Chapter VII: Part TWO: The World of Flight (2)

In the seven years that GP continued to live in Bend, he became the father of a son, David Binney, and the editor of the local newspaper, _The Bulletin_. One of the best stories conjured up by George to fill space in his paper was the tale about Lucy, the tame trout. Lucy had been kept in a shallow pan, until she spilled out all the water and somehow learned to live by breathing air. GP would take her to one of the local bars to perform. One day he forgot to close the door where Lucy was kept; and having walked halfway across the foot-bridge over the Deschutes River, GP looked back to see Lucy flapping along after him. Then, before George could get to the fish to help her across, Lucy lost her balance, fell into the river, and drowned.

After serving in World War I, GP, his father and brother having died, now took his place in G. P. Putnam’s Sons. In the beginning his selections of manuscripts for publication were happy choices. Under the Putnam imprint were issued, among others, Alexander Woollcott’s first books, Rockwell Kent’s _Wilderness_, and the novels of Ben Hecht.

One of the cleverest of George Putnam’s literary coups was _Bobbed Hair_; it was a novel, and it was victorious on all fronts. The book was a twenty-author production. GP conceived the plot; then, with the help of ten women authors and nine men writers (Putnam was the tenth), each to do one chapter, the mongrel fiction was given birth. The novel was serialized in _Colliers_, published in book form, then made into a movie. Included in the assembly-line production were Louis Bromfield, Sophie Kerr, George Agnew Chamberlin, Bernice Brown, John V. A. Weaver, Alexander Woollcott, George Barr McCutcheon, Carolyn Wells, Rube Goldberg, Edward Streeter, Kermit Roosevelt, and Frank Craven.

For George Putnam these were fabulous times. Franklin P. Adams, Harold Ross, Marc Connelly, Heywood Broun, Herbert Bayard Swope, Ben Hecht, Alexander Woollcott, Maxwell Anderson, Laurence Stallings, Sidney Howard, Louis Shipman, Burton Rascoe, Christopher Morley: all were enjoying the first of their many successes. GP was in their midst, and like cut glass catching and refracting a brilliant light, he shone among them.

During this period George scored smashing results in publishing books on exploration, and he was a publisher who practiced what he preached. In the Putnam stables of authors were Charles Lindbergh, Richard Byrd, Amelia Earhart, Martin Johnson, William Beebe, Roy Chapman Andrews, Knud Rasmussen, Lincoln Ellsworth, Bob Bartlett, Rockwell Kent, Robert Cushman Murphy, Merion Cooper, Larry Gould, William A. Robinson, Fitzhugh Green, Sir Hubert Wilkins. But GP was not content simply to publish books on exploration; he had to be an explorer himself.

In 1925 he organized and led an expedition into Greenland for the American Museum of Natural History. The exploration was also a writing and publishing success that produced books by Knud Rasmussen, Bob Bartlett, and David Binney Putnam, GP’s first son. David Binney’s _David Goes to Greenland_ was a tremendously successful boys’ book. It was a successor to his equally famous _David Goes Voyaging_, written at the age of twelve after an expedition to the Galápagos with William Beebe. For the boy the Arctic Circle was as full of thrills and adventure as the equator; happily, the son had his father’s talent for recording new, unusual, and exciting experiences.

In May of 1927 Charles A. Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, alone, and it was G. P. Putnam’s Sons that published _We_. In June of 1928 Amelia M. Earhart flew across the Atlantic, as passenger, and it was again Putnam’s that released _20 Hrs., 40 Min._

George Putnam admired Colonel Lindbergh for his accomplishment but accused Lindy of having a “mechanical” brain and a “one-track” mind. Unfortunately, George did not live to read _The Spirit of St. Louis_; if he had, he would have changed his mind.

The girl from Kansas who looked like Lindbergh, however, became his wife. “Amelia Earhart,” he wrote later, “knew me better, probably, than anyone else ever can. With her discernment, why she married the man she did was often a matter of wonder to me. And to some others.”

8. _Marriage_

Before the wedding of GP and AE in February, 1931, there were warnings given to both. Why did they want to marry? Why did GP want to become a hero’s husband? Of all men why did Amelia Earhart choose George Palmer Putnam?

No one, perhaps, understood heroes better than George Putnam. Himself a writer, publisher, explorer, and promoter with, as _Time_ said of him, “the dangerous combination of literary ability, business acumen, [and] energy,” he was to the young Amelia Earhart the fitting opposite to her essentially modest and retiring nature. He was, in brief, her kind of man.

Soon after the _Friendship_ flight AE realized that she needed a man to protect her, to help her continue as the symbol that she was. GP was the man to clear the way for her, to find the money, to stand beside her in the press of circumstance, to support her in every venture. Although many men could fill such requirements in a husband, Amelia felt that she could find happiness, if it were possible to find it with anybody, only with George Putnam.

For GP his first wife, Dorothy Binney, had given him many good years and two sons. But the Oregon years were in the distant past and by 1928 they had become cool and aloof toward each other. Dorothy Binney divorced him on a formal charge of “failure to provide,” and moved to Florida. George continued at Rye. He was never long without a wife.

The marriage of AE and GP was, to employ a metaphor from flight, a delicate combination of solo and dual. George was forty-two years old; Amelia, thirty-two.

Before the ceremony at the home of George’s mother in Noank, Connecticut, on February 8, 1931, AE gave GP a letter that defined an attitude for the future course of their life together:

Dear GP, there are some things which should be writ. Things we have
talked over before--most of them.

You must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I
shatter thereby chances in work which means so much to me. I feel
the move just now as foolish as anything I could do. I know there
may be compensations, but have no heart to look ahead.

In our life together I shall not hold you to any medieval code
of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you
similarly. If we can be honest I think the difficulties which arise
may best be avoided....

Please let us not interfere with the other’s work or play, nor let
the world see our private joys or disagreements. In this connection
I may have to keep some place where I can go to be by myself
now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the
confinements of even an attractive cage.

I must exact a cruel promise, and that is you will let me go in a
year if we find no happiness together.

I will try to do my best in every way....

The letter was signed simply “AE.” Willing but reluctant, Amelia Earhart effected the agreement--it would have been too demanding for most men--and became Mrs. George Palmer Putnam.

She had refused marriage at least twice before, and as late as 1930 she had written to a friend, “I am still unsold on marriage.... I think I may not ever be able to see marriage except as a cage until I am unfit to work or fly or be active--and of course I wouldn’t be desirable then....”

Amelia’s mother, Amy Otis Earhart, had been opposed to the marriage. At Greenwich House in New York, where Amelia was occupying the top floor as a celebrity in residence, AE and Mrs. Earhart discussed Amelia’s plans. The mother argued in vain; her daughter had made up her mind.

Hilton H. Railey tried to dissuade GP from his plans. For his efforts Railey was accused of being in love with Amelia himself.

Amelia was often asked her opinion on the marriage-career question. “Marriage is a _mutual_ responsibility,” she would answer. “And I cannot see why husbands shouldn’t share in the responsibility of the home. By that I mean something more detailed--and for as long as it takes them to get used to the idea, perhaps more arduous, even uncomfortable to the men--than merely keeping a roof over the collective head and coal in the furnace.”

As for her career and its effect on her marriage, she wrote: “It seems to me that the effect of having other interests beyond those exclusively domestic works well. The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love and understanding companionship.”

The problem of money was frequently brought up. “For the woman to pay her own way,” Amelia said, “may add immeasurably to the happiness of those concerned. The individual independence of dollars and cents tends to keep a healthy balance of power in the kingdom of the home. If one’s time is worth more at specialized tasks--writing, flying, interior decorating, what have you--it is good sense to put in one’s hours at such work rather than cooking, cleaning, and mending. Assistants more skilled than myself can be employed to substitute in the housewife role without robbing a marriage of its essence. It is fortunately no longer a disgrace to be undomestic, and married women should be able to seek, as unrestrictedly as men, any gainful occupation their talents and interests make available. Thus--for me--can joyful luxuries like low-wing monoplanes be had--as adding to the sum total of contentment.”

And George Palmer Putnam seconded his wife’s views. GP and AE had a joint bank account and every month each would put part of his earnings toward those regularly recurring bills such as household, doctor, clothes, clubs, automobiles, and trips.

Occasionally some wag would call GP “Mr. Earhart.” “Usually,” George observed, “it was some nitwit who didn’t care whether or not he lived.” But on one occasion GP called himself exactly that.

The Putnams went out to Hollywood to join other celebrities in making a film for charity. In the group were Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, “America’s Sweethearts,” whom GP and AE had never met. “I,” said Douglas Fairbanks, introducing himself to Miss Earhart, “am Mister Pickford.”

“And I,” said GP, picking up the thread and introducing himself to Mary Pickford, “am Mister Earhart.”

In 1931 GP gave up publishing and went to work for Paramount Pictures as head of the editorial board. He had sold his interest in G. P. Putnam’s Sons to a cousin, Palmer C. Putnam.

GP stayed four years at Paramount. Among his successes was _Wings_, which promoted Clara Bow, Dick Arlen, and Buddy Rogers to stardom. Playing a bit part in the film was a tall, gangling youth whose name was Gary Cooper.

There were many delightful days in the seven years of their marriage for AE and GP. George spent most of his time working for Paramount in New York. Amelia flew from her cage in the autogiro and advertised Beech-Nut. The flying advertisement had been one of GP’s money-raising ideas. He had many of them.

One, however, Amelia could not accept. It was the “Amelia Earhart Hat.” AE, George, and Hilton Railey were at the Biltmore in New York. GP crossed the room and from behind his back proudly produced a woman’s hat. It was made of russet suède and on the silk band around it was reproduced Amelia’s signature.

Amelia looked at it and turned it in her hands, pensively. Her smile of amusement narrowed to disappointment. “Of course, GP,” she said firmly, “this won’t do at all. You’ll have to cancel it.”

“But I can’t!” George cried out. “I’ve already signed the contract. They’re already made up.”

“Then tell the manufacturer to _unmake_ them. Tell him at once--right now!” She pointed to a telephone on a small table. “Phone him,” she commanded.

Angrily glaring at Railey, GP flailed his arms and stomped about the room. Amelia waited for the fury to subside.

“Since I can’t very well sue the manufacturer, and you _had_ my power of attorney, then I shall most certainly sue you--unless!” She was unyielding; she wanted no part in the scheme.

The matter was settled, and no “Amelia Earhart Hats” were put on the market. Railey, bringing all his powers of persuasion to bear, had talked the manufacturer into tearing up the contract.

