Amelia Earhart (16 page)

T
wo days after the first meeting of the Ninety-Nines in November of 1929, Amelia left for California in the Vega she had flown in the derby. While she worked in Los Angeles she intended to trade the plane in for a better one. Accompanied by her newly hired secretary, Norah Alstulund, Amelia stopped first in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where Dorothy Leh, a charter member of the new flying club, put them up for the night. In an interview Amelia gave to a local reporter, she said that she was
traveling on business for TAT. She was. Her business was getting free publicity for the airline. He was giving it to her.

Arriving in Los Angeles on November 8, Amelia, with Norah, was again the houseguest of the
Madduxes. Her feisty, charming, forty-two-year-old host, an ex-submariner and car salesman, lacked both high school and college diplomas but his wife Irene had both, as well as considerable social poise and business acumen. A pilot herself, she took over her husband’s Lincoln dealership when his airline interests demanded even more time than the tireless Maddux had. At the sprawling, comfortable house on Fremont Place, Amelia divided her time between working for TAT and shopping for her next Lockheed plane at the plant in Burbank.

In a logbook Amelia had started on July 20, she wrote that she tried
out a new Vega in Burbank on November 9, the day after she arrived in Los Angeles. However, she was no more accurate in keeping a written account of her
flight time than she had been as a novice, writing to Bert Kinner for an estimate. At the beginning of the log book she wrote that her
total time to date, that is to July 20, 1929, was 559 hours and 46 minutes. It is difficult to see how she arrived at such a precise figure. The woman who was meticulous in financial matters, keeping
records and receipts and demanding them from others, was amazingly casual in recording flight time and destinations. She had written in the new book that she flew her first Vega, “the clunk” she bought in New York, to Los Angeles between August 2 and August 8. No mileage, time, or stops were recorded. For her second Vega, which she flew in the derby, she made entries like the following one:

In referring to her search for her third Vega she wrote:

Newspapers kept a better record of what Amelia was doing. On November 21, after she flew a mile course at the Metropolitan Airport with Lt. Carl Harper, chief test pilot for Detroit Aircraft Corporation, in accordance with NAA rules, she announced she would attempt on the following day to break the
women’s speed record of 156
MPH
held by Louise Thaden. She did it pushing a wooden-bodied, Executive SF Lockheed, a demonstrator owned by Detroit Aircraft and registered as 538M, to an average speed of 184.19
MPH
over four laps. Her
fastest lap was 197.80, according to the NAA’s official timer, Joe Nikrent. However, in spite of Nikrent’s careful timing with two chronometers sent on to the NAA in Washington for calibration, the NAA refused to acknowledge the record.

When Norah Alstulund wrote for confirmation of Amelia’s record the following February, Maj. Luke Christopher, secretary of the NAA Contest Committee replied: “
You will please advise Miss Earhart that there is no category in the FAI rules recognizing speed trials over a one
mile straightaway course. The shortest course that is recognized by the FAI is three kilometers and this course is only for world maximum speed records.”

“Only for world maximum” meant no category for women. Although Christopher referred to her as “my good friend, Amelia Earhart,” and attached a list of recognized speed records to his letter, neither his claim of friendship nor Amelia’s status as the newest member of the NAA’s contest committee helped to affirm her record.

Amelia had no intention of abandoning her pursuit of official recognition for a speed record but let the matter rest while she continued to shop for a new Vega. She looked over everything Lockheed had, including
Lindbergh’s new Sirius, built with the special modifications requested by him. Lindbergh was not present for its maiden flight made by Carl Harper but on his last flight of the day in it, Harper took Amelia along as a passenger in the rear control seat.

Amelia could not afford a new, custom-built Sirius like Lindbergh’s but she learned all she could about Lockheed’s planes before she picked the one she could afford. It was another Vega, serial number 22, built before her derby plane in December of 1928, and previously used as a demonstrator on the East Coast. Although it was not registered to her as NC7952 until February 18, 1930, she had taken possession of it by the end of November and made repeated
trial flights in it during the two months she was with the Madduxes.

