Amelia (6 page)

Realizing that Putnam might have trouble accepting a marriage so unlike his own experience, Earhart added a thoughtful yet shocking way out of a future impasse. “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. . . .”

Considering social attitudes at the time, it is astonishing to think that this unusual couple made their plan work.

Famous as Amelia was, their almost secret wedding was a masterstroke of privacy. In November 1930, Earhart publicly denied one story about their marriage. Three months later, they were married without fanfare – no church, no music, no flowers, no guests. Putnam’s mother was on hand, since they exchanged vows at her house. The ceremony, Earhart wrote, “consumed but five minutes.” Besides Putnam’s mother, there were: “Charles Faulkner, his uncle; Robert Anderson, the judge’s son, and twin black cats.” No photographers were on hand, and that was exactly how she wanted it.

According to a news story, written after the fact: “Bride and bridegroom . . . were extremely happy but undemonstrative, Mrs. Putnam said.” The story also pointed out that Amelia Earhart would keep her own name. As to a bridal gown, “Brown shoes and stockings were worn by Miss Earhart in addition to her brown traveling suit. Brown, it seems, is her favorite color.” With so little to report, the story noted that “Both will be at their desks in New York, on Monday morning. . . .”

Although Earhart kept her name,
The
New York Times
occasionally referred to her as “Mrs. George Putnam,” which she always found funny, and Putnam, being a good sport, understood why some people politely addressed him as “Mr. Earhart.” They never had a honeymoon; neither of them was able to take time off.

People who knew them well understood that tact and sensitivity explained the low-key wedding. Putnam had already been married and had two sons. George Palmer Putnam, Jr. was nine years old, and his older brother, David Binney Putnam, was attending in prep school in Cheshire, Connecticut.

Their mother had already remarried in the West Indies in January 1930. In the course of divorcing her, Putnam provided for her welfare and had set up a trust fund for his children. Putnam’s generosity in the settlement with his ex-wife was important to Earhart; her refusal to have a splashy wedding came from the sense of fairness she shared with Putnam.

Knowing that a busy Earhart was a happy Earhart, Putnam directed his efforts toward keeping her occupied and in the public eye. It was Putnam who smoothed the way for her to become
Cosmopolitan
magazine’s first-ever aviation editor. The magazine’s pride at having such a famous employee shows up in its letterhead at a time, now preserved by Purdue University. The official company name shows up centered:
Hearst’s International
combined with
Cosmopolitan
, it reads. Then only two names appear: Ray Long, Editor is on the left; Amelia Earhart, Aviation Editor, on the right.

Earhart, who enjoyed writing as much as ever, had no trouble coming up with articles about aviation that might appeal to women. She wrote several articles a year that promoted aviation and encouraged women to fly.

Obviously still flying herself, Earhart experimented with the controversial
autogyro
, a type of rotorcraft, or plane-helicopter hybrid, that could take off and land vertically. She was the first woman in the United States to fly one, near the end of 1930. But why stop there? She purchased one, and, within six months, she set a new autogyro altitude record of 18,451 feet.

She sold her autogyro a few weeks after setting that record, but the Beech-Nut Company, which bought it, handed it right back to her, on loan, with their logo prominently displayed on the side of the craft. They wanted Earhart to fly it everywhere. And she did. Her way. Amelia Earhart made a transcontinental flight by autogyro in 1931. Earhart went on to set a new world altitude record of 18,415 feet, and set a new women’s world speed record of 181.15 miles an hour.

Flying the unstable craft, however, had been a continuous headache. Government authorities, concerned for her safety, didn’t want to endorse it. To make that point, the Department of Commerce put its reprimand of Amelia Earhart in writing. It looked like time to slow down.

Then she took up racing. In her first entry in the Women’s Air Derby, a cross-country race from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio – dubbed by
Will Rogers
as the “Powder Puff Derby,” - Earhart was tied for the lead at the last intermediate stop with her friend and rival,
Ruth Nichols
. When Nichols’s plane hit a tractor at the end of the runway and flipped, Earhart ran to the wreckage and pulled her friend out. Only when she was sure Nichols was safe did Earhart rejoin the race; the time she lost was the difference between winning and coming in third. Characteristically, she seldom mentioned the incident.

Thanks to her own determination and hard work plus Putnam’s promotional savvy, Earhart arguably became the most famous woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt. She helped organize several fledgling airlines, including the two that became TWA and Northeast Airlines. She did public-relations work for the Pennsylvania Railroad and Beech-Nut chewing gum, and her image was so respected that any organization she joined could count on being taken seriously.

When a group of women aviators organizing themselves at Long Island’s Curtiss Field couldn’t figure out what to call themselves, Earhart decided to take a leadership role. Now it was happening. Here was exactly the kind of group she hoped for. Should they call themselves the American Association of Women Pilots, the Ladybirds, Gadflies, or Bird Women?

After Earhart was voted the group’s first president, she recommended that they call themselves “The Ninety-Nines” in honor of the original ninety-nine charter members. The name fit so well that the club still uses it today, having grown to an international organization with several thousand members, all women.

Earhart gladly accepted speaking invitations for reasons of her own. She meant what she had been saying about wanting to encourage young women to study subjects sometimes perceived as reserved for men. Groups of women – not limited to female aviators – now hoped to have Earhart as a speaker, knowing that she would find a way to inspire them.

In May 1931, Earhart gave a speech for what sounded like a somewhat bland event. It was the annual dinner of the Barnard Athletic Association to recognize female students who had distinguished themselves in sports. Ordinarily a speaker at such event makes a few pleasant remarks that are seldom remembered the next day, but this was Amelia Earhart. Her talk was written up in
The
New York Times.

