Amelia Earhart (23 page)

Amelia, G. P., and David were all sports fans. In a letter to her mother she wrote that the games were wonderful, the weather ideal, and added, “You know what a
track fan I have always been.” The track fan met two of her heroes, Paavo Nurmi, Finnish gold medalist in 1924, and the great Jesse Owens. The letter to Amy did not mention receiving the DFC nor the
celebrities with whom she was photographed, among them Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaian swimmer and gold medalist in 1912 and 1920, actress Fay Wray, who would long be remembered as the object of King Kong’s affections, comedian Harold Lloyd, and Hollywood’s most famous couple, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Amelia, G. P., and David were dinner guests at
Pickfair during the games, but to Amy Amelia wrote only family news and that she expected to return east “
in a week or so.” She did not tell Amy she planned to make a second attempt at a nonstop, cross-country record.

She did it, on August 24–25, in nineteen hours and five minutes, the longest continuous time she had ever flown alone. She also set a women’s record for
distance—2,447 miles. G. P. and David, who had returned to New York earlier in the week, were not there to meet her. Instead, a shouting, pushing crowd of fans threatened to knock her over when she climbed down from the cockpit. Dressed in wrinkled brown jodhpurs and a crumpled orange silk shirt she motioned wearily, pleading, “
Don’t come near me. If you knew how I feel.…”

How she felt may have been more dreadful than her admirers could
guess. In addition to fatigue, air sickness from gasoline fumes, and her abhorrence of being touched by strangers, there may have been another reason she wanted to remain at a distance from the crowd. A Newark aviation mechanic confided to an aeronautical designer there that after one of her
long-distance flights her plane had reeked of urine. This may have been the flight to which he referred. Relief tubes designed for men were useless to women. In view of her nearly fanatical fastidiousness, to be in such a state would have been an agony for her.

Before the crowd could reach her the police intervened and a few minutes later she had recovered sufficiently to smile for the photographers and talk to reporters. When one asked why her husband was not there to meet her she explained that he regarded her
flying as a routine affair. Not everyone did. Charles and Anne Lindbergh wired, “
Splendid flight. So pleased at your success.” In her brief account of the flight Amelia said, “
If I had had the weather I had on my first attempt, I might have broken the men’s record.” If she had, it would not have been for long. She was referring to Frank Hawks’s time of seventeen hours and thirty-five minutes. Four days after her flight
Jimmy Haizlip flew from Los Angeles to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn in ten hours and nineteen minutes, little more than half Amelia’s time.

Much as she wanted to try again, she could not. After flying for “fun” for the better part of 1932 it was time to go to work. Before she left for Washington to receive the National Geographic medal, she had told reporters that she was ready to capitalize on her Atlantic flight “
in any legitimate way that comes to hand. Any woman who wishes to should be able to do so without stigma.” She was “willing to lead the way” but “wouldn’t do anything false.”

Amelia needed money, for her half of the household expenses at Rye, for the maintenance of an airplane, for Amy’s support, and for the limited luxuries she had begun to enjoy—a good car, a simple but expensive wardrobe, and an impressive library. On July 20 she went to Detroit to a three-day introductory celebration for a new automobile—the Essex. Produced by the Hudson Motor Car Company, the first Essex off the line was christened by Amelia on July 22 when she broke a bottle of gasoline over its hood, then watched a parade of two thousand new cars pass by, each driven by a Hudson or Essex dealer. Amelia was given an
Essex Terraplane, a stylish little coupe.

Amelia was thrifty. She never left a hotel room without taking all the
stationery in it. For years she used whatever came to hand, including Bert Kinner’s, Dennison Airport’s,
Cosmopolitan
’s, and the NAA’s. She once wrote to Amy on the back of a Ninety-Nine bulletin and Marian Stabler received a letter on tiny pages from a notepad. In London she used Lady Astor’s, and some from the U.S. embassy which caused considerable embarrassment. She had written an endorsement of a Swiss watch used on her flight. When the letter with the embassy’s address showing clearly appeared in a trade paper, a jeweler complained to the State Department. A department spokesman said that the use of the ambassador’s stationery did not constitute a government endorsement. After that, although she wrote a note to her mother on White House stationery, she was very careful.

Amelia as a child. (
Source:
The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College)

Amelia and Wilmer Stultz, pilot of the
Friendship
, being congratulated by Mr. and Mrs. Harry Moore after the 1928 transatlantic flight. (
Source:
American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming)

Amelia, wearing the wings presented to her in 1928 as an honorary major in the 381st Observation Squadron, U.S. Army Reserve, at Cressey Field, Presidio of San Francisco. (
Source:
Margaret Haviland Lewis)

Conclusion of the first westbound flight of Transcontinental Air Transport, July 9, 1929. Pictured are Amelia
(third from left)
, Dorothy Binney Putnam
(fourth from left)
, and Charles and Anne Lindbergh
(third and fourth from right)
. (
Source:
Trans World Airlines)

Amelia in the cockpit of the Lockheed Vega that she flew in the Women’s Air Derby, August 1929. (
Source:
Harvey C. Christen)

Amelia with Joe Nikrent, official timer of the NAA’s Los Angeles chapter, after breaking the women’s speed record in November 1929. The plane was a borrowed Lockheed Vega with a wooden fuselage. (
Source:
Office of Public Information, Lockheed-California Company)

Amelia with polar flier Bernt Balchen, the man who outfitted her “Little Red Bug” for the Atlantic solo crossing in 1932. (
Source:
W. M. Tegerdine)