A few days before she left for New York, the Lindberghs arrived at the Madduxes. Anne Lindbergh, who had previously reported to her family that Amelia was “likeable, intelligent, nice and amusing,” when they first met the previous July on the inaugural flight of TAT, now wrote to her sister, Constance, that Amelia was “
an amazing person—just as tremendous as C. [Charles Lindbergh].” Noting that Lindbergh had not spoken with Amelia at any length, Anne wrote that she thought the two were very alike. “She has a clarity of mind, impersonal eye, coolness of temperament, and balance as a scientist. Aside from that,” Anne added, “I like her.”

Amelia later wrote that during their stay at the Madduxes Anne told Amelia she had decided to learn to fly even before she met Lindbergh. Amelia thought Anne’s dominant characteristic was “
a fine courage to meet both physical and spiritual hazards with understanding.”

As for Charles Lindbergh, Amelia had unlimited admiration for his
aviation expertise but may have liked him less as a person. In writing about her departure for New York with Norah and thirteen pieces of luggage that comprised their winter and summer wardrobes, plus what Amelia called her “itinerant office,” she noted that
Lindbergh watched with disapproval:

Lindbergh, a devoted husband, was also a traditional one. No husband of Amelia’s would have been permitted to tell her how much luggage to bring along.

Some of her reservations about Lindbergh may have been the result of his strange practical jokes. On a night when Anne and Amelia were drinking buttermilk at the
Madduxes’ kitchen table after a movie, Lindbergh, who was standing behind them, began to drip water from his glass onto his wife’s silk dress. Anne got up and went to the door where she stood with her back to them, her head resting on her arm. Aghast at the possibility of gentle Anne driven to tears over her ruined dress, Amelia was soon delighted to see Anne wheel around and douse her husband with buttermilk. Lindbergh also thought it very funny.

Not every victim was as able to retaliate. During a later visit of the Lindberghs, nine-year-old Jack Maddux, Jr., who thought Amelia was a nice lady but whose idol was Lindbergh, was approached by the great man. Clad in his pajamas, the boy was saying goodnight to everyone. “How would you like to make a quarter?” Lindy asked. Jack said he would. Lindbergh made a paper cone and put the smaller end of it inside the front of the child’s pajama pants. Then he gave him a quarter and said, “See if you can shut your eyes, hold the quarter up high, and drop it down into the cone.” When the boy closed his eyes Lindbergh took a pitcher of ice water and poured it down the cone. The surprise was total, the pain excruciating.

On January 9, Amelia left for New York in her new Vega with Norah and the thirteen pieces of luggage. They spent the first night in Albuquerque at the Alvorado Hotel where a reporter telephoned Amelia’s room at 8:15
P.M
. and asked if he could see her. After muffled sounds of stuttering and
laughter he heard her say, “I’m afraid not. I’m in bed, reading.” However, she was willing to give him a telephone interview, most of which was about TAT. When he asked her how Lindbergh liked his new plane, she suggested he ask Lindbergh himself “
when he comes through Albuquerque before long.”

The next day she took off in freezing weather, attempting to reach Las Vegas, but was forced back to Albuquerque by a winter storm that had grounded all air travel east and west. Amelia had to leave her new Vega at Albuquerque and
return to New York with Norah on a train. Leaving the new plane behind was a disappointment but she could not afford to wait for the weather to break. There were commitments to fulfill, magazine articles due, personal appearances scheduled, and family problems to be mitigated, if not solved.