“Women are physically as qualified for aviation as men, but have to work twice as hard to get the same amount of credit.” That was the initial eye-opening salvo - from a woman who weighed 115 pounds. She was not finished. Keeping in mind her own education and her own work experience, usually with men as colleagues, she went for the root of the problem, observing that the system of education was “based on sex not on aptitude.” To explain, she described many young women as being “shunted off” into courses to teach them domestic skills, like cooking and sewing. Not denigrating those abilities, she objected that it was done “simply because they are girls.” She talked about boys she knew who “should be making pies” and even proposed offering girls a chance to take manual training. And then her language became even more direct: “There is no reason why woman can’t hold any position in aviation providing she can overcome prejudices and show ability.”

The year 1932 marked five years since Lindbergh’s historic transatlantic flight to Paris, leading people interested in aviation to assume that some aviator would reenact his success to mark the anniversary.

In 1932, many regions of the world remained unexplored and inadequately mapped; isolated populations maintained ancient practices. The Society of Woman Geographers sought to create opportunities to share information that came from exploration of different kinds.
Margaret Mead
belonged to the organization and referred to it with zest: “This is my gang!” And that prestigious organization invited Amelia Earhart to its annual dinner in 1932, months before what Earhart counted as her first notable flight.

Those who knew Earhart, particularly if they also knew Putnam’s penchant for staging dramatic events, suspected that she might be planning another transatlantic hop, this time solo. And indeed she was. True to form, Putnam was urging secrecy, and this time it worked. Not even Earhart’s closest friends knew that she planned to take off from Newfoundland on May 20, the exact date Lindbergh had begun his flight from Long Island five years earlier.

Earhart trained for her feat as if she were an athlete. She ate healthy foods, got plenty of sleep and exercise, avoided negative thoughts, and worked at remaining calm.

George Putnam, experienced at planning for his own outdoor adventures, now added his expertise to Amelia’s own talent for planning. Her efforts apparently reassured her, nearly everyone who saw her at home in the weeks before the transatlantic, commented on how serene she seemed. Wanting to offer unquestioning support, George co-operated in efforts to keep her calm. Again and again in those pre-flight weeks, Earhart suggested that she and Putnam work in the yard of their Rye, New York, home. So they raked leaves, then raked some more.

A good friend before he became her husband, Putnam also understood the importance of seeing friends. Amelia loved being around people; when the couple’s home became a magnet for visitors, Putnam could see the success of his efforts at publicity. He could also see a particular visitor showing up more and more frequently.

Handsome, graceful and extremely charming, Gene Vidal - who was to become the father of writer Gore Vidal - was the kind of man that women fell in love with. Earhart had liked Vidal instantly when she had met him a few years earlier. They had worked together at two airlines, TAT and NYWPA. A pilot himself and an activist in the cause of aviation, he wanted to collaborate in Earhart’s efforts and in her success. First, though, she had an important flight coming up.

Bernt Balchen
, a well-known pilot adventurer, engineer, and a friend of Putnam helped with the planning for the big flight that so few people knew about. Always optimistic, Earhart decided against packing a parachute - too heavy, she said. Her ultra-modern
Lockheed Vega 5B
was modified to accommodate the extra fuel required for the long flight.

Earhart and Balchen took pains to make sure she began the flight well rested. She even let Balchen fly her to Newfoundland, a decision that turned out to be auspicious.

If meticulous planning could guarantee a good flight, Earhart would have arrived in France safely and on time. But she didn’t, and the foremost problem was the weather, or more precisely, the weather information. “Doc” Kimball, a well-known weatherman, told Earhart at the start of her flight that the weather would be all right, not the best, but all right. He knew a storm was in the making, but he expected it would be to the south of her route. Kimball’s information was disastrously misleading. Earhart would run into monstrous weather - high winds, icing conditions, and near-zero visibility - after only a few hours of flying.

Her plane had started giving her trouble before the severe weather hit. The altimeter stopped working, forcing her to guess how far above the water she was flying by looking outside. Her guesswork was useless once the conditions interfered with her sight.

Another potential disaster appeared when Earhart saw flames coming from her exhaust manifold. It wasn’t necessarily catastrophic, but she had to make a judgment call: Fly on consuming fuel or turn back? She chose to keep going.

The real trouble appeared when she found herself in the storm she had been warned about. Assuming that the information she had been given about the location of the storm was reliable, she reasoned that she had strayed from her course. Then, her visibility got so poor that she had to fly on instruments, a skill she had mastered only recently.

Running low on fuel in a plane with a faulty engine and being forced to stay close to the water makes for a grueling flight. Earhart had no choice but to fly under those conditions for hours. Somehow she escaped the storm and finally saw land. It wasn’t France, as she had planned, but she was grateful to land anywhere. She found herself in Ireland near Londonderry.

Earhart’s account of the landing near a field of flax sounded as if nothing at all had gone wrong: “I pulled up in a farmer’s back yard.” And when a farmhand asked how far she had flown, she simply said, “from America.” When Earhart’s sister Muriel heard about the landing in Ireland, her reaction was sage and succinct: “Any landing on land is good.” A year later, the Ulster-Irish Society of New York presented Earhart with a roll of fine linen, woven from the flax of the field where she had set down.

Never a complainer, Earhart emphasized the successful aspect of the adventure when she spoke of her epic flight. But in photos taken soon after her landing, she appeared exhausted. After calling her husband, she spoke to the British press. Cool and unflappable as always, she dryly explained her motives for the flight: