Chapter II: Introduction: By Marion Perkins

_Miss Perkins is Head Worker at Denison House, Boston’s second oldest settlement, with which Amelia Earhart has been identified for two years._

A tall, slender, boyish-looking young woman walked into my office in the early fall of 1926. She wanted a job and a part-time one would do, for she was giving courses in English under the university extension. Most of her classes were in factories in Lynn and other industrial towns near Boston. She had had no real experience in social work but she wanted to try it, and before I knew it I had engaged her for half-time work at Denison House. She had poise and charm. I liked her quiet sense of humor, the frank direct look in her grey eyes.

It was some time before any of us at Denison House knew that Amelia Earhart had flown. After driving with her in the “Yellow Peril,” her own Kissel roadster, I knew that she was an expert driver, handling her car with ease, yes more than that, with an artistic touch. She has always seemed to me an unusual mixture of the artist and the practical person.

Her first year at Denison House she had general direction of the evening school for foreign-born men and women. She did little teaching herself, but did follow-up work in the homes, so necessary to the success of such an undertaking. In her report of her year’s work after we had planned her next year’s program, which did not include the evening school, she wrote: “I shall try to keep my contact with the women who have come to class; Mrs. S. and her drunken husband, Mrs. F.’s struggle to get her husband here, Mrs. Z.’s to get her papers in the face of odds, all are problems that are hard to relinquish after a year’s friendship.”

In the spring of 1927, Denison House was giving a country carnival for the benefit of the house. For such a good cause, Amelia consented to fly over Boston and drop publicity dodgers. She first said that she would do this if her name could be kept out of the papers! We had to use some persuasion to keep her from flying incognito. The first day of the carnival, the Boston police up and down Boylston and Tremont Streets were perhaps too amazed to try to arrest a man and woman, apparently Italian peasants just landed, who drove back and forth in a queer yellow car, stopping now and then to grind a tune on a battered hand-organ and to distribute handbills.

The organ grinder was Amelia Earhart.

Youth, keeping a heart, a soul and a body that are wide open to all the rich opportunities of life—that is part of Amelia’s creed. How many times I have heard her say that, to her, one of the biggest jobs of the social worker in a settlement is just that—to give boys and girls the experiences that will keep them young and that will develop a zest for life. Last fall, she came to Denison House as a resident and as a full-time staff worker. She has directed the work of girls from five to fourteen years and has had general charge of the pre-kindergarten. Jokingly we have sometimes called Amelia the “official secretary,” for she is the secretary of the staff, of the Board of Directors (to which she was elected this year) and to the House Committee of the board. She has an unusual flair, in a meeting, for the gist of the thought and expresses herself in writing with accuracy and originality. Last year and this, Amelia has been a member of an inter-settlement committee working on child-study records.

She herself made studies of children that show her keen insight into child life. Here are sentences taken from her record of a seven-year-old boy. “Ferris is fond of making experiments of various kinds. How far can the pencil be moved before it falls? How high can the chairs be piled before spilling? He conceived the idea on a cold day of ‘warming’ his little sister’s beads on his father’s stove. That the beads were hot enough to burn the child when she put them on was not part of the experiment.”

“Where is Miss Earhart now?” “Is she still flying?” “Gee, I hope she beats that other woman.” These and hundreds of other questions greeted us on Tyler Street. “Is she coming back soon?” “I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about her flying.”

The day she told me of the trans-Atlantic project, and swore me to secrecy, she said, “And I’ll be back for summer school. I have weighed the values and I want to stay in social work.” Her simplicity, her honesty, her complete lack of any quality that makes for sensationalism—this is Amelia Earhart. A few days after the flight project was under way, a dinner guest at Denison House, who was learning to fly at the East Boston Airport, told of the big Fokker monoplane that Byrd was “to fly to the Antarctic”; just a quiet twinkle across the room to me from Amelia’s eyes, and afterwards an infectious chuckle as we enjoyed the incident together.

One day last year, after a discussion of L. P. Jacks’ lectures on The Challenge of Life, she handed me some verses. Here they are, more appropriate at this time than any words I can write:

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace,
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things:
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.
How can Life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull grey ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare
The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay
With courage to behold resistless day,
And count it fair.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Foreword 9
Introduction 11
CHAPTER
I.—Toronto Days 29
II.—Early Aviation 43
III.—My Own Plane 59
IV.—I Shift My Base to Boston 82
V.—Preparations 95
VI.—Off for Newfoundland 117
VII.—At Trepassey 147
VIII.—Across 170
IX.—Journey’s End 198
X.—Aviation Invites 212
XI.—Women in Aviation 237
XII.—Problems and Progress 252
XIII.—Retrospect 279
Wilmer Stultz—Pilot 311
Louis Edward Gordon—Flight Mechanic 313

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
On the “President Roosevelt” _Frontispiece_
London News Agency Photo.

