Chapter IX: Part TWO: The World of Flight (4)

She had estimated her time of arrival at one o’clock, Mexican time. The chronometer for total elapsed time clicked past the hour for arriving over Mexico City. She looked down, trying to find something on the ground to correspond to the markings on her map. She flicked off the flashlight. She was lost.

As if in insult an insect flew into her left eye. Amelia tried to dislodge it by rubbing the closed eyelid with her finger; the rubbing made the eye sore, and it started to burn and cry. She flickered her eyelid, trying to keep the eye open so that she could see. It was no use. Suddenly she decided to make an emergency landing.

Amelia thought of Wiley Post, who could make a landing easily with one eye. He had learned to get along without depth perception in judging distances and lining up objects on the ground. Would that she had his ability now.

She circled, looking for a likely place; then she spotted what seemed to be a pasture. She swung down low and swept by in quick inspection. Unlike the time in Ireland when Gallagher’s cows fled in all directions at the sound of the plane, now the goats and cattle were placidly indifferent to the roaring plane, and the Irish green grass and shamrock were replaced by cactus and prickly pear.

Amelia fixed her good right eye on a patch of the pasture, swung a wing up in a steep turn, and eased the plane into the final approach. Reducing the throttle, she brought the stick back slowly, held the nose up, and dropped the tail skid then the wheels onto the ground. The plane clattered to a stop.

Cowboys and villagers sprang up as if out of nowhere and rushed to the plane. They were not at all surprised at seeing a woman pilot, at this time of the night, at such an unlikely place.

The vaqueros could not speak English and Amelia could not speak Spanish. Smiles and gesticulations served as the common tongue. One of the cowboys showed Amelia on her map where she was. He pointed to Nopala, then pointed down to the ground; a bright white smile broke across his dark skin. Amelia nodded, then noticed on the map that Mexico City was only about fifty miles away.

As she looked about around the plane, she could now see that what she had thought was a pasture was in fact the bed of a dry lake. Happily she noted as she walked up and down that the bed was flat and without obstructions for take-off. She hoped that the engine had now cooled down sufficiently so that she could make it to the capital city.

By waving her arms she tried to explain to the villagers that she wanted a path cleared down the dry lake so that she could once more get into the air. She climbed into the plane, then taxied down to the edge of the hard, sandy bed. She looked out to see if the way ahead were clear: two cowboys had placed themselves in the middle of the take-off run, directly in front of the plane. Amelia set the brakes and climbed out of the cockpit.

With much pointing and gesticulating, she finally convinced them that everybody--including cattle, goats, and children--was safest far over to the sides.

She walked back to the Vega. She took a corner of the kerchief about her neck and wiped her left eye dry; the insect had been watered and flushed out.

The Lockheed roared off the dry lake bed. In less than thirty minutes AE had found the military field at Mexico City and rolled her plane to a stop.

The days that followed were for Amelia what she called “Fun in Mexico”: meeting, seeing, doing in endless activity. She met President Lázaro Cárdenas, she saw the floating flower gardens of Xochimilco, she watched a game of _jai alai_ and a _charro_ fiesta. She attended a concert given in her honor.

A few days after the concert she was given a costume like the one worn by the cowboy musicians who had entertained her. She promptly put it on and wore it to a horse show; then posed in it, her face cracked wide in a full smile.

She loved the color of the costume because it was her favorite blue. There was fine silver embroidery at the collar, sleeves, and waist, and along the seams of the trousers. To top the ensemble, she wore on her head a large high-crowned sombrero with a curled-up brim gaily trimmed in entwining leaves and flowers. It became one of her treasured gifts.

The women of Mexico, particularly, interested Amelia. As she went about from place to place, she noted the few sheltered women of the higher classes; the many, bent and worn from the hard labor of the peon; then again the few self-supporting of the middle classes in the city. She would have liked to know more of their strivings and ambitions; she had seen enough, however, to know that reforms were needed in the new order.

“I, for one,” she wrote of the experience, “hope for the day when women will know no restrictions because of sex but will be individuals free to live their lives as men are free--irrespective of the continent or country where they happen to live.”