But there were other, more acceptable, ideas from George Putnam. Amelia became a woman’s fashion designer for a time, and she modeled her own original creations--the lines simple, classical, functional. She devised buttons, buckles, and other accessories; they were adapted from such airplane parts as a hexagonal nut, a wing light, taillight, parachute buckles, wing bolts, cotter pins, and ball bearings.

She endorsed the Franklin Motor Car; its engine was air cooled like that of her airplane. And there was Earhart luggage, light, practical, and designed for air travel.

Because of his many and varied ideas and activities, AE had a pet name for George--“Simpkin.” The name came from a book Amelia remembered from childhood, which told the story of the Tailor of Gloucester who lived with his cat Simpkin. Simpkin believed in keeping mice in reserve by secreting them under cups; whenever he was bored, he always had a mouse to liven the day. Amelia discovered early in her marriage that she was just another one of the many enterprises that her husband managed. One mouse at a time was not enough for GP; thus his nickname, “Simpkin.”

The marriage of AE and GP produced no children. Nevertheless, it was a happy one for the most part, although a New York columnist had reported in 1933 that AE and GP were on the verge of breaking up. Helen Hutson Weber, who was a house guest in the Rye home, where she was recuperating from a serious illness, chuckled when she read the item. For as she did, AE and GP were out on the patio cavorting like two playful children: George was driving Amelia around in a wheelbarrow, then dumping her on the ground. AE squealed in delight.

Neither George nor Amelia had to meet the pledge of two years before and go their separate ways if they found no happiness together.

9. _Solo Across the Atlantic_

Five years to the day after Lindbergh’s famous flight in _The Spirit of St. Louis_, Amelia Earhart flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Like Lindbergh, Amelia had competitors who had tried the solo flight before her; but, like his, the luck of “Lady Lindy” held out.

Ruth Nichols, AE’s friendly neighbor and fellow flier from Rye, was on the way for the transatlantic hop in June, 1931, but as she came in for a landing in Saint John’s, New Brunswick, her overloaded plane cracked up, nearly killing her. Although she was still encased in a body cast from the crash, Ruth Nichols was ready in 1932 to try again. But, just as she was ready to go, she heard that Amelia had made it.

The two women fliers were the friendliest of rivals, and they were always neck and neck to be the first woman-to-do in aviation. In 1930, for example, AE had set the speed record at 181.157 mph; in 1931, Miss Nichols set a new one at 210.685 mph. They had raced together in the first Powder Puff Derby, until Ruth crashed in Columbus. Each wanted to be the first woman to fly around the world: AE failed; Ruth succeeded.

For Amelia the flight alone across the Atlantic came four years after the _Friendship_ venture. She had gained experience in all kinds of flying, in all kinds of weather. She had flown coast to coast across the United States four times: twice in Lady Heath’s Avian and twice in the autogiro. With her Vega she had made numerous flights; one of them the Women’s Air Derby in which she placed third in the race from California to Ohio.

AE purchased another Vega; although secondhand, it was in excellent flying condition, and as added insurance she had a new Wright Whirlwind engine installed. After nine crack-ups and emergency landings, most of them because of engine failure, she felt that the new motor was a wise investment.

One morning in the winter of 1931, the Putnams sat at breakfast in their Rye home. Amelia lowered the morning paper and looked out the dining-room window. The light was clear, hard, and bright. The oak trees out beyond the patio were stark and bare. The air seemed crisp and clean, as if snow might begin to swirl at any moment.

Amelia brushed her stiff locks with a quick sweep of the hand and turned to her husband. “Would you _mind_,” she asked slowly, “if I flew the Atlantic?”

GP was elated with the idea, finally expressed, for he knew the project had been growing within her, like a child, for a long time. He could see, as he looked into his wife’s steady gray-blue eyes, that she had arrived at that point of self-confidence where only agreement with her was possible.

“Of course I don’t mind,” he said quickly. “I think it’s an excellent idea.”

Plans began to take definite shape. To avoid any possibility of advance notoriety, Amelia chartered her Vega to an old friend, Bernt Balchen, the famous Arctic explorer and an intrepid flier. He had agreed to act as her technical adviser. It was well known that Balchen and Lincoln Ellsworth were planning an Antarctic expedition; everyone could now infer that AE’s plane was going to be used by the explorers.

As with the earlier _Friendship_ flight, when everybody thought the Fokker seaplane was being made ready for Byrd, thus giving Stultz and Gordon the necessary freedom for test-hopping the aircraft, so now Amelia had hour after hour and day after day for checking out the new Whirlwind motor, for blind flying entirely by instruments, for preparing for the variable weather over the North Atlantic.

On a Sunday in April of 1932 the Putnams had asked Bernt Balchen to drive over to Rye for lunch. After a leisurely meal, AE led the way down over the stone steps outside to her garden. She walked to the crocuses, blooming in bright dabs of yellow, purple, and white, and felt their grasslike leaves. Overhead she noted the elms and oaks beginning to leaf. Bernt and GP had stopped at the croquet rack. Amelia joined them. They started to play.

At the middle wicket on the turn for home AE dropped the long handle of her mallet and walked toward the men. “Bernt,” she said suddenly, “I wanted to tell you....” Her voice trailed inconclusively.

Bernt and George laid down their mallets. They followed Amelia to a nearby rock and sat down. AE looked down at Bernt. “I want to fly the Atlantic, now, by myself,” she said to him. “Am I ready to do it?” she asked. “Is the ship ready? Will you help me?”

