Amelia Earhart: Lady Lindy (11 page)

He shook his head. “She's not home.”

“Let's go downstairs and you can make us some normal food,” Felix said. “Everything here is French.”

“Happily,” their father said.

Happily,
Maisie thought. She liked the way that word sounded.

They were sitting in the Library eating grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup when their mother got home. Their father made the best grilled cheese sandwiches in the world—extra buttery and extra gooey. He also made the best tomato soup, even though it came from a can. Instead of water, he made it with milk, and he added celery salt as his secret ingredient.
Comfort food
, he always called grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup. Maisie wondered if her father needed comfort, if Agatha the Great had broken his heart.

The good news was that he was going to move back to New York City, anyway.

“So maybe you guys can come down every other weekend,” he told them.

“That sounds nice,” Felix said.

But Maisie had another thought. Maybe their father would marry their mother all over again. She didn't know for certain, but she bet that happened sometimes. People got divorced and then realized the error they'd made.

“I smell a dog!” their mother called from the hallway.

“How could she?” Maisie wondered out loud.

“A wet dog,” their mother said as she came into the Library.

She looked at James Ferocious. “A very big, wet dog,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

Then she noticed their father sitting there, a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich in his hand.

“And what are you doing here?” she said, flustered. “Shouldn't you be getting married or something?”

“That's an interesting story,” their father said.

“Really? I'd love to hear it,” their mother said, flopping onto one of the Moroccan leather sofas.

James Ferocious plodded over to her and dropped his shaggy head into her lap.

“Ugh!” she said. “Wet dog.”

But she didn't make him move, which Maisie took as a very good sign.

“Maybe we could speak privately?” their father said.

Before their mother could answer, they heard the tap of Great-Uncle Thorne's walking stick coming down the hall.

He marched in the room and stood glaring at first Maisie, then Felix, then their mother, then their father, and finally at James Ferocious.

“Where are the Ziff twins?” he boomed. “Still not back?”

“I . . . that is to say . . . we . . . ,” Felix stammered.

“And who are you?” Great-Uncle Thorne demanded, pointing his walking stick at their father.

The walking stick had an ivory horse's head with an emerald eye. That eye seemed to glare at everyone, too.

“Jake Robbins,” their father said, standing and wiping his hand on his jeans before he held it out to Great-Uncle Thorne. “Their father? Her husband?”

“
Ex
-husband,” their mother mumbled.

Great-Uncle Thorne reeled around to face James Ferocious.

“And what in the world is that?” he bellowed.

“Maybe we could talk in private?” Felix offered.

“Today is not a good day,” Great-Uncle Thorne announced. “Penelope Merriweather got cold feet.”

“She got cold feet?” Felix repeated.

“You nitwit! She backed out of the wedding!”

“She did?” Maisie said in disbelief.

“Could someone please catch me up here?” their mother said, sitting up straighter and trying unsuccessfully to move James Ferocious's head from her lap. “The Ziff twins are missing?”

“No, no,” Maisie said quickly.

“Not exactly,” Felix added.

“Could someone give me a straight answer?” their mother demanded.

Great-Uncle Thorne thought for a moment.

“We need to talk in private,” he said, glowering at Maisie and Felix from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

Maisie, Felix, and James Ferocious got up to follow him.

But Maisie hesitated.

“Mom? Dad?” she said.

Her mother was pressing her fingertips into her temples like she had a bad headache.

“What?” her mother said without looking up.

“I think for a bad day, this is a good day,” Maisie said.

She didn't wait for an answer. Instead, she ran to catch up with Felix and Great-Uncle Thorne, James Ferocious at her side.

AMELIA EARHART

Born: July 24, 1897

Disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937

Declared dead on January 5, 1939

A
melia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas, and her sister, Grace, was born two years later. The two girls were inseparable, with Amelia the leader and Grace her follower. Their childhood nicknames of Meelie and Pidge were used throughout their lives. In 1890, their mother, Amy Otis, became the first woman to climb Pike's Peak in Colorado, and she used that sense of adventure in raising her daughters. Rejecting frilly dresses and big bows for their hair, Amy sewed them navy-blue bloomers that allowed them to climb and run and play more easily. The girls grew up climbing trees, collecting insects, and creating daring stunts for each other.