As in the past, GP had joined AE and guided her through all the festivities. As her manager he had become indispensable to her, particularly where only a man could get certain things done. She was free to live her own life as men are free, but there were times when GP with his bulldozing energy was the only man for the job. Without his help she would not have been able to take off from Mexico.

18. _Solo from Mexico to New Jersey_

Mexico City was 8,000 feet above sea level. To fly non-stop to Newark, New Jersey, Amelia would need a full load of gasoline; with a full load, she would not be able to take off from the short runway of the military field. George Putnam resolved the dilemma.

Nearby there was the dry bed of Lake Texcoco; if the obstructions were cleared, there would be plenty of room to get three tons of aircraft and fuel into the air. She had landed and taken off under similar conditions at Nopala when she had lost her way; why not now? Amelia looked over the mud-caked flats and agreed it could be done.

GP took over. He organized and supervised the work of Mexican soldiers in getting the dry bed ready for the Vega’s landing and take-off. He pitched in with the men as they leveled hillocks and filled ditches, until they had prepared three miles of makeshift runway. The job done, George then flew to New York to gather weather data from Doc Kimball, in order to advise his wife as to the exact weather conditions she would encounter in her record hop.

The Vega had been flown into the dry bed while AE waited from her husband for the signal to go. Weather permitting was always a condition imposed on any flight. For eight days she waited in Mexico City for the weather to become favorable.

It was not until after midnight on May 8 that GP phoned from New York. “Good visibility,” he said, summarizing Doc Kimball’s analysis, “but the winds are not very favorable.”

At one o’clock that same morning Amelia decided to go. She sent word to the men at Texcoco to fill the Vega’s tanks with 470 gallons of gasoline; then she went back to bed for a few hours’ sleep. At four o’clock she awoke, had breakfast, and drove out to the lake bed.

As at Wheeler Field in Honolulu, the pathway for the take-off run had been staked out with flags. Amelia walked to her Lockheed. By the light of automobiles which had been parked with headlights on she could see empty gasoline drums that had been rolled off to the side; and perched on a ladder, a mechanic who was giving the Wasp motor a final check.

AE climbed into the cockpit. She was handed some provisions through the hatch. Earlier she had ordered one hard-boiled egg and one sandwich, but into the cupboard in the right wing she now placed much more. There was enough food for many days of sustained flying: six hard-boiled eggs, three of them already shelled; four sandwiches, with thick slices of meat; three cans of tomato juice; one thermos bottle of hot cocoa and another of water. The way she was cared for, the accident of sex was sometimes a happy one!

She started the engine and let it idle for a few moments. Then she opened the throttle wide and checked the rpm’s and magnetoes. She watched the fuel and oil pressure, the fuel and oil temperature. She brought the throttle back. Everything set.

At 6:06 A.M. the Vega roared down the runway and blasted into the air. AE had used only one mile of the three she thought she would need for the take-off from the dry lake bed. She smiled as she climbed to 8,000 feet. Again the plane had behaved beautifully. If there was one name she truly loved besides Earhart and Putnam, it was Lockheed. During the take-off run she had forced the Vega to stay on the mud flats until it developed a speed well over a hundred miles an hour; then it flew into the air by itself.

Amelia watched the altimeter until it indicated 10 on the dial, then she leveled off. She skimmed over the mountains surrounding the valley in which Mexico City lay. Together valley and mountains formed a large saucer and rim. Behind her Popocatepetl and Ixracihuatl mountains loomed; they seemed mighty, proud, majestic with their white-peaked crowns of snow. The rising sun flung its warmth over the dappled earth.

To Amelia, the tomboy of Kansas whom the magic of flight had transformed into an air adventurer astride Pegasus, the land below was a veritable fairyland of beauty. Like Alice through the looking glass she thrilled to each new sight. Like a taller Gulliver she looked down from 10,000 feet and strode on swift, unseen legs through a Lilliputian world of small green fields, narrow dirt roads, tiny adobe huts, bull rings that could be covered with a hand. They were the playthings of a child.

