Amelia Earhart Read online

  Copyright © 1989, 2010 by the Smithsonian Institution.

  All rights are reserved.

  This book was edited by Therese Boyd and designed by Alan Carter.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rich, Doris L.

  Amelia Earhart : a biography / by Doris L. Rich.

  p. cm. Foreword by Jeana Yeager.

  Bibliography: p.

  Summary: A biography of the famous aviatrix who disappeared in the South Pacific on an around-the-world flight attempt in 1937.

  eISBN: 978-1-58834-382-6

  1. Earhart, Amelia, 1897-1937. 2. Air pilots—United States—Biography. [1. Earhart, Amelia, 1897-1937. 2. Air pilots.] I. Title.

  TL540.E3R53 1989

  629.13′092—dc20 89-32181

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available.

  For permission to reproduce individual illustrations appearing in this book, please correspond directly with the owners of the images, as stated in the picture captions. Smithsonian Books does not retain reproduction rights for these illustrations individually or maintain a file of addresses for photo sources.

  v3.1

  For Stanley

  and our children

  Christopher, Lawrence, and Deborah

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Part One TAXIING

  1. A Double Life

  2. Arrow without a Target

  3. Linen Wings and a Leather Coat

  4. Ceiling Zero but Lifting

  Part Two AIRBORNE

  5. Across the Atlantic

  6. The Circus

  7. The Hustler’s Apprentice

  8. The Vega

  9. Losing and Leading

  10. Reaching the Limits

  11. A Marriage of Convenience

  Part Three FLYING HIGH

  12. Victory and Vindication

  13. The Last of Lady Lindy

  14. Queen of the Air

  15. The Queen and the Minister of Finance

  16. Across the Pacific

  17. The Flying Preacher

  Part Four POINT OF NO RETURN

  18. A Threatened Partnership

  19. Crackup

  20. The Vortex

  21. Just One More Flight

  Epilogue

  Bibliography

  Reference Notes*

  * Note numbers are not used in this book. Instead, as a pleasurable convenience to the reader, notes are printed at the back of the book and are identified by page number and an identifying phrase or quotation from the text.

  FOREWORD

  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

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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, Davi
d 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.

  PART ONE

  TAXIING

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Double Life

  On 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.

  Amy was twenty-three when she came to Atchison for the birth of her first child, Amelia, a healthy, nine-pound girl born on July 24, 1897. The young mother’s first pregnancy had been terminated by a cable-car accident in Kansas City where she lived with her husband, Edwin Stanton Earhart. Pregnant again a few months later, Amy returned to her parents’ home in Atchison for her “confinement” and remained until the child was baptized on October 10. The baby was named Amelia for her maternal grandmother and Mary for her paternal grandmother, Mary Wells Earhart. A few days after the baptism, mother and child returned to Kansas City, twenty-two miles south of Atchison.

  At seven and a half months, Amelia was photographed in the arms of her Aunt Margaret. Wide-eyed and plump, the child looked much like any other healthy infant of that age with one exception. Her hand, resting on Margaret’s sleeve, was neither chubby nor grasping, but fully extended, the fingers unusually long and slim.

  The picture was taken at the Otis home where Amelia was to spend much of her childhood. The house stood on a bluff four hundred feet above the muddy, turgid waters of the Missouri River. In the summer, tall shade trees shielded it from the blazing sun, their leaves casting a pale green glow over sparkling white clapboard siding. Leading to the long front porch with its four pairs of tall wooden pillars was a paved walk guarded by two stone dogs. The fence Amelia loved to jump enclosed house, trees, walk, dogs, neatly trimmed shrubbery, and a green lawn at the south side of the house where a wrought iron stag-at-bay stared off into the distance.

  Long before she entered school Amelia was familiar with all eleven rooms of the house on the bluff. She explored the drawing room where frock-coated men sat in oversized chairs discussing politics and business. She watched tightly corseted women in long gowns with bustles and leg-o’-mutton sleeves drink tea in the living room with its Tiffany lamps and horsehair sofa. At Thanksgiving and Christmas the table in the stately dining room was set with fine china and silver that glistened in the light cast by a crystal chandelier and the flames from the open fireplace were reflected in the curved, stained-glass windows. After grace was said, Grandmother Otis would orchestrate the serving of the food dispatched by the cook through a serving window to waiting maids.