In 1907, their father took a job with the Rock Island Railroad in Des Moines, Iowa. Their maternal grandfather, Alfred Otis, who had been a judge and a successful bank president, did not support his daughter's marriage to Edwin Earhart. His concerns proved to be valid. Within five years of the move to Des Moines, Edwin Earhart's drinking became such a problem that he lost his job and the family's belongings had to be auctioned off. Amelia Earhart said that that was the day her childhood ended. The family moved to Minnesota, but when Edwin lost his job again a few years later, Amy Earhart took her daughters to live in Chicago.

Amelia's love of science eventually led her to attend Hyde Park High School, where the chemistry lab was more sophisticated than the one at her local school. Despite the strong science curriculum there, Amelia did not make friends, and that—combined with her family's reversal in fortune—made her last year in high school a sad one. The caption under her yearbook photo reads:
A.E.—THE GIRL IN BROWN WHO WALKS ALONE.

When World War I broke out, Amelia trained as a nurse through the American Red Cross (which was started by Clara Barton) and volunteered at a military hospital in Toronto, where her sister lived. In 1918, the Spanish influenza became a pandemic, killing an estimated fifty million people—ten times as many people who died in the war itself. (Some estimates put the toll as high as one hundred million!) Amelia contracted influenza that November and had a long convalescence at Pidge's new home in Northampton, Massachusetts. Set to enroll at Smith College, Amelia changed her mind when she recovered and instead went to Columbia University (where Alexander Hamilton studied) to study medicine.

A year later, she dropped out of college to live with her parents, who by then had settled in Long Beach, California. Back in Toronto, Amelia had seen a World War I flying ace perform, and an earlier fear of flying and airplanes—inspired by an experience at the Iowa State Fair when she was a girl—disappeared. She later said that the airplane that day in Toronto spoke to her. But it wasn't until December 1920 in Long Beach that Amelia became determined to learn to fly. On January 3, 1921, she took her first flying lesson, and within six months she bought her own airplane, a bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane that she named
Canary
. She also bought a leather jacket that she slept in every night so that it looked broken in, and cut her hair short like the other female aviators did. This look—the worn leather jacket and short hair—became the trademark of Amelia Earhart.

Flying
Canary
, Amelia made her first women's record by flying to an altitude of 14,000 feet. But in 1924, her parents divorced and, with her mother's inheritance depleting, Amelia sold her plane, bought a yellow sports car that she named
Yellow Peril,
and, with her mother, took a six-week transcontinental car trip that ended in Boston. There, with her mother now out of money and unable to pay for her daughter's college, Amelia eventually became a social worker at Denison House. One afternoon in 1928, a man phoned her there and asked, “How would you like to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic?” Without hesitation, Amelia replied, “Yes!”

A year earlier, Charles Lindbergh had flown his solo flight across the Atlantic. Amy Phipps Guess owned a Fokker F.VII named
Friendship
, and wanted to make the flight herself. But three women had died within the year trying to be that first woman, and Guess's family objected to her taking on such a dangerous mission. Instead, she asked aviator Richard Byrd and publisher George Putnam to find the “right sort of girl” for the trip. There are many theories as to why they selected Amelia Earhart. People thought she resembled Charles Lindbergh. She had a wholesome “All-American” personality. But she was also an accomplished pilot who had logged 500 hours in the air. Whatever the reasons, she was asked to join pilot Wilmer “Bill” Stultz and copilot/mechanic Louis “Slim” Gordon.

On June 17, 1928, the team left Trepassey Harbour in Newfoundland and arrived at Burry Port, Wales. Although she was promised time at the controls, Earhart never flew the plane during the nearly twenty-one-hour flight. Although she described the flight as a “grand experience,” she later said she felt like just a “sack of potatoes.” Nevertheless, reporters were much more interested in her than either of the male pilots who actually flew the plane, and the flight brought her international attention. They were greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York and a reception held by President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. The press nicknamed her “Lady Lindy.”

From then on, Amelia's life revolved around aviation. In 1931, she married George Putnam, and the two embarked on a major publicity campaign for her that included a lecture tour, a book and book promotion, and endorsements for products that ranged from luggage to Lucky Strike cigarettes. These endorsements helped her finance later flights. As an associate editor for
Cosmopolitan
magazine, she encouraged women to enter the field of aviation. In 1929, she was among the first aviators to promote commercial air travel through the development of a passenger airline service. With Charles Lindbergh, she represented an airline that later became Trans World Airlines (TWA) and she invested time and money in setting up the first regional shuttle service between New York and Washington, DC.

