Amelia Earhart (9 page)

It was not a very good poem, almost sophomoric in its disdain for the mundane, but to Perkins and, later, to others who knew her, the poem was the essence of Amelia. She could not and would not live a conventional life. Her objectives were empyrean—to go where no one had gone and to do what no one had done. If to dare was to die, then she would die.

Once committed to the flight, she wrote a will listing her debts, mostly medical bills of a little over one thousand dollars, and her assets, one government bond, the Kissel Kar, and stock in Kinner Airplane and Dennison Airport companies. Amy was to receive anything remaining after settlement of Amelia’s debts. Amelia closed the will with, “My regret is that I leave just now. In a few years I feel I could have laid by something substantial, for so many new things were opening for me.”

She also wrote a letter to each of her
parents, to be opened only if she were dead. To her father she said,

She omitted her doubts about heavenly reunions in the one to her mother:

Amelia gave the letters to Sam Chapman, the only other person besides Marion Perkins in whom she confided her plans. The will was in a safety deposit box at Medford Bank, the key left with Sam. She also asked him
to tell Amy and Muriel about the flight immediately after the
Friendship
left Boston.

To Hilton Railey she wrote, “I appreciate your forbearance in not trying to ‘sell’ the idea, and should like you to know I assume all responsibility for any risk involved.” When Railey’s wife, Julia, urged her to back out of the agreement just before the
Friendship
took off, Amelia replied, “No, this is the way I look at it. My family’s insured; there’s only myself to think about. And when a great adventure’s offered you—you don’t refuse it, that’s all.”

I
n the spring of 1928 Amelia Earhart made two decisions. The first was to accept the offer of the
Friendship
flight, the second, to return to Denison House when it was over. “I’ll be back for summer school,” she told Marion Perkins. She made both decisions as independently as she had when she defied her Hyde Park classmates in Chicago, when she left Ogontz for a Toronto hospital, when she dropped out of Columbia University, and when she decided to be a pilot. But “the girl in brown who walks alone” was now locked in step with others who had converging interests and equally strong wills.

One was Cmdr. Richard Evelyn
Byrd, USN, conqueror of the North Pole in 1926. The thirty-year-old Byrd, brother of Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia, was described by a fellow officer as a great navigator, a competent pilot, a fine companion, but a “publicity hound.” “The minute he got back from one thing and sat on his fanny for a week or two he commenced to get agitated. Wanted to do something else … good at raising money … equipment from the Navy, ‘custodial loans’ which the Navy never got back.”

The ambitious, restless Byrd was both friend and client of G. P. Putnam who published his books and publicized his expeditions. Byrd not only agreed to secretly sell his trimotor Fokker to Mrs. Guest, he also offered to pick a crew for the enterprise, an offer Putnam welcomed. Although
nominally captain of the
Friendship
, Amelia was not consulted. Byrd asked Wilmer “Bill”
Stultz to be pilot. Stultz was a magnificent pilot. Only twenty-eight, he was already a veteran of both the Army and Navy air services. He had worked for Curtiss Export Company, delivering forty planes to Rio de Janeiro, where he taught the Brazilian air force pilots to fly them. From Curtiss he went to Anthony Fokker’s firm as a test pilot and only one month before he accepted Byrd’s offer as pilot of the
Friendship
he had flown Charles A. Levine and Mabel Boll to Havana. The wealthy Miss Boll, known to the public as the “Diamond Queen,” told the press that she would sell all her diamonds to make a transatlantic flight and that Stultz had agreed to be her pilot. Either she misunderstood or Stultz had reneged before he accepted Byrd’s offer. Stultz was also an
alcoholic, not an unusual condition for test pilots of that era.

To assist Stultz as mechanic and copilot, Byrd chose Louis Edward “Slim” Gordon. A year younger than Stultz, Gordon was also a veteran of the Army Air Service. An additional pilot, Louis Gower, was put on standby by Byrd.

Byrd also chose three more members of the
Friendship
team, retired Navy Cmdr. E. P. Elmer as technical advisor, Capt. William Rogers of the International Mercantile Marine to make the flight charts, and Dr. James H. Kimball of the U.S. Weather Bureau in New York to provide weather advisories.

Although Byrd selected most of the personnel, real control of the
Friendship
flight was always Putnam’s. The suave, handsome Putnam was everything he claimed to be to Amelia—author, editor, explorer, publisher, and friend of the famous. Putnam knew how to provide heroes to a hero-worshipping public. This time he had a potential heroine. Physically, this woman was the feminine equivalent of Lindbergh. Her tall, erect, slender figure, piercing blue-grey eyes, high forehead, firm chin, and Nordic coloring were a guarantee for a “Lady Lindy” image. She had the same shy smile and the same hesitation before speaking. In addition she was an intelligent, compassionate social worker who didn’t smoke or drink, an unmarried woman with a reputation as unsullied as a Girl Scout’s. If the
Friendship
crossing was successful Putnam was certain he could make Amelia Earhart a national heroine.

Secrecy and speed were essential to Putnam’s plan. Amelia’s crossing would have to be a surprise and she would have to be the first woman to do it. The plane sale was made through a go-between, millionaire
Donald Woodward of Le Roy, New York, owner-president of the Mechanical Science Corporation. The sale was registered on April 9, 1928, with the corporation as buyer.

Making Amelia the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane was more difficult. Two
others were threatening to do it. The first was Mabel Boll, who had the use of Levine’s
Columbia
, the plane in which he and Chamberlin had flown to Berlin in 1927, and who continued to badger Stultz about his
alleged promise to be her pilot. The second challenger was
Thea Rasche of Germany who announced on May 6 that she intended to make the flight from New York with Ernst Udet, a German war ace. A few days later Rasche said she would take off after June 10, as soon as weather permitted.

