East to the Dawn (35 page)

By the time Byrd and Elmer were finished with the
Friendship,
they
had equipped it with, as Elmer proudly announced, “everything.” They installed the usual instruments, altimeter, gas gauge, speedometer, two magnetic compasses, the newly developed earth induction compass (reliable but having to be reset when a plane changed course), wind drift instruments, smoke bombs to determine wind direction and velocity, flares, a Cardwell, a radio similar to the one Byrd had on the
America,
which had a range of a thousand miles on a 600-meter wave length, and a receiving set designed, built, and installed by Wallace Battison, a Cambridge radio expert. There was also an emergency transmitter with aerial located in the tail of the plane with a range of 50 to 100 miles that would give them ten minutes, in case of a disaster, to send out a call for help to steamers. Battison said it was put on so securely, “you couldn't jar it loose with a charge of dynamite.” The Cardwell, all by itself, according to Bill Stultz, weighed a hundred pounds.

Elmer, in spite of his reservations about pontoons, thought he had overseen the fitting out of “the safest and best equipped airplane ever to attempt an ocean flight.” Guest and Earhart certainly thought they were in good hands. So did George Putnam. By mid-May the varying load tests, the “countless” takeoffs from the bay, the “brief” flights around Boston, the fine-tuning of the instruments—all of which Amelia was kept apprised of but took no part in—were finished; the plane was ready.

David Layman and his wife came up to Boston hoping to witness the takeoff, as did Amy Guest's two sons Winston and Raymond; Dorothy Putnam came up to join her husband, who by this time had taken to haunting the hangar. An auxiliary pilot, Lou Gower, hired to help out as far as Trepassey, was also present with his wife and waiting patiently. The new problem was the weather—it refused to cooperate. Amelia would remember long gray days.

Still, her life had begun to take on the texture of the future. She had moved into Boston's most elegant hotel, the Copley Plaza (registering as Dorothy Binney, the maiden name of Dorothy Putnam, to avoid discovery) and was at least exposed, if she didn't participate in tea dancing, to the music of Meyer Davis.

David Layman had first grudgingly and then gratefully ceded control of the enterprise to George Putnam, whose expertise in mounting expeditions was second to none. Putnam, assisted by Hilton Railey, now addressed himself to the public relations aspect of the flight. Able to present Amelia as a published writer on the basis of her article in
The Bostonian,
he struck a deal with
The New York Times:
they would pay Amelia ten thousand dollars for the exclusive, syndicated rights to her story. (Amelia, of course, would turn
this money over to her benefactor.) Then he worked out a deal with Emanuel Cohen, his friend at Paramount News, for an undisclosed sum, giving Paramount News exclusive newsreel coverage in Boston and in Trepassey, Newfoundland. The Paramount News man in New England, considered by all to be the dean of his profession, was Jake Coolidge; he went to work immediately. In the interests of secrecy all of his shots of Amelia were taken on the unused, unfinished roof of the Copley Plaza; there he took a “a great reservoir of shots” of her for future release, assisted by his son Phil. He kept his photographic equipment, in those years so bulky, hidden in a utility closet on the top floor under the roof. (The choice of venue must have been Amelia's; who else would have thought of climbing out onto the roof of an elegant hotel?) It was Jake who deliberately created the “Lady Lindy” image that in later years would stick to Amelia like glue. He posed her mostly in her leather jacket, white-edged helmet, brown broadcloth riding “breeks,” high-laced brown riding boots, and goggles. The theme was “Remember Lindbergh.” Amelia had bought the jacket at a sale in 1922 for twenty dollars. When new, it had been “an elegant leather coat,” a bit too elegant—a bit too shiny for Amelia. Wrinkles, she had decided, were what it needed, so she had slept in it for three nights until it had “a properly veteran appearance.” Even then not quite satisfied, she had given it “a last going over—rubbing the sheen off here and there.” Now it was to become a fashion statement for the world.

Jake didn't think that Charles and Amelia looked the least bit alike—it was just an illusion he created with his camera. “It wasn't so much that the resemblance was there as that you could make it seem to be there, by camera angles.” Later, influenced by the poses and the similar outfits, many people would remark on their resemblance to each other, but just as many thought there was none. George Palmer Putnam, having been part of the magic act, couldn't see it. “She couldn't have resembled the Colonel very much or I would have noticed it,” he would write. His wife Dorothy, on the other hand, thought the resemblance “uncanny”; Hilton Railey thought it “extraordinary.”

Paramount News sent another of their photographers, Andy Fulgoni, up to Trepassey to wait there for the fliers.

George Putnam arranged with David Layman to provide funds for Hilton Railey to go to England to run interference for Amelia when and if she landed; Hilton set off by boat.

On nice days Amelia drove her confreres around in the battered yellow convertible that George Putnam dubbed at first glance the
Yellow Peril,
not only apt, but also the name of a sleek English plane made by Handley Page.