Balchen, a Norwegian of few words, fixed his clear blue eyes on a wire hoop of the croquet game. His voice still had the trace of a Norseman’s accent. “Yes,” he said slowly. “You can do it. The ship, when we are through with it, will be O.K. And, yes, I will help.”

Her questions answered, Amelia returned to the game with renewed vigor and clouted her opponents’ croquet balls into the bushes.

Toward dusk Bernt returned home. AE, suddenly hungry, went into the kitchen. She started to make cocoa. Lucy Challiss, her cousin from Atchison, who had been staying at the house for a few days, came in with George.

“Can you keep a secret?” Amelia said, grinning, to her cousin.

“Of course,” Lucy answered.

AE went to the table and started slicing a loaf of bread. She reached out a forefinger, picked up a bread crumb, and placed it on the tip of her tongue. “I’m going to fly the Atlantic again,” she said. “Alone.”

Incredulous, Lucy stared at Amelia. The cocoa on the stove came to a quick boil, bubbled, and spilled over the pan onto the floor. GP sprang for a mop, Lucy for a dishcloth. Laughing, AE reached into the cupboard for more cocoa.

It was the first time that Amelia had taken into her confidence someone not directly connected with her flight. Lucy Challiss did not betray her trust.

Unlike the first flight across the Atlantic in the _Friendship_ plane, which had three engines, pontoons, and three crewmen, the Vega with its one engine and fixed wheels would have to go the whole distance with one pilot. For the next month, therefore, AE sharpened her reactions in the conditions demanded in blind flying. For hours at a time she practiced flying by her instruments alone: setting a course to some distant city, then by following the dial of the gyrocompass and keeping the Vega straight and level by flying the needle and ball of the turn and bank indicator, she would compute the time and distance from the chronometer, and finally look out from the cockpit to see if she had made her estimated time of arrival at her destination. She would then turn around and go through the same procedure all the way back to New Jersey.

If possible, she wanted to be ready for the Atlantic take-off on the same day as Lindbergh, five years earlier, had left New York. She had never forgotten the time in Boston when she read about Lindy’s historic flight and how she had hoped even then before the _Friendship_ venture that she might, somehow, be the first woman to attempt the same flight.

While she waited at Rye or Teterboro, she often phoned the office of Doc Kimball at the Weather Bureau office in New York and asked for a prognosis. The weather conditions that had been forecast for the North Atlantic were not too encouraging, but she had decided that if there was the slightest chance to be on her way she would take it.

On the morning of Friday, May 20, AE climbed into her car and started for New Jersey. She was on her way to see Bernt Balchen at Teterboro airport. Ground fog, heavy and wet, bubbled on the windshield of the car; she turned on the wipers. It did not seem to her now that she would get off this gray day. When she turned onto the George Washington Bridge she could barely make out the tops of the towers. The Hudson River below was clouded in mist.

Just before noon at the airport she was summoned to the telephone by Eddie Gorski, her mechanic. It was GP, calling from the office of Doc Kimball at the Weather Bureau. “It looks like the break we’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Doc Kimball says this afternoon is fine to get to Newfoundland--Saint John’s, anyway.”

Amelia asked for particulars about the weather. A “low,” she learned, which had threatened the first leg of the flight, had dissipated to the southeast; and a “high,” which promised good weather, was moving in beyond Newfoundland.

“O.K.!” she said. “We’ll start.”

In ten minutes she made final arrangements with Bernt Balchen and Eddie Gorski. They had agreed to fly with her as far as Newfoundland, to make sure everything was all right before the Atlantic take-off. Amelia looked at her watch. There was no time for lunch.

Always a fast driver, AE now drove quickly back to Westchester. Take-off had been set for 3:00 P.M. She had to pick up her clothes and maps, and then meet GP at the New York end of the George Washington Bridge. Two o’clock, he had said. She swung into the driveway. She had driven the last twenty-five miles in fifteen minutes.

She rushed upstairs to her room. In five minutes she had changed into jodhpurs, plaid sports shirt, and windbreaker. She tied a bright blue scarf about her neck, then stuffed toilet articles into a small bag. She stopped at the window that looked out on her garden. The dogwood trees were in full flower, white and pink in the sun. She turned, picked up her leather flying suit and the folder of maps, and fled out of the room and down the stairs.

At 2:55 P.M. AE and GP reached Teterboro. Bernt and Eddie were waiting by the plane. Eddie and Amelia climbed through the door into the waist. Bernt crawled up on the wing and descended through the hatch into the cockpit. Balchen had convinced AE that he should fly the first leg so that she could conserve her strength for the long solo.

The red high-wing monoplane with gold stripes along the fuselage lifted off the runway at 3:15 P.M. Amelia looked out the small window in the door. On the ground below, standing on the edge of the pavement, was George Putnam, waving. She waved back. For a change, a man would wait, anxiously, for his woman to come home.

The Vega cruised over the coast of New England to Cape Cod. Behind the big fuel tank in the cabin Amelia was sleeping, stretched out on the floor of the fuselage, her leather flying suit under her head. Three hours and thirty minutes later Bernt Balchen brought the plane into Saint John, New Brunswick.

Early the next morning they flew to Harbor Grace, Newfoundland. Amelia found detailed weather reports from GP waiting for her when she arrived. While Bernt and Eddie made a final check of the aircraft, she pored over the predictions. The weather outlook was not too good but held the promise of something better. She decided to leave that evening. That settled, she found a cot, lay down, and took a nap.