Along with the challenges of the “Diamond Queen” and the “Flying Fraulein,” there was the chance that the public could become jaded from too many successful transatlantic flights. In mid-April two Germans and an Irishman had made a westbound flight from Dublin to Newfoundland. During May two Germans, an Englishman, two Frenchmen, a Pole, a Swede, and two Spaniards all announced plans for crossing from west to east. A
prize of thirty thousand dollars was offered by the Belgians to the first airman to land at Oestand Farm from New York. Although Hollywood’s biggest box-office hit of the year was William Wellman’s
Wings
, if even half the aspiring transatlantic fliers made it, the public might well tire of aviation exploits.

In addition to the
Friendship
team, the only other persons who knew of Amelia’s plans were Marion Perkins and Sam Chapman. Although Amelia would not marry Sam, she thought of him as part of her family and gave him the onerous task of telling her mother and sister her plan
after
the flight left Boston. Amelia told no one else and avoided being seen near the plane:

During April and May she carried on her customary schedule, working at Denison House and spending weekends at Dennison Airport. She kept up her correspondence, writing again to Ruth Nichols on April 24 about a
women’s flying organization. She suggested to Nichols that they be “autocratic
about officers at first, in order to start something. One of us should be chairman, and a secretary and treasurer may be selected later.”

Putnam’s newest protégée was as aware as he of the uses of publicity. To increase support for the Boston NAA, she wrote to its secretary, Bernard Wiesman, that the chapter should receive all visiting fliers, offer speakers on aviation to clubs and schools, and ask department stores to feature aviation displays. “
The mob should be thought of too,” she wrote, “as it is or will be the support of the industry.” The letter brought an immediate response. The nominating committee named her a vice-president, “
the first woman chosen as an officer of the NAA anywhere in the country.”

The
Friendship
was ready by early May, its wheels replaced by pontoons, its wings painted gold, spanning seventy-one feet, and its three two-hundred horsepower motors overhauled and tested. For the next three weeks the crew waited while one adverse
weather report followed another. When conditions were good over the Atlantic, there was not enough wind for a takeoff from Boston Harbor. The clumsy, box-like aircraft was hobbled by the pontoons that Byrd insisted might save lives in the event of a forced landing at sea. But for takeoff the pontoons required wind-roughened waters. Without waves they induced suction like a coin on a flat, wet surface, holding down the aircraft with its heavy fuel load. Not until July 1 did meteorologist Kimball issue a really promising forecast.

On Friday, July 1, Amelia moved into a room at the Copley-Plaza Hotel. That night she wrote a
letter to Muriel:

Amelia was awakened at 3:30 on Sunday morning. She dressed for the flight in brown riding breeches, high, laced boots, a white silk blouse with a red kerchief tied at the neck, and her old leather coat, bought when she was learning to fly in California. Over all she wore a fur-lined flying suit, borrowed from Maj. Charles H. Woolley, an Air National Guard pilot who did not know why she had asked for it. With her she carried a camera given her by David Layman, field glasses from G. P., and a copy of Byrd’s book,
Skyward
, which he asked her to give to Mrs. Guest. Assembled in the hotel lobby for a drive through the dark, wet streets to Boston Harbor’s “T” Wharf were Bill Stultz, Commander Elmer, and Lou Gower, all accompanied by their wives; Slim Gordon and his fiancée, Ann Bruce; G. P., Marion Perkins, and J. E. “Jake” Coolidge, a Paramount News cameraman hired by G. P. No other reporters or photographers were present.

At the wharf a tugboat,
Sadie Rose
, took the party out to the
Friendship
, where Amelia, Stultz, Gordon, and Gower, who was to accompany the first three as far as Trepassey, Newfoundland, boarded the plane. Stultz took the pilot’s seat, Amelia stood amidships between two auxiliary fuel tanks, and Gower went aft. Slim Gordon balanced on the pontoons while he started each of the three engines, then climbed into the copilot seat. The big ship taxied down the bay followed by the tug, but when Stultz gunned the motors and raced across the bay, it would not lift off. There was not enough wind to stir the waters and counteract the suction of the pontoons. Gower moved as far aft as possible, hoping his weight would raise the nose, and they tried again without success. On a third attempt they threw out six five-gallon tins of gasoline before Stultz taxied up to the tug and shouted that he thought he could make it with a few less pounds. Putnam and Elmer rowed over from the tug in a small boat and took Gower off. As Stultz turned into the wind for another try, the breeze freshened, the motors roared, and the
Friendship
was airborne.

A report of the takeoff stated, “Those on the tugboat who saw Miss Earhart at close range in her flying togs were amazed at her resemblance to Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh. ‘Lady Lindy’ was what one deckhand called her.” The same story included a comment by a Norwegian artist, Brynjulf Strandenaes, who was in Boston the week before and who had
done a portrait from life of Lindbergh. “She looks more like Lindbergh than Lindbergh himself,” he told the reporter.

The
New York Times
’s man described her as tall and slim with a boyish face, a high forehead, level grey eyes, a firm chin, and very white teeth, which she displayed in a “quick, flashing Lindbergh smile.” Her hair, he wrote, was yellow, bobbed, curly, and unruly.

The
description was accurate except for her hair being darker than yellow and the writer failing to note a marked space between her two front teeth, so noticeable in black-and-white newspaper photographs that she soon took G. P.’s advice to smile with her lips closed. The shadow of Putnam’s image-making fell over the whole story. Although an enterprising reporter could have found a deckhand as soon as the tug docked, even one who might say that she looked like Lindbergh, and that same reporter could also have elucidated a quote from the artist who painted Lindbergh, no reporters were aboard the tug. G. P. was there, however, to make it easier and G. P. was a personal friend of the
Times
publisher, Adolph Ochs.