During all this time, Earhart and Putnam were also secretly planning her next big flight: a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Such a flight would make her the second person and first woman to successfully accomplish that. On May 20, 1932, five years to the day after Lindbergh, she took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, headed for Paris. But strong north winds, icy conditions, and mechanical problems plagued the flight and forced her to land in a pasture near Londonderry, Ireland. As word of her flight spread, the media surrounded her, both overseas and in the United States. President Herbert Hoover presented Earhart with a gold medal from the National Geographic Society. Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross—the first ever given to a woman. At the ceremony, Vice President Charles Curtis praised her, saying she displayed “heroic courage and skill as a navigator at the risk of her life.” To Earhart, the flight proved that men and women were equal in “jobs requiring intelligence, coordination, speed, coolness and willpower,” a belief she'd held since she was a young girl growing up in Kansas.

Amelia Earhart continued to break aviation records. Between 1930 and 1935, she broke seven women's speed and distance aviation records. In January of 1935, she became the first person to fly alone from Hawaii to California. That April, she became the first person to fly from Los Angeles to Mexico City. Less than three weeks later, she became the first person to fly nonstop between Mexico City and Newark.

In 1937, as she neared her fortieth birthday, she wanted a monumental, and final, challenge: to be the first woman to fly around the world. “I have a feeling that there is just about one more good flight left in my system,” she said, “and I hope this trip is it.” That March, she flew the first leg from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii, where it was determined the plane needed servicing. During takeoff, witnesses claimed that a tire blew. Earhart thought that either a tire blew or the landing gear collapsed. Others cited pilot error. Whatever happened, however, the plane was severely damaged.

But Earhart was not deterred from her goal. Determined to make the flight, she had the twin-engine Lockheed Electra rebuilt. On June 1, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, departed from Miami and began the 29,000-mile journey. After numerous stops in South America, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, they arrived at Lae, New Guinea, on June 29, 1937. At this stage, about 22,000 miles of the journey had been completed. The remaining 7,000 miles would all be over the Pacific. Frequently inaccurate maps had made navigation difficult for Noonan, and their next hop—to Howland Island—was by far the most challenging. A flat sliver of land 6,500 feet long and 1,600 feet wide, Howland Island is located 2,556 miles from Lae in the mid-Pacific. “Howland is such a small spot in the Pacific that every aid to locating it must be available,” Earhart said. Unessential items were removed from the plane to make room for additional fuel. The US Coast Guard cutter
Itasca
was stationed just offshore of Howland Island, assigned to communicate by radio with Earhart and guide them to the island once they arrived in the vicinity. Two other US ships, ordered to burn every light on board, were positioned along the flight route as markers.

At midnight on July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan took off from Lae. Despite favorable weather reports, they flew into overcast skies and intermittent rain showers. This made celestial navigation difficult. As dawn neared, Earhart called the
Itasca
and reported that the weather was cloudy. The
Itasca
sent her a steady stream of transmissions but she could not hear them. Her radio transmissions had been irregular through most of the flight, and now became faint and interrupted with static. At 7:42
AM,
the
Itasca
picked up the message: “We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet.” The ship tried to reply, but the plane seemed not to hear. At 8:45, Earhart reported, “We are running north and south.” Nothing further was heard from Earhart. Earhart's transmissions seemed to indicate she and Noonan believed they had reached Howland's charted position. The
Itasca
used her oil-fired boilers to generate smoke for a period of time but the clouds in the area around Howland Island might have prevented the fliers from seeing it. The dark shadows of the clouds on the ocean surface may have been almost indistinguishable from the island's subdued and very flat profile. Attempts were also made to reach them by Morse code, but that, too, failed.

The most extensive air-and-sea search in naval history to date began immediately. But after spending four million dollars and scouring 250,000 square miles of ocean, the United States government reluctantly called off the operation on July 19. George Putnam financed a private search that also proved unsuccessful. But the question of what happened to Amelia Earhart remains unanswered.

In 1938, a lighthouse was constructed on Howland Island in Amelia Earhart's memory. Amelia Earhart has become synonymous with aviation and with women's achievements. Across the United States there are streets, schools, and airports named after her. In a letter she wrote to her husband before a dangerous flight, she said: “Please know I am quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”