At dinnertime she was awakened. There were more telegrams from GP. Her decision to leave that night, she learned, had been a good one. The weather seemed to be clearing on her route. Amelia put on her heavy flying suit, picked up her maps, and went out to the field.

Bernt had already warmed up the engine. Awkward in her clumsy gear, Amelia plodded out to the plane. She reached a hand out to Bernt, then to Eddie. They helped her up the side of the fuselage onto the wing. She let herself down through the hatchway into the cockpit. She grinned through the side window and waved.

“Okeh,” said Bernt with characteristic brevity. “So long. Good luck.”

Amelia took command of the plane. She looked over the instrument panel, her “dashboard,” and checked the engine gauges. Four new instruments had been installed in the plane to help her find her way: a drift indicator, an aperiodic and a magnetic compass, and a directional gyro. She taxied to the end of the only runway. The wind was from the northeast, nearly perfect for take-off.

At 7:13 P.M. the Vega broke from the ground and rose into the air. It was May 20, 1932. Amelia headed out to sea, to fly the Atlantic Ocean for “the fun of it.” A few hours later it would be anything but fun.

Amelia eased back on the stick and climbed to 12,000 feet. She leveled off. She looked out the narrow windshield to the right. The sun, beginning to set in the west, sprayed out in a multicolored fan of gold, yellow, orange, and red. This was beauty, and adventure: the excitement and romance of flight. She looked quickly across the instruments, then out the other side of the windshield. The moon, like a disc of butter in whipped potatoes, sat on the top of a bank of clouds.

The nose of the plane felt a little heavy against the stick. She reached down and rolled in a little trim. She then held the wings straight and level, and trimmed the rudder against the torque of the propeller. The turn-and-bank indicator responded promptly: needle and ball aligned in the center of the instrument. The steady rhythm of the motor was like another heart; and the wings and fuselage were like extensions of her arms and body and legs. She was one with her plane.

10. _Other Atlantics_

“If you follow the inner desire of your heart,” she had said in a magazine article, “the incidentals will take care of themselves.” For four long years she had waited to justify herself to herself. She wanted to prove that she deserved at least a small fraction of all the nice things people had been saying about her as a flier. She had the credit, to spilling and overflowing, for already having flown this ocean; she now wanted to make the credit good by making a large deposit, by flying the Atlantic alone.

“Illogical?” She tried to explain with reasons from her heart. “Perhaps. Most of the things we want are illogical!”

Under the left wing she watched a ship knifing slowly through the water toward Newfoundland. She reached for the light toggle and blinked her navigation lights. There was no answer from the ship.

Amelia swallowed. Her mouth was dry. She reached down for a can of tomato juice, punched a hole through the top with a screw driver, and inserted a straw. She sipped slowly, letting the juice moisten her tongue and the inside of her mouth, then she swallowed a mouthful.

“Adventure,” she had always felt, “is worth while in itself.” Even when she was a little girl in Kansas, playing with her sister Muriel and her cousin Lucy Challiss, she had often gone to play “bogey” in the barn in back of the house in Atchison. The three girls would sit in the old buggy. Amelia would pick up the mildewed whip and crack it over the heads of the imaginary horses. They would ride wildly over a cobbled road, the buggy swaying. The horses galloped; the girls were in a hurry to get to Vienna. A knight in shining armor came riding out of the woods--toward them.

“Who’s that?” Lucy shrieked.

“Dispatches, Sir Knight!” Amelia shouted at the man on horseback; she was not afraid. “For the Congress of Vienna of Treves, in favor of the Holy Grail.” Undaunted, she continued, “Crusade about to start--unless we get through, the Pagan may prevail!”

The knight put up his lance and let them pass.

“Women can do most of the things men can do,” she had written. “In anything that requires intelligence, coordination, spirit, coolness, and will power (and not too heavy muscular strength) women can meet men on their own ground.”

She grinned as she remembered. She had once climbed upon a delivery horse, had explored the caves in the cliffs overlooking the Missouri River, had invented a trap and caught a chicken, had jumped over a fence that no boy her own age had dared to try, had even popped bottles off a fence with a rifle. If it was new and if it was different, she couldn’t wait to try it, especially if some boy dared her.

She had twenty-eight different jobs in her life and she hoped to have two hundred and twenty-eight more.

The restless urge. Better than any college education was it to experiment, to meet new people, to find out what made them tick. Adapt, please, anger, study: these were better than any classroom. The unexpected by adventure became the inevitable. Even the small things, if they were an invitation to hop out of the rut, meant just as much--as flying the Atlantic.

She stamped her feet on the floor of the cockpit. Then quickly she lifted herself from the seat and tried for a more comfortable sitting position. The motor purred steadily. The phosphorescence of the numbers and dials of the instruments was the only light. Outside it was night. The moon shone over plane and sea.

There had been many “Atlantics” before--things she had wanted very much to do, against the opposition of tradition, neighborhood opinion, and so-called “common sense.” There had been the time she left Ogontz School before graduation to become a nurse in Toronto. Learning to fly in California had ostracized her among the more conventionally minded girls. By driving a truck to deliver sand and gravel, to earn money to fly and buy her own plane, she had become a simple nobody. Such things were simply not done, not by a girl.