Amelia Earhart 35
Underwood and Underwood.

Wilmer Stultz 36
International Newsreel.

Slim Gordon 41
Paramount News Photo.

Mrs. Guest Returning to New York is Met by Commander Byrd
from Whom She Purchased the “Friendship” 42
International Newsreel.

My First Training Ship, 1920 51

A. E., 1928 52

Southampton—Mrs. Guest, Gordon, A. E., Stultz, Mrs. Foster
Welch 57
Keystone Views.

After My First Solo, 1921 58

My Cabbage Patch Landing, California, 1921 63

“I was Fond of Automobiles, Horseback Riding, and Almost
Anything Else that is Active and Carried on in the Open” 64

“Ladies’ Day” 73
Sykes in the _New York Evening Post_.

Brynjulf Strandenaes Paints a Portrait 74

Flyers All—Eielson, Wilkins, Byrd, Chamberlin, Balchen,
Stultz, Earhart, Gordon 83
P. & A. Photos.

Boston, June 9 84

At Boston with Her Mother and Major Woolley, whose Flying
Coat Miss Earhart Wore Across the Atlantic 93
Wide World Photos.

“The Yellow Peril” and Her Driver Back in Boston, before
Denison House 94
International Photos.

Welcomed by the Southampton Crowd 103
Wide World Photos.

At Medford, Massachusetts 104

Ready to Go 113

A Picture of the “Friendship” Over Boston 114
Autographed before the flight started.

Percy Crosby’s Skippy Has His Own Ideas about Flying the
Atlantic 123

The “America” as Photographed through the Open Hatch in the
Bottom of the “Friendship’s” Fuselage 124

On the Step 133

Flying to Boston—Gordon, A. E., Stultz, Mrs. Gordon,
Mrs. Stultz, Mrs. Putnam 134

Stultz in the Cockpit of the “Friendship” Looking Aft
between the Gasoline Tanks 143
P. & A. Photos.

Two Musketeers and—What is a Feminine Musketeer? 144

“X Marks the Spot” 153
Our Home in Trepassey.

Main Street, Trepassey 154

Slim on the Job 163
International Photos.

The Inevitable Winter Woodpile 164

The “Friendship” Off Trepassey 173

B-a-a-a! A Front Lawn at Trepassey 174

Lady Lindy; Lady Luck 183
Rollin Kirby in _The New York World_.

For Nineteen Hours Only a Sea of Clouds 184
Wide World Photos.

The “Friendship” “Bombing” the “America” 193
U. S. Shipping Board.

The Last Page in the Log Book 194

We Didn’t Doubt that Tying to the Buoy was Against
Official Etiquette 203

“We Opened the Door of the Fuselage and Looked Out upon
what we Could See of the British Isles” 204
International Newsreel.

Landing at Burry Port—the Ubiquitous Autograph Seeker 213
Wide World Photos.

The First Step in England. Hubert Scott Payne Helps Me
Ashore 214
International Photos.

In London (Miss Earhart) 223
Topical Press Agency.

“A Big Smile, Please!” 224
Paramount News Photo.

The Bobby Said: “If My Wife Sees This—!” 233
Keystone Views.

Off for Ascot—Mrs. Guest and Her Sons Winston and
Raymond 234

Between Us Girls 243
Weed in _New York Evening World_.

First Look at Burry Port 244
P. & A. Photos.

2500 Feet Up. A. E. and Mrs. Putnam Sign the Guest Book
of Jas. H. Rand’s Trimotored Ford the “Rem-Rand” 253

A. E., Thea Rasche, Ruth Nichols at the
Westchester-Biltmore 254

Goodbye 263

At Toynbee Hall, London 264
Wide World Photos.

Arriving in Boston by Plane, July 9 273
P. & A. Photos.

Lady Heath and Her Historic Avro Avian 274

Rear Platform Stuff 283
Wide World Photos.

With a Model of the “Friendship” Presented by A
Boston Schoolboy 284

The Camera, too, Handed Us Brickbats 293
These are culled from our less (oh, far!) ♦flattering
photographic souvenirs.

♦ “flattering-ing” replaced with “flattering”

Yesterday’s Hero, and Today’s 294
John T. McCutcheon in _The Chicago Tribune_.

From Pittsburgh to Altoona 297

Before the Flight in Boston—A. E. and G. P. P. 298

Two Characteristic Pages from the Trans-Atlantic
Log Book 305–6–7
The difficulty of writing in the dark is exemplified
by the penmanship of the second page.

Boston, 1928 308

20 HRS. 40 MIN.