of its East Boston hangar. Its fuselage was painted bright orange—technically named chrome yellow, as Amelia noted, the color chosen for safety reasons: “it can be seen farther than any other color.” She was definitely impressed; she wrote that the golden wings were “strong and exquisitely fashioned.”
Because attempts at transatlantic flight generated such hysterical attention, subterfuge became the first order of the day. If the real destination became known, if there was just the merest hint, the merest possibility that a woman—and a pilot at that—was inordinately interested in that powerful plane, the hangar would be besieged, the participants hounded by press and public alike; their lives as normal people would cease. The truth was easy to conceal, since the Fokker was, as far as anybody knew, still part of Byrd’s Antarctic expedition—part of his assault force, which was known to include three planes and five pilots, plus scientists, backup crew, supply ships, sleds, tractors, food, and supplies for two years. The personnel were consistent with a Byrd expedition: Commander Robert Elmer, USN retired, Commander Byrd’s old friend from Annapolis days was supervising all modifications to the plane. Wilmer (Bill) Stultz had previously worked with Byrd; he was not only eminently qualified to be part of the Antarctic expedition but Byrd had in fact asked him to take part in it. (He had refused because of the extended nature of the enterprise.)
Bill and Louis Gordon were old friends. Both had gone the classic flying route for men of that time—receiving their training courtesy of the U.S. government. Bill, twenty-eight, reassuringly mature looking with his shock of black hair well shot with gray, born in Pennsylvania, had enlisted in the navy in 1919 and trained at its Pensacola flight school, where he became an expert in handling seaplanes, navigation, meteorology, and radio. Upon discharge he had gone to Brazil, where he worked for Curtiss Export, overseeing their forty planes and teaching flying. He subsequently went to work for the Atlantic Aircraft Company, the American branch of Fokker, where he became the test pilot for Byrd’s trimotor Fokker Josephine Ford.
Louis Gordon, twenty-seven, nicknamed Slim, rangy, happy-go-lucky, often smiling, was from Houston, Texas, and knew more about Fokkers than just about anyone flying. He had enlisted in the Army Air Service at Ellington field, Houston, trained there, and then spent six months studying aircraft engines at Kelly field in San Antonio. After that he had been chief mechanic at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, and following his discharge he flew Fokker trimotors in an air service between Philadelphia, Washington, and Norfolk, Virginia. When Bill called Slim and asked him to join, Slim quit his job and met Bill in Detroit the next day.
For her part, Amelia simply had to stay away, with the result that her life in Boston continued on much as before. She had been made head of the summer program at the House, the Vacation program as it was cal
led, and was scheduling its offerings and activities, which mostly would take place, because of the summer heat, in the shady backyard and cooler lower floors of the settlement house.
She had absolutely no idea what forces her flight would unleash. The summer before, when Charles Lindbergh arrived in Boston after his triumphal flight, was just when Amelia had been so caught up in the opening of Dennison airport. The crowds surging to greet him on “Lindy Day” had been so huge that several times the police had had to call for reinforcements, and even so, things got so out of hand on Boston Common that the parade ground resembled a battlefield, with more than a hundred people stretched on the grass. Amelia, absorbed with her projects, must have thought it a momentary phenomenon.
When she wrote Marian Stabler a chatty letter very shortly thereafter, she didn’t even mention Charles Lindbergh or the excitement his visit had caused. Now, concentrated as she was on the upcoming challenge itself, undoubtedly assuming that the world had gone wild for Charles only because he was the first, the conquerer, the inventor, so to speak, she gave scant thought to her possible postflight fame. She therefore merely asked Marion Perkins for a two-week leave of absence and, worried that her absence might disrupt the vacation schedule, arranged for a staff worker about to leave to stay to cover for her in return for two hundred dollars. She fully expected to be back in Boston July 1 for the opening of the vacation activities. She continued flying, occasionally slipping out early in the mornings in her yellow Kissell roadster across Neponset Bridge to the Dennison airport, flying in borrowed or demo planes out over the nearby cranberry marshes, north and south over the coast, or inland over the Charles and the towns to the west.
