Amelia (8 page)

Mrs. Roosevelt invited Earhart and Putnam to a formal White House dinner. Putnam, knowing in advance that the evening would include a plane ride, made a point of asking Earhart to dress in a minutely correct and formal way: a long gown, of course, but also gloves and a fancy wrap, again highlighting her womanly gentility for the reporters.

Earhart had arranged the use of an airline plane, wanting her friend to be comfortable for the dramatic night flight, which went off without a hitch. Mrs. Roosevelt now had the zeal of a convert when it came to flying. Not only did she want to do it again, she also asked Earhart to make arrangements for her to have flying lessons so that she could get a pilot’s license.

Earhart helped Mrs. Roosevelt through the formalities, and by flying with her got her to the permit stage. She was making happy progress until it came to the next step, telling the president of her plans to earn a pilot’s license. After discussing the proposition, the sticking point came down to a baffling and characteristically male objection: The president said he saw no point in his wife getting a license because she couldn’t afford to buy a plane.

Publicly, Mrs. Roosevelt remained a booster for aviation, and, with so much in common, Mrs. Roosevelt and Earhart remained friends. Earhart recognized her advantages over others who might have had designs on the same prize. It helped that Vidal was a West Point graduate, an athlete, and the son-in-law of a United States senator – for the time being.

Even while promoting her new book, lecturing all across America, working to gain contacts who could help promote aviation, and opening new opportunities for women, Earhart still found time to set speed records for flying and to break one she had just recently set. In 1932, the same year she flew across the Atlantic, she set a new women’s record for crossing the United States: nineteen hours and four minutes. (Women’s records, as a category, were created because women weren’t allowed to compete with men.) The following year, Earhart flew west to east across the United States and, with the wind behind her, broke her own record, this time making the trip in seventeen hours, seven minutes, and thirty seconds.

Earhart’s transatlantic flights, just like Lindbergh’s, had been intended to help persuade the public and the government that airmail service was a reasonable and profitable endeavor. But that required support from Washington. Amelia and her colleagues at NYPWA found out what that battle meant by losing it.

The decision about which airline or airlines got federal contracts belonged to the Postmaster General Walter F. Brown. Leaders at NYPWA, including Earhart, while priding themselves as turning a profit when no other airline had, also knew that they needed the air-mail contract – if their company was to survive. But Brown, who avoided competitive bids or shared contracts, decided to give the contract to Eastern airlines. That infusion of government support put Eastern solidly on its feet and guaranteed that NYPWA’s days were numbered. Eastern acquired it in February 1933.

Now Earhart looked for ways to give other people, especially women, the means to develop their talents. Her friend Eleanor Roosevelt shared many of Earhart’s beliefs, and did what she could to help.

In September 1934, a conference at the Waldorf Astoria brought together professionals from a disparate set of disciplines. The naïve sounding title, the annual Conference on Current Problems, provided an umbrella that the participants understood. Each attendee dealt with some aspect of the largest problem that confronted American leaders and citizens in 1934: unemployment.

Those attending included the United States Secretary of Labor, law enforcement officials, authors such as
Pearl Buck
, literary critics such as
Clifton Fadiman
, artists, several college presidents, secretary of the National Committee on Prisons, and Amelia Earhart.

In many ways Earhart kept finding encouragement to focus on the future. Looking back at her own past became difficult after she lost some treasured memorabilia. Late in 1934, a fire at their home in Rye, New York destroyed some of Earhart’s girlhood souvenirs, including poems she had written and photographs from Kansas. Now more than ever she needed to keep her eyes ahead of her, ahead and above.

Speed records, altitude records - she saw fewer all the time. And now there were more and more women pilots. New challenges lay farther from home. Early in 1935, Earhart became the first woman to fly solo from Honolulu to Oakland, California. Having flown the Atlantic, she now had her eye set on the Pacific.

Amelia Earhart, so cheerful and usually uncritical, now felt confident enough to speak her mind to the press. The headline introducing a story in
The
New York Times
on January 13, 1935, read, “Amelia's Own Story of Her Flight Over Pacific: Her Greatest Hazard Was Adverse Criticism Before the Start – Never Experienced Any Nervousness - Weather Not ‘Really Bad.'”

The newspaper of record dreamed up the headline, but everything else in the report came from Earhart herself and carried her byline. Straightforward and peppered with flashes of wit, she explained why she had begun the 2,408-mile flight almost in secret. “The final preparation was accomplished very cautiously,” she said. “I wanted to escape the fuss and crowds of a preannounced departure. It was easier to say no ‘Aloha.'” Later in the story came the comments that explained the headline: “I didn't encounter really bad weather throughout the entire flight, and the greatest hazard I had to overcome was the criticism heaped on my head for even contemplating the flight [because several other aviators had died attempting it]. For this reason it was infinitely more difficult than my two Atlantic flights. The criticism I had received before taking off from Hawaii was entirely unwarranted and manifested itself in a physical strain more difficult than fatigue. Throughout the night I felt this, yet I never experienced actual nervousness.”