She crossed the divide. Thick clouds formed and stretched out over the Gulf. Briefly they parted and through them she saw a cluster of oil tanks. She checked her map and estimated that she was over Tampico. Applying right stick and rudder, she turned, leveled her wings, and took up a northeast heading. Straight ahead, across the Gulf of Mexico and 700 miles away, should be New Orleans.

Over the water, she remembered the warning of Wiley Post: “Amelia, don’t do it; it’s too dangerous.” She grinned and shook her head. Why, everything was fine! She scanned the instrument panel, listened to the steady purr of the motor. Fine indeed. She reached into the cupboard and unwrapped one of the peeled hard-boiled eggs. She ate the egg quickly; then she took out one of the thick sandwiches and the thermos bottle of water.

She munched, sipped, and mused. Wiley Post was right in a way. It would be safer to make long over-water flights in a bigger and better plane. Two engines would be ideal. Why, with a multimotored plane a pilot could fly anywhere. She rolled the paper wrapper from the sandwich into a tight little ball. She squeezed it hard in her hand, then popped it into the compartment in the left wing. Why, with a two-engined plane a pilot could fly--around the world! She settled back in her seat and pressed her shoulders against the bulkhead behind her. One day, perhaps. One more good, long flight. It would be the last. Then she could sit back, relax, and really write a good book about flying. The others, the articles and the books, had been done too hastily. She could do better.

Ahead she saw a ragged peninsula jutting out into the water; short, stubby fingers of land, then the long index finger. At the base of the notch formed by the thumb and index, a city. It must be New Orleans. She radioed in on the New Orleans frequency. She had made it; her dead reckoning had been right on the nose.

From New Orleans to Newark she could be in radio contact all the way. She reported in to Mobile, Montgomery, Atlanta, Charlotte, Richmond. She felt like a country telephone operator listening in on party lines, the conversations were so numerous and frequent on the way across the country. She looked out and watched the darkness cover the earth. She snapped on her navigation lights.

Successively, each of the cities as she looked down at the lights was a treasure of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds. A thousand and one nights’ treasure that had been tipped over, spilled out, and spread over the black land. She thrilled to the sparkle and glitter.

At 9:05 P.M. she passed over Washington, D.C., and reported her position. Into her earphones came the voice of Eugene Vidal, her old friend from the Ludington Line. He came in loud and clear. “You’ve done enough,” he said. “You’d better land at Hoover Airport.” He was calling from his office at the Bureau of Air Commerce.

Amelia grinned. “No thanks,” she answered him. “Going through to New York.” Then she added, “Cheerio.”

It was a beautiful night for flying, too beautiful to land. Clusters of bright green and silver stars against the black of the night were better than emeralds and diamonds at Tiffany’s.

Amelia checked the gasoline gauges for the left- and right-wing tanks and for the big extra tank in the passenger compartment. She studied the fuel-flow meter. Everything normal. The Wasp purred in steady, rhythmic beats. She pulled out the thermos of hot chocolate. She gulped a mouthful; the warmth from the sweet liquid spread through her.

People had often offered her coffee or tea, and on other occasions liquor and cigarettes. She didn’t believe in stimulants of any kind; she didn’t need them. Once, someone had asked her why she didn’t smoke. He had undoubtedly seen her endorsement of a cigarette after the _Friendship_ flight.

Amelia smiled as she remembered. To overcome any thoughts of prudishness he might have of her she had thereupon taken two cigarettes, lit them, and puffed them into clouds of smoke. “There,” she had said, after they had burned down and she put them out in an ash tray, “I have smoked.” She never smoked again, not even in jest. But there was nothing to prevent her if she wanted to. That point had to be made clear.

She looked out from the cockpit and ran her eyes from wing tip to wing tip. It was a lovely night: the new moon, the stars that could be scooped into the palm of her hand, the clean, fresh air that whistled through the opened windshield. Space unlimited. She looked at the tachometer: the needle was steady at 1,750 rpm’s; then at the indicated air speed: unwavering at 150 mph. Homeward bound. Everything fine.

