Walking on Air (14 page)

The National Sweepstakes would be Phoebe's last race. Her sponsor, Mono Aircraft, had been struggling for survival following the death of founder Willard Velie in October 1928, and the death five months later of his son and heir, Willard Velie Jr. The Velie family sold out to Allied Aviation Industries, which moved its operations to St. Louis in 1931.
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Phoebe severed her relationship with the company, although she continued to fly her personal Monocoupe.

When she came home, the city of Memphis threw their famous aviator a big party at the Peabody Hotel. After she regaled the crowd with stories of the dangers encountered during the derby, the chamber of commerce presented her with a scroll “in formal recognition of nationally pre-eminent attainment in the field of aeronautics, through which has been furthered the objective of the 10-Year Program of Progress to advertise Memphis to the nation.” The text of the scroll paid tribute to her as “victor over a host of rivals in the National Air Races of 1931 and a leader in the work of building a greater future for aviation in Memphis, the South and the nation.”
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During the Depression, the key to survival for the aviation business was a contract to fly the mail; these funds sustained commercial aviation and served to underwrite passenger service. The airmail had finally come to Memphis in June 1931 after a five-year struggle. The first ship was christened the
Cotton States Mail
by Mary Hill Overton, the mayor's daughter, who dented the starboard wing motor cowling as she smashed the beribboned bottle against it.
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Universal Aviation, which had been folded into American Airways, began operating a regular airmail service throughout the Midwest, with a stop at Memphis. Another airmail contract for a route from Chicago to New Orleans via Memphis brought a second airline, Pacific Seaboard, to the city. The airline soon changed its name to Chicago and Southern Air Lines and began offering passenger service.
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The regular airmail schedule and the support it required sustained the airport and Mid-South Airways through the challenging decade, and eventually led to significant improvements. After mail disruptions during the winter caused by the inability for heavy planes to land safely at Memphis, the airport improved its grass airfield with hard-surfaced runways. August
1932 also saw the introduction of air express, “the airline making an arrangement whereby packages can be picked up at the sender's door, transported by air and delivered direct to the consignee.” The airport commission reported that 675 planes, exclusive of regularly scheduled airlines, had visited the municipal airport in the first six months of that year.
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Passenger service followed the airmail. A total of 5,391 passengers traveled to and from the airport in 1932. Chicago was now just six hours away, New York could be reached in fifteen hours, Los Angeles within seventeen hours. Memphis also proudly boasted a passenger connection to Europe, although the trip would require some patience. Passengers traveled by American Airways to Atlanta, the Southern Railroad to Miami, Pan-American Airways to Rio de Janeiro, and the Graf Zeppelin to Spain. “Memphians leaving here May 2 on the first trip would be in Spain within 13 days, allowing an afternoon and night in both Miami and another in Rio.”
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Phoebe settled down to work as the secretary-treasurer for her husband's business, Mid-South Airways, Inc. She assisted her husband in training students, servicing airplanes, storing and repairing airplanes, making local passenger hops, and doing photographic work.
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The local newspaper described the couple as former barnstormers who were “in white collar jobs now.”
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It seemed apparent that this would be their future together.

Then, a year after Phoebe's triumph in Cleveland, came a message that would change her life. A telegram arrived from the wife of the governor of New York, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. It read:

AS ONE OF THE LEADING WOMEN FLYERS IN THE COUNTRY AND A SOUTHERNER WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO HELP US ON THE DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGN STOP OUR IDEA WAS THAT IF YOU COULD POSSIBLY ARRANGE IT WE SHOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOU FLY TO NEW YORK MEET DEMOCRATIC OFFICIALS AS OUR GUEST RECEIVE DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGN LITERATURE FROM THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE HERE AND FLY BACK WITH IT TO MEMPHIS WHERE YOU WOULD AGAIN BE MET BY A NATIONAL COMMITTEE WOMAN STOP NEEDLESS TO SAY IT WOULD BE SPLENDID PUBLICITY FOR THE DEMOCRATS AND WE SHOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE IT IF YOU COULD GET IN TOUCH WITH ME BY RETURN WIRE COLLECT ON THE MATTER I SHOULD BE GREATLY OBLIGED
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Recruiting America's most successful woman pilot for the campaign was fitting for the air-minded Roosevelts. Mrs. Roosevelt took her first airplane ride in 1930 and loved it; she made it a point to say that her only chance to fulfill her crowded schedule was to travel by air.
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Franklin had been a strong advocate for naval aviation while he served as assistant secretary of the navy. He would later become the first presidential candidate to fly when he chartered a Ford Tri-Motor from Albany to Chicago to address the Democratic National Convention in 1932. Their son, Elliott, was a licensed pilot.
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This promised to be an administration receptive to aviation development, and Phoebe was thrilled to be asked to participate. In October, she flew to New York to meet with Mrs. Roosevelt and the Democratic National Executive Committee and key Democratic national committeewomen.
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Phoebe joined an extraordinarily well-planned, woman-centered campaign staff led by Mary W. “Molly” Dewson, director of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee. The group included Lavinia Engle, a member of the Maryland legislature and head of the women's speakers' bureau; Emily Newell Blair, vice chair of the national committee; and Tennessee attorney Sue Shelton White, executive secretary of the Women's Division.
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They organized a precinct-level, door-to-door, woman-to-woman strategy for the 1932 presidential campaign. The Women's Division printed millions of leaflets (called “rainbow fliers” because they were printed in many different colors) to be distributed by women “grass trampers” directly to other women. Their strategy was to reject the conventional approach to going after “the woman's vote” by emphasizing their candidate's personality and charm. Instead, Dewson valued women's serious approach to politics. Her strategy was to appeal “to the intelligence of the country's women, to all those thousands feeling the pinch of hard times. Our[s] were economic issues, and we found the women ready to listen. They had been thinking hard about such things.”
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Phoebe agreed to undertake a flying campaign tour for the Democratic presidential ticket using her winning Monocoupe,
Miss Memphis
, which was repainted with the slogan: The Victory Pilots—Win With Roosevelt.
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Barely three weeks before the election, Phoebe took off with Sarah Lee Fain, one of the first two women to serve in the Virginia General Assembly, on a 5,000-mile campaign trip, the first air tour of its kind on behalf of a presidential candidate.
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The pair stopped in numerous places in twelve states—Missouri, Kansas, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee.
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The women kept to the tight schedule worked out by the DNC, although severe snowstorms canceled them out of Bismarck and Carrington, North Dakota. In Watertown, South Dakota, they landed in six inches of snow. Because there was no heat in the plane, they wore multiple layers of stockings and sweaters.
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While Phoebe was perfectly comfortable flying Ms. Fain and herself in her tiny plane, public speaking was another matter. Nonetheless, she tackled the problem with her usual can-do attitude and reportedly delivered an adequate if not eloquent effort, stating that she believed it to be the policy of Mr. Roosevelt to “bring stability from chaos” in all segments of the economy, including the aviation industry.
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By all accounts, the tour was a success, as, of course, was the campaign. Molly Dewson told the press, “We were proud of our women fliers because they carried through their schedules successfully, while the Hoover women fliers all came to grief.”
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As it turned out, Roosevelt flier Phoebe Omlie had herself come to grief. Sue Shelton White reported to Molly Dewson that Phoebe not only deserved but needed a job. She wrote:

Phoebe Omlie is a real casualty of the campaign. While she was out with her plane one of her creditors threw her in bankruptcy. The petition was filed with a federal judge who was appointed by Harding or Coolidge … Phoebe is very reticent about her personal affairs and had never told me this and does not know that I know it. It came to me yesterday through a mutual friend. I asked that friend if she didn't think you should know it and she said Phoebe asked her not to tell you, after she had wormed the information out of her. But hell, I am telling you now any how.
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Since before the election, Dewson had been preparing to secure patronage appointments for a host of Democratic women in the New Deal government, and White wanted to be certain that Phoebe was included. When President Roosevelt indicated he wished to have a woman in his cabinet, Dewson was ready to make a strong case for Frances Perkins for secretary of labor.
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She mobilized her network to press Perkins's nomination, including asking Phoebe to write to the president at Warm Springs to lobby on Perkins's behalf.
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Instead, Phoebe flew down to Warm Springs to visit with the president in person. They talked for some thirty minutes “principally discussing the possibility of a woman in the new cabinet,” Omlie told the press. She expressed surprise to find that “the Roosevelts are ‘just folks'—and Mr.
Roosevelt himself is just like a Southerner in speech and manner and hospitality.” She was gratified that he spoke of his own and Mrs. Roosevelt's interest in aviation.
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Though the newspaper didn't say so, Phoebe was also giving an impromptu job interview.
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She clearly had a New Deal appointment in mind. Right after the election, Phoebe approached her flying sisters to lobby Eleanor Roosevelt and James Farley (Roosevelt's campaign manager, close personal advisor, and manager of New Deal patronage) on her behalf. She wrote to her friend, Pancho Barnes, founding director of the Women's Air Reserve (a quasi-military search and rescue organization), about her ambition to be assistant secretary of the Department of Commerce in charge of aeronautics, adding, “I do not care to do this unless the different organizations with which I have worked, and who are in a position to know the work that I have been doing in the past six or seven years in the development of aviation, will sponsor the appointment.”
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A few months later, Phoebe announced to the press that she was angling for the post of assistant secretary of commerce in charge of aeronautics.
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Phoebe tried to rally support among the Tennessee congressional delegation, but the response was tepid at best. When she contacted her congressman, recently elected E. H. Crump, to intercede on her behalf, he discouraged her from approaching Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper as “unwise,” and took her to see Farley for an inconsequential two-minute anteroom visit.
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Letters between the women in the Women's Division reveal an abundance of political maneuvering on the part of many players in the fight to secure important New Deal posts. Rumors indicated that a friend of Elliott Roosevelt's was being considered for the post Phoebe sought until he was exposed as a Republican. Another story said Amelia Earhart was approached about the position but that she had refused the appointment.
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“I am convinced that he is just stringing Phoebie [
sic
] along,” noted Lavinia Engle after visiting with Crump on Phoebe's behalf. “If she is to get anything someone will have to go to [Commerce Secretary Daniel C.] Roper and to some of the men in the committee and go to the mat about it.” Sue White told Engle that she thought Crump was simply using the “matter to bait [Tennessee senator Kenneth] McKellar … Sue thinks it is too late to do much about it. I sort of feel that I owe it to Phoebie [
sic
] to make a fight.”
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In September, both of her senators, Kenneth McKellar and Nathan Bachman, went with Phoebe to meet with Jim Farley to plead for a position in aviation policy.
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At the same time, Dewson lobbied hard for a significant role for Phoebe in the new administration. She sent FDR a list of fifteen women paired with appropriate appointments, noting such action would “mean a NEW DEAL for the women workers.” Phoebe was number seven on her list. Dewson was nominating her for “Division Chief in Aeronautics Branch.” Her qualifications: “Good flier. Won the Air Derby over men. One of the half dozen qualified airplane mechanics. Has been in one branch or another of the business for years, and wide aeronautics acquaintance. Has real horse sense. Is modest. Very easy to work with.”
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The position of assistant secretary of commerce for Aeronautics was too large a plum to go to a woman. Indeed, the position itself would soon no longer exist. After Roosevelt appointed Daniel Roper to secretary of commerce, the president consolidated several positions under an assistant secretary of transportation. The new aviation position would report to the assistant secretary of transportation as the director of Aeronautics. There was a mad scramble for this prize. By May 1943, no fewer than forty-three people, each backed by some faction of Democratic Party supporters, had made a bid for the post. It ultimately went to Eugene L. Vidal, former Army Air Corps pilot, air line founder and manager, friend of Elliot Roosevelt and close acquaintance of Amelia Earhart, and son-in-law to the influential blind senator from Oklahoma, Senator Thomas P. Gore.
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Phoebe finally obtained an audience with Vidal at the end of October 1933, due to the apparent intercession of the first lady.
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Shortly afterward, Phoebe Omlie was officially appointed to a cobbled-together, loosely defined but impressive-sounding position of special assistant for Air Intelligence of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) with additional duties as liaison officer between the committee and the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce.
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