Amelia Earhart

by Doris L. Rich

  The next night Amelia made front-page copy on her own when she threw down the gauntlet of pacifism to the Daughters of the American Revolution. Before a full house at Constitution Hall she declared that no organization should advocate armaments unless its members were willing to bear arms themselves. Calling it “a point on which this organization and I don’t see eye to eye,” she repeated her claim that equality of opportunity with men was essential in everything, including the draft in the event of war.

  Although her stand on equal rights had previously aroused remarkably little criticism, her proposal to draft women did and not just from the D.A.R. In November, on the eve of Armistice Day, she gave an interview to Yale Daily News reporter Whitelaw Reid, whose parents owned the Herald Tribune. This time she added that women not only should be drafted, they should “be made to do the dirty work, and real fighting instead of dressing up and parading down the streets.” The oldest people should be drafted first, she said: “They are the ones who start war and if they knew that their verdict to fight meant their getting out in the line of fire themselves, they would be a great deal slower in rushing into an armed conflict.”

  The Yale interview was picked up by the Associated Press and ran in newspapers from coast to coast. In a letter to the New York Times, one of Amelia’s critics, a woman, claimed that American women had served in the First World War both overseas and at home, and they paraded in the streets to sell Liberty Bonds, not to show off. “A woman with Miss Earhart’s fine courage and high order of intelligence should have a better knowledge of her own sex than her flippant remarks would indicate,” she wrote. Perhaps Amelia was too young to know what her country-women had done from 1914 to 1920!

  The feminist-pacifist also defied her old friend Hiram Bingham of the NAA, resigning on May 6 from her posts as vice-president and contest committee member. She objected to Bingham’s insistence that membership be expanded and the control of the monthly magazine be given to “a promoter who will operate it for his own gain,” or so she claimed. Amelia had already waged a two-year campaign to abandon the magazine, winning approval of the executive and contest committees but the dictatorial Bingham ignored their action. “Wholesale resignations” had been predicted but Amelia’s was the only one.

  In her letter to Bingham she said their viewpoints were “too dissimilar” but she had only the friendliest personal feelings toward him. He was not as charitable, claiming that she apparently wanted the NAA to do nothing except sanction air meets, but he urged her to keep her honorary membership.

  However, she did side with Bingham when he threatened to suspend all NAA-FAI license holders for one to three years if they took part in “unsanctioned” (by the NAA) air meets. His threat was aimed at the Chicago Tribune—sponsored American Air Races, scheduled for July 1 through 4, the same dates as the NAA-sanctioned National Air Races to be held in Los Angeles. Pilots protested that Bingham’s ukase banning them from participation in the Chicago races would cause them to lose potential prize money but Amelia supported Bingham’s efforts to sustain what she thought the most basic function of the NAA, the sanctioning of air meets. The day before she resigned as vice-president she protested the use of her name as a member of the Chicago meet’s pilots’ committee, saying she had no connection with the meet because it was scheduled in direct opposition to the National Air Races.

  Back from Washington after her resignation, Amelia stayed home for most of May and June. In May her mother came for her first visit in the house in Rye since Amelia’s marriage more than two years before. The mother-daughter relationship reflected in their letters had evolved into one in which Amelia, Amy’s primary source of support, sounded like the parent, and Amy, the child. Amelia sent checks, advice, and packages, including a bottle of “tooth wash,” a “scientific solvent,” recommended by her dentist. Amelia’s customary admonishments regarding money and Muriel continued. “Enclosed is a check. Please don’t give it all away if the giving means fostering dependence and lack of responsibility.” When Muriel asked Amelia for a second mortgage on the Morrisseys’ house, Amelia tried to find out from Amy how much help Amy was giving the couple from her allowance. Amelia doubted the Morrisseys could hold on to the house under any circumstances, but she sent the necessary documents to Muriel.

  Amy’s visit to Rye in May was followed by a series of letters concerning where and with whom Amy would spend the month of August. Amy suggested Maine. Amelia countered with Stonington, Connecticut, where her friend from college days, Elise von R. Owen, and her mother had converted their pre-depression home into a guest house. Amy then changed to Marblehead and wanted to take both her grandchildren with her. Amelia said she could have one, part of the time, but not both. “I will not permit it under any circumstances,” she wrote, threatening to withhold Amy’s monthly check if she took them. In the end Amy went to Marblehead where Amelia urged her to stay through autumn. There was no mention of how many grandchildren went with her in subsequent letters.