Waiting for her at Newark were GP and thousands of other people who had heard about the flight and driven out to the airport. With George were Paul Collins, AE’s other good friend from the Ludington Line; Doc Kimball, the famous New York weatherman; and Dr. Eduardo Villasenor, consul general for Mexico. From the southwest they saw a single-motored, high-winged plane. It was AE, and she was ahead of schedule.

Paul Collins, a veteran of more than a million miles in the air, watched the plane come in. The red and green passing lights slid down and up in a turn, then rolled out and headed down for a landing. Thinking of the long flight that was being finished, apparently without effort, Paul shook his head. There was admiration in his voice. “That’s a flier!” he exclaimed.

Doc Kimball was proud that AE was one of “his fliers.” “Such people are good for us all,” he said, just after the plane touched down on the runway.

Amelia taxied the plane to the parking ramp. She saw a huge crowd of people straining at the ropes that held them in. The crowd broke and ran for the plane. AE cut the switch. The throng, now wildly shouting, had eddied up and completely surrounded the plane. Amelia opened the hatch. A loud roar of welcome acclaimed her.

GP, lost in the sea of faces, looked up at his wife who could not pick him out. She looked like a little girl in the heavy flying clothes. Her face was streaked with grime; her eyes were taut and strained.

Two policemen pushed through the crowd to the side of the plane. Amelia jumped down to them. One policeman grabbed her right arm; the other her left leg. They started to move in opposite directions. Amelia screamed. The policemen reunited at the girl and plowed through the mob to the police car.

19. _Purdue University_

“You are all a lost generation,” Gertrude Stein had said to Ernest Hemingway about him and the group of disillusioned postwar expatriates who lived in Paris. Hemingway had quoted her in _The Sun Also Rises_, published in 1926. The phrase “lost generation” became a touchstone of the times; in the early thirties it still persisted, but now included in one wide sweep all who were the young, the troublesome, the enigmatic.

In 1934 the New York _Herald Tribune_ held its annual conference; the topic: “Women and the Changing World.” Amelia Earhart was a guest speaker. In the audience was Dr. Edward C. Elliott, president of Purdue University. Up on the platform Mrs. William Brown Meloney rose to introduce the famous woman flier.

“I present to you,” Mrs. Meloney said, turning to AE, “evidence against a ‘lost generation.’ For I remind you that no generation which could produce Amelia Earhart can be called a lost generation. She has set a pace for those of her age and time. She has never been content to rest on her laurels. She has worked, and is working, and will continue to work hard to further the science to which she has dedicated her life.”

Amelia, thirty-six years old and born in the same year as Ernest Hemingway, sat uneasily as she listened to the introduction. She had been asked to discuss youth. Although she did not consider herself a member of the younger generation, she certainly did not consider it lost. She got up from her chair and walked to the speaker’s stand. Her voice was low and confident. The speech was short and to the point.

“It is true,” she said, after making the usual introductory salutations, “that there are no more geographical frontiers to push back, no new lands flowing with milk and honey this side of the moon to promise surcease from man-made ills. But there are economic, political, scientific, and artistic frontiers of the most exciting sort awaiting faith and the spirit of adventure to discover them.”

She brushed her hair back with a quick sweep of the hand. “Probably no field,” she continued, now with more animation, “offers greater lure for young people--explorers--than aviation. It has the color and movement of flying to kindle the imagination, and its growing importance as an industry is tempting to those who plan serious careers in transportation, for aviation is simply the newest form of transportation--the climax of the human pageant of human progress from oxcart to airplane....”

She listed some of the problems in aviation that had to be solved, and admitted that there were no easy solutions. “For,” she then explained, “the economic structure we have built up is all too often a barrier between the world’s work and the workers. If the younger generation finds the hurdle too absurdly high, I hope it will not hesitate to tear it down and substitute a social order in which the desire to work and earn carries with it the opportunity to do so.”

She narrowed to a conclusion. “The ancients, such as I am,” she said, as she drove home a burning conviction, “should be listening to young ideas, rather than pointing up opportunities in a world”--she paused for a quick breath--“which has the elders decidedly on the run.”

