Amelia (4 page)

In 1924, Earhart became engaged to Sam Chapman, a chemical engineer at the Boston Edison Company and onetime boarder in her parents' house. Like most young American men at the time, he assumed that any woman he chose to marry would make a home for him, start a family with him, and consider her role as homemaker to be an honorable and sufficient career.

The couple had been dating for two years. He was tall and thin with dark brown hair and kind eyes. They became engaged, but Earhart never truly expected to give up any of her independence. It took a little while for Sam to understand that Amelia was never going to fill the role he cast for her. He eventually understood that their romance was becoming mainly epistolary.

Aviation became a national obsession in 1927 when
Charles Lindbergh
flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean to Paris, doing what no other pilot had ever done. Lindbergh's flight had been meant to promote air transport as a fast, affordable, and reliable service for airmail. But the wild publicity that ensued got the business community thinking about passenger airlines and the future of air commerce in general.

Should another man repeat Lindbergh's feat, it would not be enough of a spectacle to hit the publicity jackpot. But what if a woman, an aviatrix, were to attempt an ocean crossing in a plane? What a story!

And, of course, in the summer of 1927, rumors were already floating that the next transatlantic flight would include a woman. Since no firm plan had been announced, speculation grew in scope and sometimes in credibility. That summer, Thea Rasche, a well-known woman flyer from Germany, started showing up in competitions and airshows in the United States.

The young blond flyer instantly had a regular presence in the news. Rumors circulated that she planned to fly the Atlantic with Lindbergh. They were taken so seriously that Rasche had to issue a denial.

That summer, American audiences experienced horror when they saw her plane go into a nosedive at an air show. Rasche survived, saving her plane and her life, by landing in the Hudson near Poughkeepsie.

The press and the public saw the accident as evidence that women weren't fit to fly. In fact, the fault was in the aircraft, which knowledgeable aviators appreciated.

With that experience behind her, Rasche made a far more serious nosedive when the very same mechanical failure happened again, in September of that year in an airshow at Dennison field near Boston. Once again Rasche was able to pull out of a dive; this time she survived by choosing a crash landing in a marshy area next to the field. Amelia Earhart was in the audience.

Seizing the moment, Earhart helped herself to a plane belonging to the field and successfully distracted – and calmed – the crowd by going through her own air maneuvers as an improvised stunt flying demonstration. Later detractors cited Amelia's actions as opportunistic self-promotion. But such critics missed the much more significant point: Earhart hoped most of all to obviate the criticism of women pilots. She appreciated what Rasche had to do and admired her fellow aviator.

Not wanting to upset her mother, Earhart took pains not to let on that she was even thinking of playing a part in planning a transatlantic adventure. Amy swore her sister to silence, as well.

In some circles, the people who imagined the excitement of a woman pilot's success story had already arranged a way to use it: New York publisher and publicist
George Palmer Putnam
and pioneer aviator
Richard Byrd
had long hoped to back just such a flight. Putnam appreciated the public's attraction to dangerous undertakings. He had taken part in museum-sponsored Arctic adventures himself, and learned of them through his friendship with Byrd, who had tried to fly over the North Pole just two years earlier.

The two men thought they had found their woman in the American socialite Amy Guest, a member of the
Henry Phipps
family, who was successfully introducing herself to high society in England. Daring in many ways, Guest wanted to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic and would finance the trip herself, but family matters prevented her from making the crossing.

The planners needed a substitute, and, by 1928, the name Amelia Earhart had become known beyond California and Massachusetts. Her reputation as a pilot and a resourceful leader was on the verge of becoming national. Earhart was at work at Denison House when she got a call from Hilton Railey, a Boston friend of Putnam. Amy Guest was insisting that the woman they chose be able to maintain her composure around British aristocrats, and Railey wanted to get a look at Earhart before he made his offer. He wanted to make sure she was well-bred and presentable, matching the modest, charming Lindbergh model.

Railey told Earhart that he was looking for a woman to fly the Atlantic, but he was so evasive about the details that she balked at meeting him. She demanded more information before she would agree to discuss anything. But when his references checked out, Earhart asked a woman colleague to accompany her to meet Railey. When she heard the full offer, she wasted no time in agreeing to fly with others across the Atlantic.

The plane for the historic flight had been custom-designed and built for Richard Byrd, who had hoped to make the first Atlantic crossing but was beaten by Charles Lindbergh. It was a bright orange, Fokker trimotor seaplane, set on oversize pontoons that enabled it to take off and land on water. Byrd had sold it to Amy Guest to finance other adventures he was planning. Guest named it
Friendship
to evoke the relationship between the United States and England.