  That summer Amelia, as president of the Ninety-Nines, stepped up her efforts on behalf of her colleagues, a strong-willed and unconventional lot, sometimes contentious and always competitive. Determined to increase the membership, she opposed Gladys O’Donnell’s suggestion that there be a special women’s committee for the National Air Races, affiliated with but separate from the Ninety-Nines. Amelia warned O’Donnell that there were already complaints that the organization was run by and for professionals who comprised only a small number of the six hundred women licensees in the United States.

  Amelia also used her own fame to gain publicity for the Ninety-Nines. She made arrangements to model an inexpensive flying suit for Vogue magazine—one she thought might make an optional Ninety-Nines uniform—but she could not get an agreement from the regional directors in time to meet the magazine’s deadline and the picture was used without mention of the organization. To publicize an all-woman air race staged by Annette Gipson, a beautiful young aviatrix, at Roosevelt Field on June 4, Amelia took all the participants to lunch before the race, then waved the starting flag while thirty thousand spectators watched, many standing on the roofs of their parked cars.

  In a letter to Margaret Cooper, the woman she wanted to succeed her as president, Amelia revealed managerial talent and political acumen. Bylaws were needed; so was new stationery, but the old should be sold to “patriotic” members, she said following the Earhart rule of putting style first, with frugality close on its heels. She also warned Cooper that she should consider the hazards of a lawsuit before attempting to eject an undesirable member.

  Amelia wrote to Cooper because she was not certain she would arrive in time for the annual meeting and election of officers in Los Angeles on July 3. She had just entered the Bendix, the transcontinental race sponsored by Vincent Bendix, with Ruth Nichols. “Racing,” Amelia wrote to Cooper, “is not the most reliable way to travel.… The schedule calls for our leaving July 1, but it’s along [sic] way from here to there.”

  It was a long way. The two women were given only two weeks notice that women would be eligible, with a special prize of twenty-five hundred dollars for the winner. Nichols, who had cracked up her Vega at Newfoundland while attempting an Atlantic crossing a year before, had borrowed a Lockheed Orion that her friend Clarence Chamberlin was trying to overhaul in a few days. Amelia’s sole “test flight” for her rebuilt Vega was to Chicago for a three-day visit to the World’s Fair with G. P., his twelve-year-old son, George, Jr., and a Rye neighbor, Betty Chester. If she had known she would be flying in the Bendix she might have put it through more rigorous testing.

  Amelia and Nichols were scheduled to take off a little after midnight on July 1 from Floyd Bennett Field, six hours before the men, who had faster ships. The crowd of two thousand that gathered at the airport to see them leave dwindled to two hundred after Nichols’s plane developed motor trouble and the fog rolled in from the sea, followed by a severe thunderstorm. Amelia found a bed in one of the airport offices and slept for thr
ee hours while mechanics worked on Nichols’s plane and G. P. studied weather reports from the west. At 3:30 A.M. it was obvious that Nichols’s Orion needed more work. Amelia took off twenty minutes later after telling reporters she would insist that her rival not be penalized for the delay in starting.

  The delay was only the first in a series of mishaps that plagued both women. After refueling at St. Louis, Amelia almost lost consciousness from gas fumes in the cockpit before landing at Wichita. Shortly after she left there the hatch cover of her Vega blew open, “blanketing” the tail and threatening her control of the aircraft. She spent an hour and a half at Winslow, Arizona, while mechanics made repairs. Soon after she left Winslow, motor trouble forced her to return to Wichita where she stayed overnight. On July 2 she reached her destination, the Los Angeles Municipal Airport, but was forced by ground rules to circle over the field for more than a half hour until the fifty-mile free-for-all race was over. Amelia was the last of the three remaining contestants out of six to finish the Bendix. Russell Boardman, who crashed at takeoff from Indianapolis, died on July 3. Harry Thaw dropped out after his plane was badly damaged on takeoff, also at Indianapolis, and Ruth Nichols withdrew at Wichita.