President Elliott of Purdue nodded in agreement. Such a woman, he decided, who believed in young people, belonged on a college faculty.

A few days later Dr. Elliott joined the Putnams for dinner at GP’s favorite restaurant in New York, the Coffee House Club. GP and AE sat with their guest at a little table on the second floor. The room was cozy. The men talked.

Amelia glanced at the familiar surroundings, and was glad that her husband had taken her to such a place. As if clearing the area before making a turn in the Vega, she directed her eyes across the books and paintings along the wall, the piano in front of the little stage, the Fish drawings and Chappell cartoons along the other wall.

George looked at his wife. She seemed particularly lovely to him that evening. Her long bangs, neatly combed over the high forehead; the clear blue-gray eyes, forever hiding a mystery; the sensuous lips and the wide mouth; the strong jaw; the long, lovely hands: on such a night as this he could propose to her all over again.

After dinner they walked casually out of the room toward a couch against the far wall. Dr. Elliott pulled up a chair; AE and GP sat on the couch. Amelia leaned to one side, held her skirt, and tucked her feet up and under her.

President Elliott looked at the bulletin board above the couch, then at the slight figure of Amelia. He caught her eye, then told her how much he had enjoyed her speech at the _Tribune_ conference. Young people, he explained, were his business and he could never find enough of the professionally trained to motivate and inspire his students.

“Amelia,” he said, smiling, “we would like to have you at Purdue.”

AE thought a moment. “I’d like that,” she said, knowing nevertheless that she had no degrees to qualify for such an assignment. “But what do you think I could do?”

Dr. Elliott’s eyes brightened and crinkled at the corners. “We have about six thousand students. Eight hundred of them are girls. We don’t think the girls are keeping abreast of the opportunities of the day nearly as well as they might be.”

Amelia warmed to the possibilities. “And I...?” She began a question.

“You could supply the spark they need,” he answered. “Something from outside the classroom.”

For two hours they continued to discuss the idea. By the time President Elliott had been taken to Grand Central for a midnight train, the project had assumed a definite shape. For one month during the academic year Amelia would deliver lectures, act as a counselor to the girls, and advise the department of aeronautics. AE liked the challenge. Purdue at the time was the only university in the country that had its own airport.

On June 2, 1935, after the Pacific and Mexico flights, President Elliott formally appointed Amelia Earhart to the faculty of Purdue University. “Miss Earhart,” he announced, “represents better than any other young woman of this generation the spirit and courageous skill of what may be called the new pioneering. At no point in our educational system is there greater need for pioneering and constructive planning than in education for women. The university believes Amelia Earhart will help us to see and to attack successfully many unsolved problems.”

Amelia was heartened by the announcement. Not satisfied with the record flights of the spring, she now tested the high-speed capabilities of her plane. In July she set the transcontinental speed record for women, by flying from Los Angeles to Newark in seventeen hours, seventeen minutes, and thirty seconds.

In November, AE was the “flying professor” of the Lafayette, Indiana, campus. With the students, male and female, she was easy, casual. Dressed in slacks at a conference, she would swing her legs up on a desk or table and chat. She invariably preferred an atmosphere of informality.

She lived in one of the women’s dormitories at Purdue, and kept her door open for any of the girls who wanted to drop in for a visit. In the dining hall she had a different group sit at her table for every meal.

Amelia soon declared herself as the empiricist and pragmatist which she was. Learn by doing and have fun at it had guided her every step through life. At one of her first lectures she explained why she came to Purdue. It was her kind of school--a technical school where all instruction had its practical side. Education, she felt, had failed to discover individual aptitude soon enough. If a child’s bent could be determined early, much study and work in the wrong direction could be avoided.

“We have watched the colleges,” she said, “produce countless graduates who could only demand jobs for which, notwithstanding the adequacy of their formal education, they might be totally unprepared or unfitted, and in which they were often even just plain not interested.