She had flown the Vega 5B, the same plane she used to solo the Atlantic. It was so reliable that she dubbed it “Old Bessie, the fire horse.” Indeed, the flight was so smooth that Earhart, in the waning hours, had been able to relax and listen to a broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera from New York.

By 1935, Earhart's accomplishments as pilot had become almost routine in the public eye, but she had just flown her longest flight so far. The distance from Honolulu to Oakland, some 2,401 miles, exceeded her earlier flight from Canada to Ireland (2,026.5 miles), which had inspired greater celebration.

That same year, 1935, Earhart set another record when she made the first solo flight from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey, again in Old Bessie. Readers may not have remembered which flight she was talking about, but they would certainly remember the way she told the story of her tumultuous Newark welcome: “I was rescued from my plane by husky policemen . . . one of whom in the ensuing melee took possession of my right arm and another of my left leg . . . the arm-holder started to go one way, while he who clasped my leg set out in the opposite direction. The result provided the victim with a fleeting taste of the tortures of the rack. . . . It was fine to be home again.”

Earhart's description focuses on the humor of that story, but George Putnam was furious with the police. He expected better protection and security.

Long before she reached Newark, crowds had been gathering at airports along the way, hoping to get a glimpse of her small red plane. Some of her admirers remembered that before Earhart's flight only one pilot had attempted the same general path. In 1931, a young Mexican had begun in New York headed for Mexico City, despite warnings that bad weather lay ahead. He had flown only as far as New Jersey when severe thunder and lightning dashed his plans – and crashed his plane. He didn't survive.

Before that crash had faded from memory, an even worse accident happened, this one just three days before Earhart's record-breaking flight from Mexico. Four people, including a United States senator, died when a plane traveling from New Mexico crashed.

The drama surrounding that high-profile accident left many of Earhart's admirers fearful for her safety. Mexico City itself - with its elevation of more than a mile above sea level - presented special challenges. Regular flying procedures had to be changed from the moment of takeoff. In an age when flight instruments were rare and sometimes inexact, pilot judgment was crucial. But Earhart transcended the technical difficulties as she made her successful and surprisingly fast flight.

Records of earlier flights helped, particularly when she beat those records. Earhart knew, for example, that seven years earlier Charles Lindbergh had flown from Mexico City to Washington, D.C., and she had found out Lindbergh's time, so when she flew over Washington she knew she had beaten him by almost fourteen hours.

On the ground, Earhart's friends, also aware of the earlier fatal crash, worried about her as they tracked her progress – and waited. At Hoover Airport in Washington, D.C., knowing that Earhart was not stopping there, a crowd gathered, hoping to see her fly over. Passing over that airport, Earhart acknowledged them by swooping over them, flashing a greeting with her plane's navigation lights. Gene Vidal sent her a message by radio: “You've done a splendid job, so come down.” But Earhart could not take him up on it. Her polite reply was brief: “Thanks for the invitation. I am going through.”

As Earhart's reputation grew, admirers readily imagined ways to apply her fame in promoting causes beyond aviation. The president of Purdue University, Edward C. Elliott, had been in the audience when she spoke at the New York Conference on Current Problems.

The day he met her in 1934, he invited her to come to Purdue and give a lecture to women students. In October, she was at the Lafayette, Indiana, campus, and her audience, equally eager, heard her present “Activities for Women After College.” Elliott kept in touch with her, and their conversations developed into negotiations; she signed a contract to join the university's faculty.

Earhart had two roles beyond her teaching. The awkward sound of one of her titles shows how new the enterprise was: Consultant in the Department for the Study of Careers for Women. And to put her technical expertise to use, Elliott made sure to give her another unusual appointment: Technical Advisor in Purdue's Department of Aeronautics.

He had known since September, the year before, when he heard her speak, that she could bring prestige to his expanding university. Earhart had been puzzled by the offer, since she lacked the traditional credentials for college teaching, but Elliott had a job description to go with his bold idea.

In Elliott's vision, having Earhart at his university, no matter what she did, would boost his efforts to convince women students to enroll in technical courses. He was convinced that fields like engineering and other scientific areas, including agricultural science, would advance more quickly with an infusion of female talent.

Elliott's idea immediately helped Purdue, where female enrollment went up 50 percent – especially when Earhart's affiliation became known. She threw herself into the effort. In her view, no university would have been better: She knew that Purdue had its own airport.

Not seeing her position as honorary or merely a gimmick, Earhart moved in – literally. Enjoying the new adventure, the high-flying guest settled into life in a dormitory. She spent time with students, answered their questions, talked to them about career plans, and sat with them at meals.

