MY LIFE WITH AMELIA EARHART.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 17

MY LIFE WITH AMELIA EARHART.

A FIRST MEETING.

"SOMETHING DANGEROUS."

HVtBAJTD AS BIOC»AW».

The story of «»• famous woman ..ivJor as renowned personage and as tVf* Is toldhere by the flyer* husZllA in a series of article, of which «hlais thJ first l*e njer has not been lilrdfrom "nee last July 2. when, on from New Oainem ««* «'"7. HowWna Island. In the South Paclflc. (By GEORGE PALMER PUTNAM.) (NO. 1.) The flrrt time I *nw Amelia Earhart was early in 1»28. Whan she appeared at my office I wa« busy, *o she had to cool her heels—and didn't like it much. The Hon. Mrs. Frederick Guest had secretly purchased from Admiral (then Commander) Byrd a Fokker monoplane. Through her representatives I had been commissioned, surprisingly, to find an American woman who would fly in that 'plane to England. I had heard about a girt In Boston who might do. Let A.E. herself describe what happened next. "I was working in Denison House, one of America's oldest social settlements. "•Phone for you, Miss Earhart. "At the moment I was busy, in a cluster of Chinese and Syrian neighbourchildren, piling in for games and classes. •"They say it's important.' "So I excused myself and listened to a man's voice asking me whether I was interested in doing something dangerous in the air. At first I thought the conversation was a joke, and said so. Several times before I had been approached by bootfe?gir* who promised rich reward* and no danger— 'absolutely no danger to you, leddy.' "The frank acknowledgment of risk stirred my curiosity. References were demanded and supplied. Good references. An appointment was arranged for that evening. '"Would you like to fly the Atlantic?' "My reply was a prompt 'y e9 '~7V*P' vided the equipment was right and the crew capable. Nine year* ago flying oceans was lees commonplace than to-day. "So I went to New York. The candidate, I gathered, must be a flyer herself, with social graces, education, charm and, perchance, pulchritude.

"Mr. Putnam's appraisal left me discomfited. Somehow he seemed unimpressed. But I showed my pilot's license (it happened to be the first granted an American woman by the P.A.1.) and inwardly prepared to start back for Boston. Could Go if I Wished. "However, he felt that, having come so far I might as well meet the representatives of Mrs. Guest. It should have been slightly embarrassing, for if I were found wanting in too many ways I would be counted out. On the other hand, if I were too fascinating the gallant gentlemen might be loath to risk drowning me. The meeting was a crisis. "A few days later the verdict came. The flight actually would be made and I could go if I wished. Naturally I couldn't say 'no.' Who would refuse an invitation to such shining adventure T" On June 18, 1928, Amelia Earhart had become the first woman to fly the Atlantic. True, she was merely a passenger; she made no pretence of being more than that. One English paper reminded its public that she was simply "a sack of potatoes." Nevertheless, as such thing* happen, the feminine member of the trans-Atlantic trio got the glory. Tb*> adventure launched her career in aviation. In the months that followed she set up a flock of flying records. Then, in 1932, she flew the North Atlantic solo, the second person to do so. The first was Lindbergh.

Likewise, she married. That was in February, 1931. She married the man who "discovered" her. She alwaya emphasised her uncertainty as to whether that was reward or retribution. With me there was no question. The spur of the moment wedding occurred in a little summer house of my mother's, at Noank, Connecticut, on a Saturday morning. Present were a local justice of the peace, my bother, and a black cat. Monday we were both back at our desks in New York, where A.E. was the vice-president of an airline, I a publisher.

"On* Ocean to Another." In A.E."* words, "one ocean led naturally to another." In January, 1935, she flew alone from Honolulu to Oakland, and a little later made a non-stop solo from ' Mexico City to New York. During those later years she was nursing a major ambition—to fly around the .world a* near the equator a* practicable. On June 1, after a Honolulu crack-up following an earlier start, she recommenced the flight from west to east. On July 2 after covering successfully 22,000 miles,'she embarked from New Guinea on the hazardous flight across the South Pacific to tiny Howland Island, 2550 miles away. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not find Howland. Some radio messages, apparently sent not far from the objective that July morning, i told the world their fnel wa* giving out. They were not heard from or seen again. A great search, by sea and air, found 1 no trace.

No man, they say, is. a hero to his valet. A woman may be that even to her husband—a modest hero whose character showed best in 'homespun little things, as when, to make possible the flying lessons so much wanted, she worked as file clerk in a telephone office, or, at Toronto, stood her ground when a post-war stunting pilot, diving down, tried to bluff her into scampering for cover.

"I remember," she told me, "the min- ' gled fear and pleasure which surged over me ae I watched that small 'plane at ' the top of its earthward swoop. Common , sense told me, if something went wrong : with the mechanism, or if the pilot lost control, he, the aeroplane and I would be rolled up in a ball together. I did not understand it at the time, but I believe that little red aeroplane said something to me as it swished by." Always Loved Gadgets. For Amelia Earhart adventures in exploring commenced when she was a little girl in Kansas. With her sister Muriel and her cousin, "Tootie" Challis, she indulged vast ambitions in travel—makebelieve travel. James Stephens says it this way: "How often we chase the thing that we ourselves become." The travel went on in a barn behind the house in Atchison. In an oldfashioned carriage they made lonir journeys full of fabulous perils. A.E. always loved gadgets. Her earliest contraption I have heard about was a "de-scenter." That was a creation of the Atchison play days. Often on their expeditions they were pursued by hostile Indians, or what have you. Obviously these wily traokers would followed the scent of the pursued. So cool-headed Millie devised a contrivance which eliminated the scent. When this was working well it was just impossible for the enemy to trail them. By the way, in those pre-famous days the girl who liked adventuring had a middle initial. It was "M." Colonel Clarence Young, one-time head of civil aeronautics, who somehow knew about it always, jokingly called her "Mary,'" which the "M" stood for. The mania for autographs was responsible for abandoning the initial. It was easier to be just Amelia Earhart. Amelia was 10 years old when she saw her first airplane. In retrospect,, it was "a thing of rusty wire and wood, which looked not at all interesting." The Hat Won First.

A grownup pointed it oufc. "Look, dear, it flies."

"I looked as directed," A.E. recollected, "but I confess to remembering I was much more interested in an absurd hat made of an inverted peach basket, which I had just bought for fifteen cents. "What psycho-analysts would make of, this preference in the light of subsequent behaviour I do not know," she added. "To-day I loathe hats on the head for more than a few minutes at a > time. And I'm sure I should p*w by the

niftiest creation if an airplane were anywhere around."

Seldom after the fifteen cent peach basket did hats get a foothold on A.E., so to speak; in time, her shock of tousled hair—one writer has always referred to it as "carefully tousled"— became pretty much a hall-mark of things nautical in America. Some people seemed to resent her hair. Complained about her not combing it. She did comb it. Lots of women pay good money for the kind of curliness which was A.E.'s for nothing.

Frank Hawks gave Amelia Earhart her first hop. He was then a barnstorming pilot on the West Coast, unknown to fame. That was in 1920. She blames it all on Frank. "By the time we were a few hundred feet off the ground," she said, "I knew 1 had to fIy."—N.A.N.A. (To be Continued.)