“It’s a fundamental problem, and I can imagine that reform may involve the entire reconstruction of our educational system. Because Johnnie liked to play with tin soldiers, his mother has jumped to the conclusion, since the year one, that he wanted to be a soldier! So she packed him off to military school--which he hated--though maybe she never found it out--all because what really interested him about tin soldiers was that they were made of lead, and lead is metal, and you heat metal and melt it and make it into lots of things--steel for skyscrapers, decorative ironwork, leading for stained-glass windows....”

Although she would have liked to, AE soon discovered that it would be impossible to interview all 800 women students. She therefore sent out a questionnaire to them. In answer to one question she learned that 92 per cent of the coeds wanted to go into useful employment after graduation.

She would assemble the girls in large groups and talk to them.

“After all,” she said to them, drawing from her own experience, “times are changing and women need the critical stimulus of competition outside the home. A girl must nowadays believe completely in herself as an individual. She must realize at the outset that a woman must do the same job better than a man to get as much credit for it. She must be aware of the various discriminations, both legal and traditional, against women in the business world.

“I cannot tell you that you will be able to bounce right out of college into your life work. I believe, under existing conditions, that it is almost impossible to do. But I believe also that it doesn’t greatly matter, for the business world will draw out one’s aptitudes.

“Probably no sure way has yet been discovered for women--or men either--to know before they reach the age of sixty-five if they have done right by their lives; and even then I believe they can’t be exactly sure that something else they could have chosen would not have made their lives richer.

“Probably people of outstanding talent--like Lily Pons, for instance--couldn’t do anything but follow their natural bent. Such people must know they’re in the right profession. The rest of us, I fear, can never know for certain until we can take a backward look in old age, for we must have a background of experience against which to make comparisons. So our vocational starts are somewhat conditioned. But not fatally, surely. Of course if men and women are very unhappy in their work, they are entitled to a pretty good opinion that they are in the wrong work. Yet if they are happy in it--I don’t believe it means, necessarily, that they couldn’t be happier.

“And so I’m inclined to say that, if you want to try a certain job, try it. Then if you find something on the morrow that looks better, make a change. And if you should find that you are the first women to feel an urge in that direction--what does it matter? Feel it and act on it just the same. It may turn out to be fun. And to me fun is the indispensable part of work.”

Aptitude, trial and error, practicality, fun: such were the tenets of her proclaimed philosophy for living. For the girl who initially had accidentally become a heroine of flight, then had to prove it to herself, and for the rest of her life to the world who acclaimed her, it was the only possible philosophy.

Although she forgot to mention it, there was in her life, in addition to the necessity of fun for work, much work in her fun. And despite the fact that her practical self would never admit it, she was also a romantic and a visionary. Like the skylark and the nightingale of Shelley and Keats, she was a blithe spirit and a light-winged dryad, who soared on the wind and pranked the starlight sky. Without her dreams she could not live in the wide-awake world.

Like Henry David Thoreau, the famed mystic of Walden Pond, she could say:

I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the range of sight,
New earth and skies and seas around.

There was fitful restlessness in the way Amelia had skipped from job to job and interest to interest on the ground, the ground in which her soaring ambition could never take root. It was only in the air that she found the repose and the leisure to probe the depths of her own soul, to come to a sustaining knowledge of herself.

Dr. Elliott was pleased with her work. So was the Purdue Research Foundation, which set up an Amelia Earhart Fund for the purchase of a plane that she could use experimentally at her own discretion.

AE, despite a deep interest in the engineering and mechanical aspects of flight, wanted to study the human elements involved--“the effects of flying on people.” She had named herself as the first guinea pig.

Early in 1936 enough funds were declared available for her to make her choice of airplanes. Amelia picked a new twin-engined ten-passenger Lockheed Electra transport plane. It was what she had wanted for a long time: a bigger, safer airplane.

Amelia now announced to GP that she planned to fly around the world at the equator. It was something no man had done, not even Lindbergh.

Like the matador of many victories who pits his ability against the bull by getting closer and closer to the horns and making more and more difficult passes, or the mountain climber who has proven himself the victor over the tallest peaks and has yet to climb Everest, so Amelia, who had triumphed over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the North American continent, now would set out to conquer the one remaining adversary to her skill and courage--the world.