But Elliott kept looking for even more ways to let Earhart help him advance Purdue and the study of science. He had majored in chemistry as an undergraduate. He compensated for the hardships of the Great Depression by getting New Deal funds for his university. A supple and imaginative thinker, Elliott helped start several corporations that would help the university. One of these was the Purdue Aeronautics Corporation. Now he heard of a new idea that combined flying and science. It matched his own thinking about collaboration between industry and education.

At a social occasion, Elliot heard Earhart talk about her interest in a formal scientific study to analyze how long-distance flying affected pilots. The practical-minded Elliot saw how useful such data could be to the airline industry. Calling upon donors, Elliot quickly raised the $80,000 needed for a flying laboratory. The fund he created, The Amelia Fund for Aeronautical Research, also provided Earhart the money for a new plane, a Lockheed Electra modified for long flights. That plane would transport the flying laboratory.

A plane equipped with numerous scientific instruments could gather data from a wide sample of climates and altitudes. Using that data, scientists at Purdue could promote their own work, publish their findings, and add to the prestige of the university.

Earhart saw the project as an opportunity to get a new plane. She had already said that her dear old Vega, Bessie, was getting old. She knew she needed a new plane, but the model she wanted was more than she could afford. The plane Earhart dreamed of needed capabilities beyond what the Vega could possibly deliver.

Now she was being offered such a plane.

It was time for a new adventure. In recent years, Amelia Earhart had watched opportunities for record-breaking flying dwindle. She had flown the Atlantic, flown the Pacific, and seen commercial carriers start to offer flights over distances that had once made headlines. Now she was eager for a bigger adventure than anything that she - or anyone else - had tried.

Recognition coming from a university president heartened Earhart because it affirmed her efforts to help women interested in aviation. Now she came up with more ways to reach that goal. She wrote to the president of the Airline Pilots Association with a simple question: Why did that organization exclude women pilots?

In her public appearances and speeches, she repeated that theme consistently. She spoke eloquently about aviation as standing out from other forms of scientific progress. With skill and competence – as a speaker rather than as a pilot – she explained why aviation was a wonder: “Among all the marvels of modern invention, that with which I am most concerned is, of course, air transportation. Flying is perhaps the most dramatic of recent scientific attainments.”

In few words, she reminded people of how quickly this young field had grown: “In the brief span of thirty-odd years the world has seen an inventor's dream, first materialized by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, become an everyday actuality.”

She also discussed how the future of air transportation mattered for women: “Perhaps I'm prejudiced but it seems that no other phase of modern progress contrives to maintain such a . . . measure of romance and beauty, coupled with utility, as does aviation.”

Then, she extolled the practical application of science. Her detailed technical knowledge would have allowed a lengthy elaboration at this point, but she cut it short in the interest of rhetorical appeal: “Within itself this industry embraces many of those scientific accomplishments which yesterday seemed fantastic in possibility. . . . Aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies the possible relationship of women to the creations of science. Although women as yet have not taken full advantage of its use and benefits, air travel is as available to them as to men.”

That wonderful year, 1935, before she started the academic year at the Purdue campus, Earhart had off-campus business to attend to. Setting several flying records added to her confidence. Now it was time to talk to Washington.

Earhart had always hated to wear a hat, but she knew there were times when she had to, and she did – grudgingly. Now, after she “strode into” a Senate hearing committee, she took off her brown felt hat and put it on the table. She had come to enlighten the men who sat before her.

She had recently resigned her job as aeronautical expert at the Department of Commerce. (To make it clear that she did the work as a public service, she agreed to work for a token salary of $1 a year.)

A Democratic senator - and Earhart was a lifelong Democrat - proposed to give the Interstate commerce Commission authority over aviation. Senators reasoned, and Earhart agreed, that it made sense to regulate aviation in coordination with other forms of transportation, but she cautioned the committee that they were on the wrong track by requiring airlines to give certificates of convenience and necessity for scheduled operations. She explained that they would be getting in their own way.

Several months later, political leaders everywhere knew the name
Helen Richey
. And they knew she was a close friend of Earhart. Now the most famous female flyer in the world was helping a younger pilot whose career had stalled.

Central Airlines had hired Richey but maintained that her gender gave her a handicap in her work; she resigned. Insisting that she had left Central Airlines “in a friendly spirit,” Richey could not get her career as pilot ignited again. She had been hired on a mail line as a co-pilot, but she could not get the pilots' union to accept her, because the Department of Commerce would not authorize her to fly in bad weather.

Word of Richey's experience, and Earhart's support, galvanized feminists, who championed Richey. (Published reports carefully did not count Earhart a feminist.) But stories all focused on Earhart.

The old question came up again: Did women have the strength to fly transport flights? Earhart argued that women did have the necessary strength, and she knew why. A transport license, the most difficult to get, required a pilot to log 1,000 hours of flying. Some women had those licenses - seventy-two in the whole country - but none of those women had jobs on transport lines, which meant jobs flying air mail, very good jobs.