“The girl in brown who walks alone.” Now she was the girl in brown leather flying suit and helmet, flying alone across the Atlantic Ocean. She looked at the smooth and worn leather of the arm of her suit, and grinned as she remembered her first flying jacket, how she had slept in it so it would have a used look. At first she had been shy about flying.

11. _Flying in California_

California was a wonderful place for flying. In the summer of that year--it was 1920 and she was an exuberant twenty-two--Amelia had dragged her reluctant father from his Sunday newspapers and persuaded him to take her to an air meet at Daugherty Field, out on the far stretches of Long Beach. By the time they arrived, Mr. Earhart was hot and uncomfortable. He ran a long finger under his wilted collar, and mopped the sweat and dust from his face. He could not understand his daughter Millie’s enthusiasm for airplanes. After you had seen one, he affirmed, you had seen them all.

Amelia was fascinated at the sight of the old Jennys and Canucks. They were the same kind of planes she had seen at Armor Heights in Toronto. A man in uniform with an “official” badge pinned to his coat passed in front of her. She took her father by the arm. “Dad,” she asked, “please ask that man how long it takes to learn how to fly.”

Mr. Earhart went to talk to the official; then he returned to his daughter. “He says it’s different with different people.” Then he added, “The average time is between five and ten hours.”

Amelia reflected on the report. “Please ask him how much lessons cost.”

Unwillingly Mr. Earhart went to the official again. When he came back he said, “The answer to that question is one thousand dollars.”

All the way home Amelia thought about the $1,000. It was more money than she had ever had, and she wondered where she could get such a large sum. Her father did not seem to share her interest, and she did not know how her mother would react to the idea of her taking flying lessons. She would begin her campaign by first asking her father if she could take just one ride in a plane.

She finally coaxed him into taking her out to Rogers Airport. They ate a hurried breakfast then took the streetcar to the outskirts of town, to an open space at Fairfax and Wilshire boulevards which was the airfield.

A young pilot of about Amelia’s age, noting prospective customers, came forward and introduced himself. He was Frank Hawks and he would one day establish numerous records as a famous racing pilot. Amelia told him she wanted to go up for a ride.

Frank Hawks glanced at the tall, slight build of the girl in the high-laced shoes. He was unimpressed. If she wanted to go, he told her, she would have to suffer another passenger in the same seat with her, and he nodded to his companion standing by the plane. Hawks didn’t trust frightened females in his airplane. Amelia saw that argument was pointless and agreed to the conditions.

The pilots helped her into the front cockpit. Hawks climbed into the rear seat, and his friend squeezed in beside Amelia. A mechanic swung the propeller and the plane came suddenly to life. AE watched the whirling blur before her and covered her ears to shut out the deafening blast. The plane started to roll over the uneven ground to the far end of the field, then it turned and stopped.

The wings and fuselage shook as the motor clattered wide open. Amelia screwed up her face to the noise. The plane began to move down the take-off run, dipping and bumping as it picked up speed. Then, suddenly, it broke cleanly into the air. As suddenly Amelia was thrilled: she felt as if she were floating on a cushion of air.

She looked down from 300 feet. Trees and ground were speeding by; everything was getting smaller as the plane climbed into the sky. The automobiles on Wilshire Boulevard looked like black bugs, the houses like toys.

The plane leveled off. “Two thousand feet,” Hawks shouted from the back seat. Amelia looked over the side of the cockpit. The oil derricks on the edge of the city were directly below; farther out, the Hollywood hills and the ocean.

Hawks nosed the plane into a steep glide, then tipped up the wing into a turn. The wind whistled over the wings and through the struts and cross wires.

Amelia braced her arm against the instrument panel. She smiled as she rose slightly from the seat. The stick in front of her angled forward; she wanted to hold it. When she reached out a hand, the man beside her shook his head and pushed the hand aside.

She turned quickly left and right in the seat, then tapped her feet on the floor. How wonderful to climb and turn and dive through the air! She felt buoyant, light, free--something she had never known before. A warm wave of exhilaration surged through her.

The plane had landed and the flight was over too soon. AE was on the ground but her thoughts were still in the sky. She knew now that she would have to fly again, whatever the cost. As soon as she had left the ground on that take-off she had known it. She now understood what had lured the young Canadian pilots into the air.

That evening she had to tell her family about her plans. “I think I’d like to learn to fly,” she said finally, when the supper dishes were being cleared from the table.

“You aren’t really serious, are you?” her father said. “I thought you were just wishing. I can’t afford to let you have instruction.”

Amelia was by no means defeated. She would find other ways of getting the money. She would get a job and pay for her lessons by herself. She was now old enough to decide what she wanted to do with her life. Her father’s decision forced the issue and broke the financial ties she had grown to depend upon.

Amelia found a job with the Los Angeles telephone company. It paid little, but sorting mail and running errands provided enough to get started with her lessons. She worked five days a week, leaving her with weekends to spend at the flying field. Neta Snook, an early woman flier and a graduate of the Curtiss Flying School, was her first instructor.

Early one Saturday morning AE rolled out of bed. She was wearing a leather flying jacket over her pajamas. For the last several nights she had been sleeping in it to give it a worn look. She didn’t want the curious to know that she was a novice at flying. She ate her breakfast quickly; she wanted to be out of the house before seven o’clock.

The ride out to the airport took more than an hour to the end of the carline, then she had to walk another three miles along the dusty highway to the field. Amelia wore her riding breeches, her high leather boots, and her leather jacket; tucked under her arm was her leather helmet and goggles. Although she had not soloed yet, she felt like a flier. And to complete the woman-flier portrait, she had been secretly snipping away at her hair.

