East to the Dawn (24 page)

Amelia went to Toronto for Christmas vacation to be with her mother and sister, and never returned to Ogontz. Instead, stunned by the sight of so many wounded soldiers, she decided to stay in Toronto and become a nurse. She lived with Muriel at the St. Regis Hotel, where this photograph was taken. Courtesy of Kenneth Clapp.

Both Louise de Schweinitz and Amelia were pre-med students at Columbia. Amelia involved Louise in aa number of escapades, including this one—climbing onto the dome of the Low Library, the focal point of the Columbia campus. Louise brought her Brownie camera. Courtesy of Louise de Schweinitz Darrow.

Amelia was engaged to Sam Chapman for several years. She broke off the engagement in 1928 after the Friendship flight. He never married, never got over her.

Courtesy of Corbis-Bettumann.

This is a self-portrait, taken by Amelia after she returned east from California, winter 1925-26.

 

Courtesy of Kenneth Clapp.

Amelia and Neta Snook, her first flight instructor, on the day of Amelia's first lesson, January 3, 1921. Amelia is wearing her riding clothes, which Neta thought “a beautifully tailored outfit. ”

Courtesy of Oklahoma Air and Space Museum, and the grandchildren of Neta Snook Southern.

One of the publicity photos for Denison House, where Amelia was a social worker, that appeared in Boston newspapers. Amelia flew over Boston and Cambridge dropping passes for a fund-raising carnival for the settlement house. May 25, 1927.

Courtesy of Corbis-Bettmann.

Being greeted in Southampton, England. Amelia was only a passenger on the transatlantic flight of the Friendship in June 1928, but she was the fivst woman to make the crossing, and the world went wild. From the left:Amy Guest, who financed the flight; Louis Gordon (mechanic), Amelia, Bill Stultz (pilot), and Mrs. Foster Welch, the mayor of Southampton. Courtesy of Corbis-Bettmann.

After Amelia finished her speech at the Hyde Park High School, from which she graduated, she exited the stage by way of the piano so she could mingle with the students. July 1928. Courtesy of Corbis-Bettmann.

Amelia and George Palmer Putnam, shortly after their marriage, February, 1931. On the morning of the wedding, she handed George a letter listing conditions he must meet if he wanted to marry her. It didn't seem to faze him a bit.

Courtesy ofAP Wide World Photos.

On May 21, 1932, exactly five years after Charles Lindbergh's flight, Amelia became the second person to fly the North Atlantic solo. She was not only the first woman to make the flight, but the first person to fly the Atlantic twice. She landed in a pasture in Londonderry, Ireland. Courtesy ofAP Wide World Photos.

Townspeople of Londonderry greeting Amelia. Courtesy of Corbis-Bettmann.

By 1923 the Kinner field, the old Mercury field, and the Rogers field had been sold for subdivisions, for houses for the droves of people moving to Los Angeles who would that year make it the fifth largest city in the country. In February Bert Kinner moved his operation to a new field in nearby Glendale, which became upon completion the nearest airfield to downtown Los Angeles. It too was none too safe; its short twelve-hundred-foot runway was bracketed on one end by power lines and on the other by a peach orchard. Nevertheless, within a short time the Aero Club of Southern California and most of the local fliers, including Amelia, were flying out of Glendale, less than fifteen minutes from her new home on Sunset Boulevard, and it became the favorite site for most of the aviation segments filmed by the studios.

By now the Kinner Airster was the accepted, popular sport plane of the day, and Bert Kinner was in the happy predicament of being hard put to turn out a sufficient number to keep up with demand. Amelia's prescience in selecting the avant-garde Airster two years earlier was vindicated everywhere she turned. As
The Ace
somewhat pompously put it, even Jenny owners—and Jenny was understood to include its Canadian sister ship the Canuck as well—“could now see the necessity of developing a smaller plane with a greater performance range to eventually supercede the ‘old faithful' which is so prevalent at most of the flying fields today.” (On September 1, 1927, the U.S. Army would ground the Jenny forever, stating “Today they are obsolete.”)