East to the Dawn (25 page)

The opening of the Glendale airport on Saturday, March 17, 1923, was marked by an air rodeo held under the auspices of the Aero Club of Southern California, the Commercial Aircraft Association, and the city of Glendale. All the usual local fliers were invited to perform, including Amelia, who was paired with the movie attraction of the moment, Andrée Peyre, a sloe-eyed film star just featured by
The Ace
on its cover attired in high boots, jodhpurs, leather jacket, helmet, and goggles. Brave as well as beautiful, Andrée, who came to Los Angeles in 1919 as an actress under contract to United Studios, had learned to fly from French ace Captain Étienne Poulet following the deaths of her three aviator air ace brothers in the war. When she arrived in Hollywood, she had taken further instruction from Earl Daugherty, who taught her stunting. She had just taken delivery on a new French-made Sport Farman, the hot plane of the hour.

Earl Daugherty led off the stunting in a Canuck; Amelia and Andrée were the second featured event. Although they shared equal billing, it is noteworthy, in that land of touchy egos where such things matter, that Amelia's name ran first: “The Ladies Sportplane Special. Miss Amelia Earhart flying Kinner Airster, Miss Andrée Peyre flying Sport Farman.” It
was particularly noteworthy since not only was Andrée more famous than Amelia, but her plane was better known. The Farman, also a 2-seater biplane, smaller than the Airster with a 23-foot wingspan and 150 pounds lighter at 450, was a marvelous machine that held the world's record for range in speed—from a low of 15
mph to a high of 87. And it came from a famous maker: another Farman, a Goliath, had held the endurance record in 1921.

The two women performed barrel rolls, loops, tailspins, and other stunts. They were followed by an accurate landing contest, balloon strafing by Frank Clarke (simulating the air battles of World War I), a parachute jump from the wing of a plane by Miss Gladys Roy, a skywriting exhibition—Lucky Strike” would float across the sky, the work of a “master aerial penman”—and a Jenny Scramble (actually a five-mile race) among other events. There was an added event to the program: “If weather conditions are suitable, Miss Amelia Earhart, flying her Kinner Airster, will attempt to break the altitude record of 13,200 feet for plane equipped with 50 H.P motor,” which for some reason, presumably the weather, didn't occur. (Her previous record of 14,000 feet had been made in her first plane, which had a 60-horsepower engine.) In May Andrée would briefly take the altitude record for women away from Amelia when she recorded 15,700 feet, then would lose it in July to Bertha Horchem of Ransom, Kansas, who would establish a record of 16,300 feet. But none of them took their records seriously—Lieutenant John Macready, in a Lepere biplane with a 400-horsepower Liberty motor, had gone up an astounding 34,509 feet.

The day before, the newly reorganized National Aeronautic Association issued Amelia an F.A.I, pilot's license. She had passed the test on December 15, 1921. Under the aegis of the Aero Club of America, the test consisted of two parts. The first part was to check out a pilot's ability to make a dead stick landing. Amelia had to cut the engine off at 4,921 feet (1,500 meters) above the ground, then glide and land within 492 feet (150 meters) of a predetermined point without restarting the engine. For the second part, Amelia had to make an uninterrrupted series of five figure eights around posts not more than 1,640 feet (500 meters) apart, at an altitude of not more than 656 feet (200 meters) above the ground. She also had to, upon landing, stop the aircraft within a distance of 164 feet (50 meters) from a fixed point.

In June Amelia would be admitted to membership in the Aeronautical Hall of Fame, the worldwide honor roll of men and women “influential in advancing aeronautics.” In July she would get public recognition of her unique flying status-it would be duly noted by Daisy Elizabeth Ball in the prestigious
Aeronautical Digest,
the magazine of the Aero Club of America,
that “Miss Earhart, who resides in Los Angeles, is the only woman licensed by the N.A.A. since its organization last October.” As Daisy Ball, herself a member of the Women's Press Club of New York, would note, the new association, the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) “has declared its intention of including women in its membership.” It was one of the few professional organizations in the United States that would.

Amelia, at the age of twenty-five, had already become one of those early mythical heroes of the sky whom people came to see at air meets and dreamed of emulating. She was one of those exotic beings whom popular songs commemorated, the subject of flying having become a favorite in the early 1920s:

By 1924 Bert Kinner was so successful that he was floating another issue of stock in his expanded company and, spending all his time at Glendale, had become field manager of the airport, which was averaging almost a thousand flights a month. Amelia continued to fly out of Glendale in the Airster, which Bert now advertised as so well designed that it was still “essentially the same sport plane, with the exception of a few minor details, that was designed by this company more than five years ago.” When her old friend and fellow pilot Aloysia McLintic Huzar came back from China after a year-long honeymoon, the two women would go flying in Amelia's Airster, an event notable enough to be worthy of mention in flying circles and written up in the press.

By this time Amelia had been dating Sam Chapman for two years. They appear to have settled into a comfortable if not exciting relationship largely controlled by Amelia. Sam was patiently waiting for her to give up her career plans, deeply in love with her. Amelia had no intention of giving up her career plans, but she was certainly fond of him, and before the year was out she had agreed to be engaged.

7

Breaking Through

• • • • Once Amy and Edwin's divorce was final, once it was clear that family life as they knew it was over, Amelia was free to lead her own life. She decided to return east and resume her studies at Columbia—to pick up her life where she had left off. One by one, those around her also decided to go back east. Sam Chapman returned to Marblehead, the sea-port town north of Boston where he came from, and went to work for the Edison Electric Company in Boston. Muriel, still intent on getting her undergraduate degree, enrolled in Harvard summer school and set off by train for Boston; the plan was that she would find a place to live for herself and Amy. Edwin was the only one in the family who felt at home in Los Angeles and remained there.

Amelia was laid low by a return of the infection in her antrum, the result of the strain of packing up all the Earhart possessions, trying to sell her truck, tying up the loose ends of four suddenly dislocated lives, and again taking care of her mother. The main problem was Amy, who was so devastated by the ordeal of divorce, so obviously miserable, that Amelia was sure that once they left, her mother would never set foot in California again.

An operation was called for to drain the pneumonococcal infection. The procedure cost five hundred dollars, which Amelia left unpaid.
She could have scraped together the money, particularly since she now proceeded to sell her plane, but she had other plans for her slim resources; she bought a rakish yellow touring car made by the Kissell Company. Her action made her fair game for nasty letters from a collection agency, to whom the debt had been turned over; undeterred, she went about her business.

Amelia had always planned that, when she returned east, she would fly there in her own plane; the maps and data for such a flight had long been ready. But that idea had been superseded by Amy's needs. The Kissell was so that she and Amy could drive across the country, stopping to see the famous national parks of the West on the way—an adventure of a different sort on the unpaved roads of the 1920s. “Which way are we going?” asked Amy as they left Hollywood that first morning. “I am going to surprise you,” replied Amelia and headed north. They visited Sequoia, then continued north to Yosemite, farther north into Oregon to Crater Lake, then north into Canada to Banff and Lake Louise, after which, turning southeast, they began heading back, stopping on the way to see Yellowstone Park in Wyoming. It was a long, leisurely trip, and by the time they reached Boston, they had covered more than seven thousand miles. The last part of it was a labor of love for Amelia, for the operation had not completely drained out the infection, and there was pressure and pain in her sinus.

Three days after their arrival in Boston, Amelia checked into Massachusetts General Hospital, where yet again doctors opened up her sinus and drained the infection. This time her recovery was excruciatingly slow. She spent the months in Medford, a suburb of Boston where Muriel had found a teaching job and a house nearby for herself and her mother to live in.

Sometime in the late fall, Amelia felt well enough to go to New York. By that time, however, the combination of the move east and Amelia's medical expenses had eaten such a hole in the Earhart finances that Amelia departed for New York in her Kissell with hardly any money in her pocket.

Amelia had a terrible time that winter. It was not until the spring term, which started in February, that she enrolled at Columbia, and even then she entered after the term had started. Before that, she stayed for weeks at a stretch with her old friend Marian Stabler out in Great Neck, Long Island. Marian observed that Amelia was so severely debilitated that the least strain or exertion exhausted her. Her convalescence was as unduly slow as before, and for the same reason—there were still no potent drugs with which to fight the infection.

But she was still game. Ailing as Amelia was, Marian remembered, she still went on at least one winter picnic. Nor had she lost her nerve, as
evidenced by her conduct one night when Marian heard a strange noise. Marian's impulse was to run for the bedroom and lock the door until the servants came home. Amelia refused, insisting upon searching the house until she had allayed Marian's fears.

Marian realized years later that, as close as they were, Amelia never really confided in her. By Marian's admission, it becomes apparent that Amelia's habit of concealment extended even to her closest friends, for Marian would remember that although they talked for hours on end for days and nights on end “about everything under the sun,” Amelia never mentioned her parents' problems. Even when she divulged their divorce, it was in such a manner that she gave away no real information. “It seems odd that a family could be broken up by geography but my mother hates the west and my father hates the east,” Marian remembered her saying. And that was all Amelia ever said on the subject. She never admitted that Edwin was an alcoholic, never talked about the pain and suffering his drinking had caused the family. When, years later, Marian finally learned about Edwin's drinking, it was from another source.

Nor did Amelia complain about her lack of money. And yet Marian couldn't help but notice it—Amelia was virtually penniless. The only thing she spent money on was her car, remembered Marian; in order to maintain it, she “went without everything but essentials.”

By January of 1925 Amelia felt better, and on January 25 she climbed the dome of Low Library to watch the eclipse of the sun, bringing with her a “known biologist,” as she wrote in her second book—undoubtedly her old professor, Dr. James McGregor, whom she couldn't name without bringing the wrath of the university down upon his head.

Five years before, Amelia had carried five courses one term and six the other. Now Amelia enrolled in only two, an intermediate course in algebra, Mathematics eX6, and an elementary course in general physics, Physics eA4. Two courses were probably all she could afford. And she had difficulty scraping together the fifty-six dollars due for these two courses, for she couldn't register without paying, and so she didn't register until February 10, six days after the term started. She rented a room in an apartment at 50 Morningside Drive.

But having taken those crucial steps, almost immediately she felt her prospects brighten and a science degree to be within her reach. She had registered as a nonmatriculated student, but in March she reregistered in the University Undergraduate Matriculated Program. In the interim, having been exposed to the engineering profession through Sam Chapman, her focus had changed; she was now planning, she wrote on the form, to take a degree in engineering.

Then, on April 20, she withdrew from Columbia. One month after she had gone to the trouble of changing her status from a nondegree to a degree candidate, more than a month before the term was over, she was gone.

The problem was again money. Sometime in March she had received a letter from her old partner Lloyd Royer, in which he informed her he had finally sold the Moreland truck she had entrusted to his care and put the money into her bank account. But it was evidently nowhere near as much as Amelia expected. And strapped as she was, she knew he was equally strapped, having netted only a hundred dollars after building a plane in partnership with John Montijo. He had just gone into the aircraft repair business and owed money for the space he had leased. Amelia insisted he keep part of the money She wrote him back: “Please hold out something for yourself; I want you to. Heaven knows you've had enough trouble with the thing. Please.” She closed with the sentence, “Write me when you have time,” giving as her return address 50 Morningside Drive. She mailed her letter on March 22; doing it with flair in spite of her straitened circumstances, she sent it airmail, setting her back twenty-six cents. To Lloyd no more than to Marian would she reveal distress.