Instructor Neta Snook and student Amelia Earhart must have looked strange to the casual onlooker. What were these two women doing, dressing like men and climbing into an airplane?

Neither woman cared. Why couldn’t a woman enjoy the pleasures and run the risks of flight? Snooky did not trouble herself about how she looked: she was comfortable in a pair of mechanic’s dirty coveralls. Tall and slender, Amelia, with her hair pushed under her helmet, looked like a handsome boy. She was not concerned about her appearance; she was being practical: the field was dusty and the plane was difficult to climb into. The jodhpurs and jacket, like the gym suits she wore as a little girl, made good sense.

Amelia was glad that Neta Snook was her first instructor. With a woman to teach her she felt less self-conscious about taking lessons; any of the men fliers, who overwhelmed her with their abilities, would have scared her away, at least in the first difficult stages of learning how to fly. Her self-confidence was still shaky and insecure.

AE learned slowly but well. At first Neta showed her how to read the instruments, how to start and rev up the engine, how to check the magnetoes, follow through on stick, rudders, and throttle as she took the Canuck off, climbed, made gentle turns to the left and right, and came in for a landing.

After a few weeks Amelia had learned how to fly a quadrangular course. This had been difficult at first in the light plane. She had to fly around a fenced-off field by keeping the right wing, at a steady altitude of 1,000 feet, exactly in line with the fence. She would angle in to the line, move swiftly downwind, turn steeply into the wind and crab along the cross-wind leg, then level out and move slowly upwind. The fourth leg was the hardest, for it meant a shallow turn with the wind to stay on course. The maneuver around the field demanded coordination of up and down and left and right. But Amelia could see the point of the exercise: if she could successfully work stick, rudder, and throttle in getting around the field, she would have learned the basic requirements for a landing pattern.

Then Neta taught her stalls and spins. These had to be mastered soon if she hoped someday to solo. Again Amelia followed through on the controls. AE sat in the rear cockpit and studied Neta’s every move with stick, throttle, and rudder. Neta reduced throttle, pulled up the nose until the wing stalled; the plane plunged down, then she jammed the stick forward and added throttle to pull out of the dive. This was a simple stall, and Amelia soon commanded the necessary skill to recover the plane.

A spin was more involved; again Neta proved that the Curtiss Flying School had taught her well. As before she pulled the plane back into a stall, but now she kicked the right rudder hard, snapping the wing over. The plane spun to the right, and Amelia, getting dizzier from each tightening whirl, tried to concentrate on Neta’s recovery. Neta applied opposite rudder to the direction of the spin, straightening the wings; then she thrust the stick forward, adding power, and slowly came back on the stick to bring the nose back onto the horizon. Amelia thought the maneuver too complicated to master, but after several attempts with Snooky patiently guiding her through each step, she finally learned. Her reactions became quick, sure, and accurate.

Having learned how to take off and land, and how to recover from stalls and spins, Amelia began to radiate with the new sense of power which these basic skills and accomplishments had given her. She was eager to get on with her lessons, but there was never enough money to pay for them. Much of her instruction from Neta had been on credit, and her job with the telephone company scarcely paid enough to meet all costs. It became immediately clear to her that she needed a better-paying job. She found one a few days later in a most unlikely occupation for a girl--driving a truck for a sand and gravel company.

By this time Amy Earhart realized that her daughter was serious about flying, and she decided to help. On the condition that Amelia would spend more time at home, Mrs. Earhart let her have some of the money she had been saving over the years. Amelia readily agreed to the terms.

To her sorrow, however, when she returned to the field a few weeks later to tell Neta Snook the good news, AE learned that Neta, herself desperate for funds, had sold her plane. Disappointed but not discouraged, Amelia turned to a man to help her through enough lessons so that she could solo. Fortunately, her choice of a new instructor was a good one. He was John Montijo, a former Army instructor with hundreds of hours of experience in the air. And what was more, he was patient and unexcitable before the most trying stupidities of his students. He was demanding, but very knowing and skillful in his ability to teach others.

Amelia learned quickly from him. And she insisted that he teach her acrobatics before he allowed her to go up alone. She wanted to have complete mastery of the Kinner Airster biplane. She knew that if she could stunt the plane, she would then have the necessary confidence to recover the plane from whatever attitude it might assume.

Under Montijo’s guidance, her reactions to the most unusual conditions of flight became as trigger fast as they were in the more normal spins and stalls. She practiced for hours doing slips and split-S’s, loops and rolls, lazy-eights and Immelmanns.

Amelia had gained such a sure degree of skill from her new instructor that when her time to solo finally came she had lost all nervousness and fear. She reversed the usual procedure for the first flight alone. Most fledglings she had watched took off with a joyful sweep and circled the field; then--suddenly ground shy--they kept circling until the tanks ran dry and they had to summon the courage to land. The necessary judgment for a good landing is one of the first tests of a good pilot, and AE hoped that hers would be as smooth as John’s always were.