  Last in the Bendix and entering no other event, yet mobbed by admirers at the grandstand, Amelia stayed on through the last day, July 4. For the grand finale, manager Cliff Henderson had arranged for Mary Pickford to arrive on a trimotored Fokker, escorted by six Boeing pursuit planes. Amid the blare of trumpets, Amelia greeted her, along with Col. H. H. “Hap” Arnold, who would become one of the great air commanders of World War II. Pickford, who had announced the breakup of her marriage to Douglas Fairbanks two days earlier, smiled bravely for the photographers when Amelia shook her hand. The syndicated photographs of “America’s Sweetheart” and the “Queen of the Air” appeared in hundreds of newspapers across the country.

  In spite of her poor showing in the Bendix Amelia had lost nothing by entering. Along with the national news coverage G. P. wanted for her she had given the reconditioned Vega a shakedown it needed for another try at breaking her own transcontinental speed record for women.

  Late on the night of July 7 she taxied the heavily laden plane, its red and silver paint glistening in the moonlight, down the runway of the Los Angeles Municipal Airport and took off for Newark. Three hours later the lock on the hatch cover broke again. The first time the rigid sheet of metal had blown off, narrowly missing the rudder. This time it fluttered in the propeller’s wake, again threatening to shear the rudder. With one hand on the controls, Amelia reached up and caught the edge of the cover, then held it for the next seventy-five miles as she headed toward Amarillo. She knew she would have to use both hands to land. Arm bruised and numb, she released the hatch, pulled back the throttle to slow the ship and grasped the wheel for a landing. The latch held.

  After a two and a half hour delay while the lock was repaired, she left Amarillo but was soon involved in a new battle for survival when carbon monoxide gas again drifted into the cockpit. Nauseated and faint, she held out until Columbus where she had to land for fuel. While waiting there she walked up and down the field to restore her circulation. Her knees kept buckling, but the fresh air revived her. From Columbus she fought a heavy rain squall over the Pennsylvania mountains before approaching Newark at 8:19 P.M. on Saturday, July 8. The field was still lit by a summer sunset as she came to a halt on the runway. She had beaten her old record by almost two hours; the new time, seventeen hours, seven minutes, and thirty seconds.

  A crowd of three hundred fans, most of them women, rushed the plane as soon as she pushed back the hatch cover and looked out, grinning and running her hand through wind-matted hair. G. P. was waiting for her when she jumped down from the plane, her grimy overalls spattered with oil and grease. “Well,” she said to him, “I’m back and nice and dirty as usual.” After seventeen hours of constant tension and nausea she took G. P.’s arm, walked with him to the car, got in on the driver’s side, and drove off toward Rye. The “Queen of the Air” had reasserted her right to the throne. The record was won, the routine had gone full circle. It was time to make some money again.

  * The Vega Model B, serial number 171, was built in August of 1931 for John Henry Mears as a “high-speed special.” When he refused delivery on it, Elinor Smith bought it for a projected Atlantic flight she never made. After Smith, the most severe critic of Amelia’s flying skills, cracked it up in an accident in Garden City, she transferred ownership to her husband, Patrick H. Sullivan, who sold it to William W. Hart, Jr., of New York City. Hart sold it to Amelia, the bill of sale dated January 7, 1933.

  † Almost fifty years later U.S. Air Force pilot Maj. Nancy B. Samuelson repeated Amelia’s complaint, claiming that women were all but totally eliminated from training programs paid for by taxpayers. “This is particularly true of flight training programs and especially true of military flight training programs,” she wrote.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Queen and the Minister of Finance

  Amelia Earhart’s recordbreaking transcontinental flight in July of 1933 was her last until January of 1935. For the next eighteen months she was grounded, back in the center ring of the circus she dreaded, jumping through the hoops held by G. P. At times she rebelled, but not often and not for long. Fellow aviator and publicist Harry Bruno overstated the case when he observed: “She loved flying; wanted to fly all the time she was not after money at all. But George Palmer Putnam was a businessman and he wanted to cash in on it.”