  The house mirrored the values and achievements of Alfred Otis, chief warden of the Trinity Episcopal Church, lawyer, retired U.S. District Court Judge, and president of the Atchison Savings Bank. Of his six children, Amelia’s mother, Amy, was his favorite. He had been bitterly disappointed when she married Edwin Earhart. Son of an impoverished Evangelical Lutheran minister who taught school, farmed, and carried out his ministry whenever and wherever he could, handsome, charming Edwin was raised in grinding poverty. He had worked for his education, shining shoes and building furnace fires and, later, tutoring less diligent students at the University of Kansas Law School. One of his pupils was Mark Otis, Amy’s brother, who invited Edwin to Atchison for Amy’s sixteenth birthday party, also the occasion of her formal presentation to society. For Amy and Edwin, love occurred at first sight, but marriage did not. Five years passed before Edwin could meet the Judge’s minimal requirement—a monthly salary of fifty dollars in the claims department of the Rock Island Railroad’s office in Kansas City. The Judge provided a house in that city, furnished.

  When Amelia reached school age, she was enrolled in the school her mother had attended, the College Preparatory School in Atchison; she lived with her grandparents while her parents remained in Kansas City. The headmistress, Sarah Walton, reported that Amelia “deduces the correct answer to complex arithmetic problems but hates to put down the steps by which she arrived at the results.”

  Amelia was seldom intentionally disobedient but her impatience led to frequent clashes with authority. A gifted speaker, she annoyed the headmistress by arriving too late for an annual school contest in which she was to share with a classmate the
complete recitation of an Horatian ode. When the headmistress demanded an explanation, Amelia said that she had promised to exercise a horse every day for some friends of her grandparents and thought she could ride first and get back in time to take over the second half of the ode. Too late to compete for the prize that would have been hers, Amelia said she was glad she knew all of the poem anyway.

  On another occasion Amelia displayed that same reluctance to consult her elders before taking action. She was playing with her friend, Kathy Dolan, when she noticed a horse tied in front of a delivery cart parked down Second Street. The animal, Amelia told Kathy, was uncomfortable, its check rein tied much too high. She immediately crossed the street and lowered the rein just as the angry driver appeared. His scolding was accepted in stony silence.

  Although often impatient, Amelia could be very tenacious. One afternoon she took a .22-caliber rifle her father had given her for Christmas and went to hunt rats in her grandfather’s barn. When she wounded one, she spent hours searching for it to deliver the coup de grâce. It was long after dinner before she succeeded and returned to the house. Her grandfather confiscated the gun, a penalty she accepted without protest. Charley, the Otis’s handyman, observed that once “Meelie” decided to do something she would do it, regardless of the punishment.

  Amelia was the undisputed leader of the neighborhood children. She decided who would be pitcher, catcher, or batter in any baseball game. She taught a younger neighbor, Mary Elizabeth Campbell, to ride a bike and lent her her roller skates. She invited Mary Elizabeth and Kathy to lunch on a private railroad car that Edwin Earhart was allowed to use even though he was merely an employee of the company’s claims department. The two girls were awed by the luxury of the appointments and the service by a white-jacketed Filipino.

  Amelia’s favorite games were played with Muriel and their two cousins, Lucy and Kathryn Challis, known as “Tootie” and “Katch,” who lived next door. Amelia wrote the scripts and they played out these adventures in an old carriage stored in the barn. In one, “The Pursuit of the Hairy Men,” the girls were pioneers traveling to an imaginary place. When attacked, the carriage became mired in mud or a wheel came off and the horses stampeded. While pursued, the girls would lash the horses and bang away with make-believe guns. Amelia sometimes chose actual places, all of them exotic. Africa was her favorite, the rivers Nile and Niger sufficiently mysterious, the Taureg and Swahili peoples satisfactorily ferocious.