On the day of her solo Amelia walked out to her plane with the graceful ease of newly won self-assurance. Her patent-leather jacket gleamed in the sun; her high leather flying boots, carefully laced over the tight-fitting breeches, kicked up the dust as she walked; her white shirt, jauntily opened at the neck, revealed the inevitable feminine touch. She stepped onto the lower wing of the plane and swung into the front cockpit. She buckled her helmet and set her goggles over her eyes. A mechanic spun the wooden propeller and the biplane headed out to the runway for the take-off. As the plane rolled down the barren strip, gaining speed for the take-off, Amelia felt the right wing sag just before the plane should have lifted into the air. Instinctively, AE chopped the throttle, pulled back the spark-control lever, and settled the plane onto the ground. Getting out to see what had gone wrong, Amelia noticed that one of the shock absorbers had collapsed.

After the damage had been repaired, Amelia, taking courage anew, tried again. She inched the throttle forward, and when the plane had more than enough flying speed, she eased back on the stick, waiting an anxious moment for the plane to break from the ground. The shock absorber held, and the Airster sprang from the end of the runway. Gently, almost caressingly, Amelia coordinated throttle and stick, aileron and rudder, in her climbing turns out of take-off. Suddenly, as she leveled the wings and straightened the nose, she realized an overwhelming fact: she was alone, gloriously alone. She was in complete command of the surging power from the engine and it was just at her fingertips to obey her will and no other.

Her nerve ends had multiplied, for now the power of the engine was her power and had become part of her own body, and the wings and fuselage and _empennage_ were extensions of her own limbs. She climbed and dived and turned, pranking the air in the thrill and exhilaration of new-found love. The awareness of soaring flight now struck her consciousness as if for the first time. She was now the master of her life, her destiny, and perhaps her death. The realization brought a bitter joy and a livid loneliness, but beyond them lay a new kind of freedom and a blessed peace.

Buoyant and elated, she swung the plane into the landing pattern. Feeling too confident, she neglected to lose enough flying speed in her final approach to the runway, and when she tried to touch the plane down, it kept bouncing off the ground and back into the air. Finally, realizing that she had not cut the power, she pulled the throttle all the way back and held the stick hard against her middle. The engine sputtered, the wing stalled, and the plane thumped to the ground.

When she had taxied the plane to the parking area, some of the other pilots came running over to her. “Congratulations!” they shouted. “How did it feel?” they asked. “Were you scared?”

Amelia felt guilty and somewhat silly, but she certainly had not been frightened. She was ashamed of her rotten landing, but took some comfort in what John Montijo had once told her. All landings are good ones, he said, if you can walk away from them. Amelia was proud that she had finally soloed; by flying only on weekends, she had taken months to do what others had done in just a few weeks of constant instruction. She turned to one of the men standing near her plane and asked him to take her picture out in front of the Kinner. She posed like a wistful maiden who is going to announce her engagement in the society section of the Sunday newspapers. She smiled softly and held her arms out from her body, her hands angled, her fingers pointed. The camera clicked.

12. _The Girl and the Machine_

The remembered sound was enough to snap Amelia back from her reverie. She looked at the chronometer on the instrument panel of her Vega. Time had passed quickly. She checked the fuel-flow indicator. Everything normal. It was 11:30 P.M. She glanced at the air-speed indicator: 180 mph. She wondered what ground speed she was making along her track: that depended on the direction and velocity of the wind. To the right of the air-speed dial she noticed the dials of the altimeter; suddenly they started to spin crazily around and around. In her twelve years of flying this had never happened before. With the altimeter out, she would have to fly by carefully watching the air-speed needle.

She looked out. The moon slid behind a tall build-up of clouds. Then more clouds grew and thickened about the plane. The Vega started to buffet, then to buck like an unbroken horse. Rain pinged and splattered against the metal wings and fuselage, hit and spread like gravel against the windshield, and streamed across the width and off the trailing edges of the wings. Whips of lightning cracked across the nose of the plane.

Amelia set her jaw hard and flew the plane by the needle and ball. She hoped the driving downdrafts of the storm were not nosing her too far down to the water. She could only trust to luck. For an hour she fought the plane through.

Fleetingly she saw the moon. If she could only pull out on top of the clouds. She added throttle and applied back pressure to the stick. She watched her instruments. For thirty minutes the Vega climbed. Amelia felt the controls getting sluggish. The dial of the rate-of-climb indicator fell off. The wings were picking up ice. Slush now splattered on the windshield. Amelia checked the engine rpm’s. Like the altimeter, the tachometer now began to spin wildly. It had picked up ice from the freezing outside temperature. The stick and rudder became sloppy and unresponsive.

Suddenly one wing lurched up high and snapped over. The plane, heavy with ice, spun out of control down through the clouds to the ocean below. Amelia quickly jammed opposite rudder, drove the stick all the way forward, and slowly brought the nose of the plane up out of the dive. She looked out. The gun-metal waves of the Atlantic rose and fell less than a hundred feet beneath her. She inhaled deeply against the pounding of her heart.

Amelia continued to fly near the water, hoping the lower altitude would melt the ice. Then fog and clouds gathered and spread over the ocean. Without the altimeter she dared not fly that low, and she climbed again to what she hoped was a safer altitude: low enough to escape the ice and high enough to avoid the water.

She would have to depend on her remaining instruments to make it across. She did not look out of her cockpit again until morning. The Sperry directional gyrocompass became her savior. She believed in it and followed it. Setting the gyro every fifteen minutes to a new heading, she pursued it across the night and through the engulfing clouds. For Amelia, it was now a grim, dogged, and stubborn refusal to be overcome. As long as the Wasp engine kept firing, she would fly her plane. The last hours became the worst of the flight.