  Amelia wanted to make money, but she wanted to make it in aviation. G. P. aimed for the greater profits to be made from maintaining and exploiting her fame. While he was always just a friend of the famous, Amelia was one of them, a natural. Her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt was invaluable to him, leading to one of his finest publicity coups, one involving the president, Eleanor, and the newest conquerors of the Atlantic, Capt. James “Jimmy” Mollison and his wife, Amy Johnson Mollison.*

  On July 23 the Mollisons reached the American east coast from London. Weary and heading into darkness, Jimmy Mollison turned back just twenty miles short of New York where ten thousand people were waiting to see the couple land at Roosevelt Field. When he attempted to put down at Bridgeport, Connecticut, he overshot the field and crashed in a swamp bordering the field. Amelia was with G. P. and Helen and Ogden Reid beside the Reids’ swimming pool in Purchase, New York, when she heard the news on the radio. She called the hospital in Bridgeport where both fliers were taken, suffering from bruises and shock. The next morning she drove there, bringing clothing for Amy. The couple were moved the same day to the Hotel Plaza in New York City where they rested until the following Friday when Amelia drove them to the house in Rye.

  That weekend the Roosevelts were vacationing at Hyde Park. After announcing on Friday that he would not receive anyone over the weekend, the president changed his mind on Sunday morning and asked the Mollisons, Amelia, and G. P. to lunch. They were the only guests. Franklin’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, who still ruled the family roost at Hyde Park, was the official hostess. Photographs were taken of the Roosevelts, the Mollisons, and Amelia. The English public was delighted, the Mollisons got some of the publicity they needed if they were to secure backing for a new plane, and Amelia shared in all the press notices.

  Never one to leave anything to chance, G. P. had already been at work before the president’s unexpected invitation. He and Amelia brought the couple to their swimming club at Manuring Island where they were photographed on the beach. More pictures were taken at the house in Rye, pictures that appeared in rotogravure sections of newspapers across the country. The day after their official Broadway parade in New York, and while they were still front-page news, the Mollisons were given a second official reception by Atlantic City, New Jersey. G. P. arranged this one with Amelia as official hostess.† He also arranged for guests to be flown there in planes provided by Eastern Air Transport’s president, Thomas B. Doe, the same man who had hel
ped him set up the April flight for Mrs. Roosevelt.

  The success of G. P.’s celebrity-wooing, along with Amelia’s considerable charm, was reflected in news comments like this one: “No public luncheon or dinner, no private party, is complete without Miss Earhart. She is the one essential, apparently, for a successful entertainment.”

  In addition to the interviews he scheduled for her and the articles he arranged for her to write, G. P. also wrote some of his own. In Paris on a business trip, he gave an article to the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune, on the “49.5 Club,” an invention of his allegedly composed of the husbands of Ninety-Nines. In another of his articles he claimed that it was not so bad being known as “Amelia Earhart’s husband,” and that he was not the only man with a wife more famous than himself. Describing the filming of celebrities Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks with Amelia for a charity fund drive, G. P. wrote:

  Mary and Amelia had some shots taken on the lawn. Then Douglas and I barged in.

  “I,” said Doug, introducing himself to Miss Earhart, “am Mister Pickford.”

  “And I am Mister Earhart,” I said to Mary.

  There were times when he crossed the line into territory rightfully Amelia’s. In January of 1933 when he arranged the free ride she took on Northwest Airlines he said she was to “assess the desirability of flying the route in mid-winter,” and report her findings to the postmaster general. The assignment was ridiculous. She may have been less prejudiced but she was certainly not as qualified as the airline’s regular pilots to make such a report. However, Northwest officials had more in mind than Amelia’s opinion and so did G. P. They wanted a government appropriation for airfield improvements along the fifteen-hundred-mile air route, about $1.2 million worth. G. P. wanted a piece of the action.

  Two weeks after FDR’s inauguration, Col. Lewis H. Brittin, vice-president of Northwest and its representative in Washington, wrote to company president Croyl Hunter: “Amelia Earhart had lunch last week at the White House and I think it is quite possible a meeting can be arranged where we would have an opportunity to lay our problem … directly before the new Administration.… Apparently Eugene Vidal is slated for the Department of Commerce job, [director of the Bureau of Air Commerce] although it has not yet been officially confirmed.”