After a short hop from Boston up to Trepassey, a small fishing village in southeastern Newfoundland, the plane was in place for takeoff. The pilot, Wilmer “Bill” Stultz, and the mechanic, Louis “Slim” Gordon, weren’t planning to let Earhart do any work since they would have to fly mainly on instruments she was not yet qualified to use. They had hoped to have an auxiliary pilot, Lou Gower, but a crew of four and the extra fuel needed to make the trip made the plane too heavy for takeoff. Gower would have to be left behind.

George Putnam, the experienced publicist, knew the value of surprise, so the crew worked to keep Earhart hidden until takeoff. Nevertheless, rumors about her part in
Friendship’
s
flight were buzzing around Boston. One false tale that made it into the newspapers claimed that Earhart had joined the crew to help cover her family’s financial losses. When she heard about it, she cabled Putnam in New York:

Putnam made sure to leak her message to New York reporters. And when Earhart returned to the United States, she continued her to emphasize the vital of women in the future of aviation.

As for her own career, she didn’t expect the flight to have much impact. Thinking the adventure would be relatively short, she asked for just two weeks off from her job at Denison House, paying a colleague to take her place. Further indicative of her thoughts about the trip’s consequences, Amelia agreed to a financial deal that promised her nothing of value, not even the right to make commercial endorsements.

Wilmer Stultz was to receive $20,000 for piloting the plane, and Lou Gordon, the mechanic, would get $10,000. Earhart could write about the flight and use it as fodder for her lectures, provided she protected the “dignity and integrity” of her benefactress, Amy Guest. But if any writing or lecturing fees happened to come Earhart’s way, she would be expected to donate them to the heiress to help offset the expenses of the flight.

In the early years of aviation, pilots had scant information about any weather they might encounter over the ocean. The reports they did received were radioed from ships. Any such messages were handed to meteorologists, who, in turn, compared them to historical records, hoping to deduce seasonal patterns. Earhart and the
Friendship
crew only could pray that the information they got while waiting in Newfoundland was accurate.

Meanwhile, the weight of fuel and people continued to bedevil - and worry - the pilot and his crew. Some of the journalists awaiting the historic takeoff finally gave up and left before Stultz decided to take off with Gower standing on the runway.

On June 17, 1928,
Friendship
finally in the air, the weather continued to pose a problem, the limited visibility forcing the pilot to depend on instruments. The flight was proceeding smoothly, but, after hours on instruments and expecting to see land at any moment, Stultz dropped to a lower altitude. He wasn’t quite sure where he was. All he and his tiny crew could see was a ship. Their radio was unable to send messages, but it could receive them. Flying low, they attempted to drop a note, asking the captain to radio them his position.

Such a maneuver sometimes worked, with ships cooperating by writing their longitude and latitude on the deck itself. But the
Friendship’
s note missed the boat, and with thick fog making it impossible for them to see, the crew didn’t know that they were only a mile off course. When they did spot land, they came down in a bay that they thought was off the Irish coast or perhaps off Cornwall. It was neither. They had landed at Burry Port, a small village in southwest Wales.

On that rainy day, no one noticed the plane. Stultz took advantage of the low tide to push it to the railroad docks. He found the offices all closed up, and when he knocked, he got no answer. Earhart, Stultz, and Gordon, exhausted from the flight and having spent some time waving from the plane without attracting attention, decided to get some sleep. The flight had lasted a total of twenty hours and forty minutes.

Once the word was out, Earhart was appalled to see the press awarding all the credit for
Friendship’
s flight to her, giving Stultz and Gordon scant mention. She tried to set the record straight, telling interviewers, “Stultz did all the flying - had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.”

Thanks to the Boston newspapers – and no other source – Amy Earhart first learned that her daughter had been on the
Friendship
. Out of consideration for her mother’s nerves, Amelia had kept the news about her activities to herself. Amelia’s friends shared her happiness, but some women pilots, who considered her a rival, found the success bittersweet. Ruth Nichols, Earhart’s colleague and George Putnam’s neighbor, felt snubbed, but she and Earhart would find ways to repair their friendship over the years as their sky paths continued to cross.

The press chose to focus on Earhart’s afterthought: “Maybe someday I’ll try it alone.” Then she went shopping at Selfridges, met with the Prince of Wales, and bought an
Avro Avian
airplane from
Lady Mary Heath
.

On the
Friendship
crew’s return to the United States, the hoopla was even more pronounced. There were parades everywhere, cheering crowds, a visit with the president, and a tidal wave of media attention - and all in Earhart’s honor.

When
The
New York Times
introduced Earhart to its readers, the headline said: “Student, Worker, as Well as Flier - Miss Earhart Is Striking in Physique and Personality and Decidedly Feminine.” The article itself opened by reassuring readers:

The fact that she could write was a bonus. The
Times,
which had offered her $10,000 for the exclusive rights to her story even if she couldn’t keep the money, printed it under the headline, “Miss Earhart Foresees Planes de Luxe Due to Women’s Interest in Aviation.” The story itself, cabled from London before her return ship sailed, showed both Earhart’s flair for writing and her humility: