Amelia Earhart

I am often asked whether Amelia Earhart was one of my childhood idols.

The simple answer is no. I grew up very much a loner, very quiet, and I never had anyone that I consciously modeled my
self
after. But I was always ready to reach out and live my fantasies, to explore my own capabilities, to challenge myself—and to this extent I believe that many young people have been touched by her example and spirit.

For many years, however, I was more interested in horses than aircraft. I obtained my pilot’s license at the age of twenty-six primarily so that I could fly helicopters, which reminded me of the dragonflies I had admired as a child. My full absorption in the world of aviation did not transpire until I met Dick Rutan in 1980 and joined in the design and testing of experimental aircraft. We soon began setting records for speed and distance, as we pursued the dream of building and flying the first aircraft capable of circling the world nonstop without refueling.

That dream—which was realized by the flight of
Voyager
in December 1986—certainly reminded us of Amelia and her own courageous attempt at an around-the-world flight. But it was not until I received a copy of this book’s manuscript that I had actually read an account of her life. The similarities between her goals and enthusiasms and my own are almost spooky—similarities such as a love for horses, a competitive interest in setting records, and an inherent stubbornness. A lot of the other
ingredients of her life—the long hours, the physical exhaustion—also strike familiar chords.

This book tells us of a gifted woman’s lessons in dreaming and work and determination. Her achievements were worth all the physical discomforts and dangers she endured in seizing that one rare chance offered to so few: to be the
first
.

Jeana Yeager         

Nipomo, California

Much of the material in this book came from special collections and the archives of the following libraries and organizations: National Archives, Library of Congress, Martin Luther King Library and Society of Woman Geographers, all in Washington, D.C.; Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College; Ninety-Nines, Inc.; J. B. Carruthers Aviation Collection, Harvey Mudd College; Charles Dawson History Center of Harrison, New York; West Virginia and Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Library; Special Collections, Purdue University Libraries; Archives of Contemporary History, University of Wyoming; Cochran Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; Oral History Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University in the City of New York; Aero Club of France; North Hollywood Amelia Earhart Regional Library; Zonta International; Swarthmore College Peace Collection; and the Office of Public Information, Lockheed California Company.

In all of them, staff members were invariably patient and helpful. I wish to thank in particular Kenneth Dowden, Thomas Branigar, Dr. Virginia Purdy, Edythe Caro, Loretta Gragg, Eleanor Mitchell, Dr. David Kuhner, Jeri Nunn, Robert C. Ferguson, Roy A. Blay, Herbert Bowen, Ginger BeVard, Marian Holt, Helen Bergan, Emmett D. Chisum, Eunice E. Spackman, and Lynn Durkee.

I spent most of the first three years of my six years of research at the
library of the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. The staff members who gave me guidance and encouragement, as well as information, include Phil Edwards, Larry Wilson, Robert Dreeson, Frank Piatropaoli, Peter Suthard, and Mary Pavlovich. I thank them all.

I am grateful for the interviews given me, especially by Amelia’s sister, Muriel Earhart Morrissey; by Amelia’s stepson, David Binney Putnam, and his daughter, Sally Putnam Chapman; and by Margaret Haviland Lewis, Donna Kinner Hunter, Winfield Kinner, Jr., and Marian Stabler. The late pilot-author Don Dwiggins gave me the papers of Paul Mantz, and Richard Sanders Allen, identification of all of Earhart’s planes.

Others who gave me interviews were: Capt. Ralph Barnaby, USN (Ret.), Mrs. James E. Bassett, Jr., Melba Gorby Beard, Albert Bresnick, Jessie B. Chamberlin, Harvey C. Christen, Marie Christiansen, Phyllis Fleet Crary, Harkness Davenport, R. E. G. Davies, Susan Dexter, Shirley Dobson-Gilroy, Lucille Emch, Col. Vincent Ford, USAF (Ret.), Paul Garber, Eddie Gorski, Mrs. James G. Haizlip, Mrs. Clifford Henderson, Charles Hill, Terry Gwynne-Jones, Charles LeBoutillier, John L. Maddux, Jim Montijo, Edna Whiting Nisewaner, Elise von R. Owen, Frank Pine, Paul Rafford, Ogden Reid, Whitelaw Reid, Pat H. V. Riley, Vivian Maatta Sims, Neta Snook Southern, Clair C. Stebbins, Nancy Hopkins Tier, Evelyn “Bobbi” Trout, Mrs. Robert W. Trump, Maj. Gen. Leigh Wade, USAF (Ret.), Dr. Max Ward, Bradford Washburn, Fay Gillis Welles, Patrick Welsh, Edna Gardner Whyte, Bernard Wiesman, Margaret and Benson Workman, C. L. Zakhartchenko and Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Zinavage, USN (Ret.).

Information through correspondence came from Virginia L. Ames, Mrs. Bernt Balchen, Michelle Birnbaum, Eleanor Merrick Bissell, Pam Blittersdorf, Doris Brell, Jane Dow Bromberg, Mrs. Robert C. Canavello, Masataka Chihaya, Anne F. Cooper, Louise Van Dyne Cotterman, Emma Encinas DeGuitierrez, Jack Elliott, Elizabeth Braun Ernst, Doris H. Farr, Harold C. Field, Herbert O. Fisher, Ella May Frazer, Eddie Fritts, Betty Huyler Gillies, R. J. Hyland, David Jones, Susan Kiner, Valerie F. Levitan, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Ellen C. Masters, Clinton and Marian Morrison, Carole Osborne, Ben R. Rich, Dorothy Schaeffer, Richard G. Strippel, Anne Saunders, Nicholas Meredith Turner, Charles and Anne Thielen, W. M. Tegerdine, and Margaret Warren.

I am deeply indebted to Claudia M. Oakes, Curator of Aeronautics
at the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution; to Jacqueline Hubbard, author and friend; and to Ann Elmo, my agent; all of whom read the manuscript and made helpful suggestions. My thanks also to my life-long friend, Capt. Roger Pineau, USNR (Ret.), to Chris Prouty Rosenfeld, Nonna Cheatham, Luree Miller, Susan Dexter, and Julia Dean for their interest and support, and to Felix C. Lowe, Ruth Spiegel, and Therese Boyd for editorial guidance.

Finally, I could not have completed this work without the constant help of my husband, Stanley Rich, who took time from his own interests to become reader, editor, secretary, chauffeur, and an expert baker of frozen meat pies in motel ovens.

O
n a bitterly cold winter day in 1904, seven-year-old Amelia Mary Earhart stood at the top of a hill near her grandparents’ house in Atchison, Kansas. Her blue-grey eyes surveyed the icy street descending to a crossroad below. Muriel, her four-year-old sister and co-owner of the new sled given them at Christmas, watched silently as Amelia knelt in the snow and carefully laid the tow rope over the top of the sled before picking it up. She ran forward a few steps, then fell on the sled for a perfect “belly-slammer” start. By mid-hill she had gained the speed she wanted, the road beneath the sled flashing by her eyes. Watching from above, Muriel saw a wagon drawn by a horse with blinders emerge from the side street. The hill was too icy for a turn; the driver of the cart, whose ears were covered by a woolen cap, was deaf to Amelia’s warning cries. Just when collision seemed inevitable, Amelia put her head down, and sled and rider shot under the horse’s belly. A moment later the grinning, triumphant speedster stood in the deserted road, waving up at Muriel.

On the way home Muriel was warned that Grandmother Otis should not hear of the incident. Grandmother did not approve of girls “belly-slamming.” Years later Amelia claimed, “that condemned
tomboy method saved my life … had I been sitting up, either my head or the horse’s ribs would have suffered in contact—probably the horse’s ribs.”
There was no mention of the possibility of contact with the horse’s legs. Luck was ignored, the method idealized.

Their grandmother also disapproved of the “bloomers” worn by the Earhart girls, apparel promoted by their mother’s sister, Margaret, who was an admirer of feminist
Amelia Jenks Bloomer. Even Amelia harbored reservations about it. “We wore them Saturdays to play in and though we felt terribly ‘free and athletic,’ we also felt somewhat as outcasts among the little girls who fluttered about us in their skirts.”

Amelia Otis, the black-gowned, corseted matriarch of an affluent Victorian household, was not to be ignored. The first time she caught Amelia leaping the wrought iron fence enclosing the Otis yard, the old woman told her, “Ladies don’t climb fences, child. Only boys do that. Little girls use the gate.” From that time on Amelia looked before she leaped, although she was certain that if she had been a boy her grandmother would have thought the shortcut “entirely natural.” If her thoughts seem mundane in the late 1980s, they were revolutionary at the time, when rules of female conduct bewildered and annoyed an adventurous, active little girl.

On the day of the sled ride, when Amelia walked up the hill to the corner of North Terrace and Santa Fe streets, she could see the spacious white wood and brick Victorian house against the darkening winter sky. It was home to her for nine months of each year, the house in which she was born. Her grandfather, Alfred E. Otis, had had it built for his bride, Amelia Harres Otis, in 1861 when Kansas became a state, at a time when Indian raiders still threatened the lives of Kansas farmers, and an endless stream of trappers, traders, miners, and homesteaders crossed the new state on their way west. In it Amelia Otis had borne six children, one of whom was Amy Otis Earhart, Amelia’s mother.