Amelia met with both George Putnam and Amy Guest in New York. They both thought she was perfect. Attractive. Polite. Well-educated. She got the job.
The job was actually not nearly as good as it sounded. Amelia wouldn’t get paid. A man named Wilmer Stultz would fly the plane. He’d get twenty thousand dollars. And although Amelia was called “the captain,” she was really just a passenger.
Why did Amelia agree? First, no woman had ever crossed the Atlantic by plane. The experience alone was enough to make Amelia go. Amelia summed up her feelings in a letter to a friend. “When a great adventure’s offered you—you don’t refuse it, that’s all.” Amelia also hoped that, if the trip were successful, all the attention could bring her other flying jobs.
The flight was very dangerous. Charles Lindbergh had made the trip safely. But fourteen other people had died trying to cross the ocean. Three had been women. Still, two other women pilots were already planning to try it. Amelia had to move quickly if she wanted to be the first.
The plane, called the Friendship, took off from Boston on June 3, 1928. However, the crew had to land in Canada because of bad weather. Many days went by. The Friendship was still not able to take off.
Amelia discovered another problem. Her pilot, Wilmer Stultz, drank too much. If Wilmer got drunk, she knew he couldn’t fly the plane. But if they did not take off soon, Amelia would lose the record. It was now or never.
On June 16, Amelia made a decision. She told Wilmer to get ready to fly—they were leaving the next day no matter what. On the morning of June 17 Amelia sent a cable to George Putnam back in Boston. The cable read “Violet. Cheerio! A.E.” Violet was a code word. It meant that the Friendship was taking off.
Through the long flight Wilmer Stultz and his co-pilot “Slim” Gordon took turns flying the plane. Amelia wrote notes in her journal. After twenty hours of flying, they knew they were low on fuel. Could they find land in time?
The answer was yes. The Friendship touched down in Burry Port, South Wales, twenty hours and forty minutes after taking off from the Canadian coast. They had done it. On June 18, 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
What came next was a surprise for Amelia. The trip made her an instant hero. Amelia hadn’t flown the plane. But people still thought she was very brave.
In London, Amelia was entertained by the rich and famous. She had tea with royalty.
On her return to America, Amelia was met with even greater excitement. There were parades and speeches. Crowds of people wanted to see and hear the brave female. Many people compared Amelia Earhart to the famous pilot, Charles Lindbergh. They thought that Amelia, who was tall and slim, even looked like Lindbergh. Amelia’s nickname became “Lady Lindy.” George Putnam liked this a lot. He knew he could make Amelia even more famous.
All the attention was hard on Amelia. Sometimes she was frightened by the push of people trying to get near her. However, Amelia was a smart woman. She knew she would have to be in the spotlight if she wanted to fly planes and break records. Amelia also knew that if people got excited about flying, then the tiny airline business would grow. Amelia hoped to be a part of that business.
If Amelia made speeches, she would also be paid. That meant that she could buy another airplane. With her own plane she could set more records. That would lead to more speeches—and more money. For the first time in her life, Amelia started to believe that she could actually make a living by flying.
George Putnam became Amelia’s manager. He set up lots of public appearances for her. In six months Amelia made over one hundred speeches and gave more than two hundred interviews.
Amelia did not complain about her busy schedule. She was given a new car for an appearance at an auto show. She also made money by letting companies use her name to advertise their products. The fur-lined, leather “Amelia Earhart Flying Suit” became very popular in a New York department store. Amelia also became an editor for Cosmopolitan magazine and wrote a column about aviation. Amelia didn’t really like to write, but the articles brought more publicity. Many of the magazine’s readers thought that Amelia was a good role model for young girls.
By 1929, Amelia was the best-known female pilot in America. But what Amelia really wanted was more time flying. So a week before she turned thirty-two, Amelia purchased a secondhand Lockheed Vega. It was a big plane that was hard to handle. But it was built for speed and distance. As soon as possible, Amelia wanted to set more records.
The first women’s cross-country air race was going to be held later that summer. It was called the Women’s Air Derby. Whoever flew from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio, in the shortest time would win. Amelia was eager to enter.
The course, which went over the Rocky Mountains, was dangerous. The rules committee considered changing the flight path or making a male navigator go along in every plane.
Needless to say, Amelia was very angry. She and other women pilots had flown many hours alone. Amelia said she would not enter the race if she couldn’t fly on her own. Because of Amelia and several other female pilots, the committee backed down. The women would fly the whole course by themselves.
On August 18, 1929, twenty thousand people turned up in Santa Monica, California, for the start of the race. There were 19 pilots, including Amelia. Many people did not take the women seriously. Will Rogers, a famous writer at the time, called the race the “Powder Puff Derby.” Still, by that Sunday afternoon all 19 planes were in the air and racing against the clock.
The race was to take eight days. But there were problems from the start. Planes broke down. Landing fields were not in good shape.
On the second day, Amelia’s plane flipped over on landing. She wasn’t hurt and she was able to fix her plane and keep racing.
But others weren’t so lucky. Some planes went off course and crashed. One pilot died in the mountains of Arizona.
On August 25, the race was over. Only 11 of the 19 women finished. Amelia Earhart came in third. Even though she didn’t win, Amelia learned a lot. She also got to know many of the best women pilots in the country.
After the race, many women pilots decided it was time to start their own group. On November 2, 1929, twenty-six women met in an airplane hangar in Long Island, New York. They wondered what to call themselves. Amelia suggested they name the club after the number of women who first joined. The other pilots liked the idea. Over the next several months the name changed from the Eighty-Sixes to the Ninety-Sevens. Finally, the Ninety-Nines was the name that stuck.
Amelia worked to get more women pilots to join. By the following summer, the Ninety-Nines had almost two hundred members. The group helped women pilots get jobs. The Ninety-Nines also had an office where careful records of women’s aviation achievements could be kept. Amelia Earhart was elected the first president of the group.
Sometimes Amelia felt she didn’t deserve all the praise that the public gave her. But she had truly earned the respect of the other women fliers. And it meant a lot to her. |