Edwin, whom she had seen in California, was gravely ill. Muriel, pregnant with her first child, was also ill and Albert Morrissey was proving as difficult a husband and miserable a provider as Amelia had feared. Amy Earhart, with little of her own money left, lived with the Morrisseys in an uneasy and depressing household. Even before Amelia’s return from the Coast, she had written her mother that it would be best to stay with Muriel and try “
to keep out of Albert’s way. I’m sorry she’s [Muriel] having such rotten luck,” she added, although she had always thought the marriage was more bad judgment on Muriel’s part than bad luck.

In November on the day she broke the speed record Amelia had gone to see Edwin, who was remarried and was living in a cabin on Eagle Rock in the foothills behind Los Angeles. Although his wife, the former Helen McPherson, earned a small salary as a salesperson for a jewelry company and Edwin had made a down payment on the cabin, he was worried about keeping up his mortgage payments. He had closed his office in town and for much of the legal advice he gave to neighbors and friends he was reluctant to send any bills. “
I’m long on friends,” he told Amelia, “but short on cash.”

Amelia paid the mortgage of about two thousand dollars and had a lawyer draw up a life tenancy freehold giving the property to her father and, in the event of his death, to Helen. Amelia retained title to the house. Soon after, she wrote to Muriel that she had made her the ultimate heir. In the same letter she reported, “
I’m afraid Dad may not enjoy his cabin too long, Pidge … he looks thinner than I have ever seen him and Helen says he has no appetite at all and tires very quickly now.”

These were all temporary measures to solve what she considered serious, ongoing problems. A plan for her mother’s support took priority, one that would provide income on a regular basis. Amelia had to arrange it at a time when the world was entering the Great Depression. On October 24, 1929, “Black Thursday” to millions of Americans who had bought
stock on a 10 percent margin, the market collapsed in the most catastrophic decline in the history of the exchange. The “crash” started with the dumping of over-inflated airplane stocks, threatening Amelia’s own financial future, but she was determined to establish a regular source of income for her mother.

Soon after she returned to New York she wrote to Amy explaining the plan: “I am enclosing a check for $100. Hereafter you will receive it right from the Fifth Avenue Bank. I have put all my earnings into stocks and bonds and the yearly income in your name. The list includes the $1,000 bond of yours which you may have … at any time.”

She also arranged for an accident endowment through the National Air Pilots’ Association in Cleveland, naming Amy as beneficiary “in case I pop off,” and in the same
letter assured her mother she was not being deprived of her own comforts: “I am able to live easily on what I make and you may have the other.… I still have a job with Pennsylvania Railroad besides TAT-Maddux. I plan to work very hard this year and do little else but fly.”

She repeated these reassurances in another letter on February 25, the day after she returned from her second trip to the coast to pick up the plane she had left in Albuquerque: “Please do not think you are taking my hard-earned money even tho I would give it willingly. What you receive comes from what the cash receives from being put into bonds, etc.… extra to what I earn. I am living with Norah and very economically.”

However, what she earned was
not
easy to come by. Aviation was a luxury in a depressed economy. Air shows were resorting to sideshow stunts of the previous decade and to the appearances of celebrities in order to attract the public. At a weeklong exposition in St. Louis, attended by one hundred twenty-five thousand spectators: “
A Guernsey cow of famous lineage was carried aloft in a tri-motored Ford from the Parks airport and submitted to being milked in the air well above the smoke of St. Louis. The milk in pint containers fastened to small parachutes was dropped over the side.… A pint of the milk is being saved
for Colonel Lindbergh who is expected here tomorrow [February 19, 1930] from Los Angeles.”

Amelia arrived the next day on her way east in her new Vega, in time to fly in an
exhibition with Clarence Chamberlin, Frank Hawks, Elinor Smith, “Speed” Holman, and Jimmy Doolittle. In April she was
aboard the aircraft carrier
Lexington
off the Virginia coast observing maneuvers along with Hiram Bingham, the assistant secretaries of Navy and Commerce and members of the Senate and House Naval Affairs Appropriation Committees. Appearances like these were needed to retain the celebrity status that assured her income from lectures, articles, and advertising testimonials.