Her new friends may not have known what kind of a pilot she was, but they undoubtedly noticed that sweet and modest though she was, she drove a car like a bat out of hell. Depending on their temperaments, her passengers were either impressed or scared. Marion Perkins was one of those impressed. Amelia was, she wrote, “an expert ... handling her car with ease, yes more than that, with an artistic touch.” Hilton Railey's wife Julia was one of those who was not. “People got out of the way of it I noticed. Our battered and bedented bus scudded through the traffic like a car possessed. With something of a flourish we drew up at last at the Old France restaurant.” (She didn't like the car, either, calling it “the worst looking automobile—hers—I think I ever saw, bar one. Its rear end was cigar-shaped and its ground color a sick canary.”)

In spite of the fact that neither Amelia nor anyone else mentions his presence at this juncture, Sam Chapman was still an important part of Amelia's life. She gave him the intimate, delicate job of telling her mother, the type of task a fiance
would
undertake. There is no doubt they still considered themselves engaged; he, like she, expected her to return to Denison House in two or at the most three weeks.

Amelia's actual preparation for the flight was minimal since she was going to wear her everyday flying outfit (which she had been donning for her photos for weeks). In addition to the breeks, boots, goggles, helmet, and leather jacket, she would be taking (and wearing) a light brown sweater, a blouse, a red necktie, fur-lined boots, and, “a single elegance,” practically a trademark for pilots of the day, a silk scarf—hers was brown and white. As protection against the cold that they would meet flying at high altitudes, Amelia and the men took fur-lined flying suits, hers borrowed from a friend, Major Charles L. Wooley, commander of the Massachusetts National Guard Air Force, a fellow member of the Boston NAA (she didn't divulge where it was going). The few things she took—a toothbrush, a comb, fresh linen handkerchiefs, a tube of cold cream, a camera borrowed from Layman, field glasses borrowed from Putnam—all fitted into the small knapsack she bought for the occasion at a local army-navy store. She didn't own a watch; Mrs. Layman lent her one, and David Layman loaned her his camera.

She wrote a will of sorts. She itemized her debts that, all told, amounted to slightly over one thousand dollars, most of it owed to a bank, but as a marker of the complexity of her character, it included a $140 debt to Filene's for a fur coat. She suggested that her car be sold to cover the
bills and directed that her interest in the Kinner Airplane and Motor Corporation and the ten shares of stock she owned in the Dennison Aircraft Corporation go to her mother. (“I hope they will pay and think they will,” she added.) She concluded, “My regret is that I leave just now. In a few years I feel I could have laid by something substantial, for so many new things were opening for me.... Selah.”

She left letters for her mother and father at Denison House, identifying them, for the unnamed person who would find them (undoubtedly Marion Perkins), with a penciled note clipped to the envelopes, as “popping off” letters that should be sent out. Her letter to Amy is carefully upbeat:

But her note to her father, dated Friday, June 1, is even more exuberant and affectionate. She used her childhood name and indulged herself in deliberate misspellings.

She wrote a letter to Muriel, which she mailed, writing carefully and honestly, explaining why she had kept her in the dark.

She added a postscript, explaining that she had taken care of her affairs. “I have made my will and placed my house in order. I have appointed a girlfriend at Denison House to act as administrator in case of my death.”

She had taken care of everything: her job was covered, her will written, farewell letters to her parents in place in case she didn't come back, and Sam delegated to tell her mother. It would have seemed inconceivable to her that Sam could fail to reach Amy before the evening papers were on the streets with the news, but that is what happened.

Clearly she was very much in control of herself. But she couldn't do anything about the plane. The
Friendship
was moored off the Jeffrey Yacht Club in East Boston. The first predawn attempt to take off was a failure. There was not enough wind, and as Elmer had said, the pontoons acted like a dime stuck to the table. The second attempt was aborted because of fog. Amelia loved poetry and had an ingrained habit of retreating into it to handle difficult situations. At Columbia, when she could not answer questions in the weekly physics quiz, she had inserted a little French poetry. Now she quoted Carl Sandburg.

 

The fog comes on little cat feet and sits on

its haunches

 

Overlooking city and harbor

And then moves on.

 

According to Phil Coolidge, with whom Amelia had become friends, both George Putnam and Bill Stultz were beginning to show signs of strain. George “grew irascible,” and Bill Stultz so edgy that Phil kept trying to calm him down so that he wouldn't start drinking. There was a disquieting article in
The Boston Globe
on Friday, June 1. The paper reported that more than a thousand gallons of aviation gas and 150 gallons of oil had arrived at Old Orchard Beach, Maine, in anticipation of the arrival of Thea Rasche, who planned to hop off from there on a transatlantic flight. Their two failures to take off took on an ominous meaning.