East to the Dawn (46 page)

It was to Vladimir that Amelia opened up a side to her personality that rarely showed: her restless desire for new challenges, wanting him to understand what drove her on. “Are you interested to know I shall try a parachute jump next week? I've tried to analyze my desire and find it's the seeking of a new sensation. Why do we use the same ones over and over again? We hold hands in the moonlight—and then spend the rest of our lives trying to repeat the moment.”

Amelia didn't do a great deal at the settlement house, but her presence
was enough to energize everyone, and she did her bit and made it count. She spoke at the children's annual club council awards dinner and, to everyone's delight, presented the cup to the senior Greenwich House basketball team, which defeated Denison House in the big annual grudge game. The junior girls' basketball team, with Amelia watching over them, came out first in their local contest. She mesmerized a neighborhood gathering with a description of her transatlantic flight. She became a member of the committee for the children's theater annual Christmas production at the John Golden Theater. She also arranged for her mother to give ten dollars to be a member of the settlement house—a respectable sum, not as much Eleanor Roosevelt gave that year but the same amount contributed by Condé Nast.

It seemed as if her life were in perfect balance: she was earning her living as a writer, flying when she had the opportunity, and contributing to the social work movement by living in a settlement house.

12

Dreams Come True

• • • • On July 1, 1929, Bill Stultz died.

He had been stunting in his own plane, a taper winged Waco that he had just bought from his employer, the wealthy sportsman John Hay Whitney, when he crashed. He had crammed two passengers, young men from Long Island who wanted some thrills, into the forward seat of the two-seat plane and taken off from Roosevelt field just past noon.

He started stunting at an exceptionally low altitude, but those on the field thought nothing of it because Bill was considered the most skillful pilot around. Then an observer in nearby Mineola saw the Waco dive at a house and pull up just before crashing into its roof. The next moment, back over the field, the plane started fluttering down tail first, leveled off at about fifty feet, then dove straight down into the grass. All three men were killed.

Because knowledge of Bill's drinking was widespread, the wrecked plane was examined with particular care. It was discovered that Bill had not cut the switch, the procedure used to avoid fire, that the throttle was wide open, and that the passenger controls had not been disconnected, a violation of federal regulations. And, a bizarre touch, two shoes of different sizes and colors, twisted out of shape, were jammed under the rudder bar; it was impossible to move the bar until they were taken out. The
shoes spoke of moments of sheer terror. Also because of Bill's drinking, an autopsy was performed. A few days later everyone knew the chilling truth. He had been “very drunk,” the autopsy revealed. He was twenty-nine.

Amelia attended the funeral the next afternoon at three o'clock at the Reformed church in Manhasset, as did Lou Gower, the pilot who had gathered his gear and left the
Friendship
in Boston Harbor. After it was over, Amelia went into New York City to take her part in the radio show on station WRNY at five fifteen PM., lending her voice to the aviation industry effort to calm people's fears—real enough, since there had been two other accidents at Roosevelt field in less than a week. It would have taken great self-control for her to talk calmly; she must have thought over those days in Trepassey and how they might have ended, then, for all of them.

The era of airline travel was just beginning. Jack Maddux had started Maddux Air Lines in July 1927, with one plane, a Ford trimotor, flying between Los Angeles and San Diego. By the end of 1928 the line had thirteen trimotors, two Lockheed Vegas, and two Travel Airs and had flown 9,443 passengers 386,736 miles all over the West. In the Midwest, Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT), put together by C. M. Keys, was growing even faster. In the summer of 1929 Keys and Maddux joined forces and started the first transcontinental service, with Jack Maddux as head of the western division. Maddux hired Charles Lindbergh to lay out the route (the line became known as the Lindbergh Line), and it was a combination air-rail trip—passengers flew during the day in sixteen-passenger Ford trimotors and slept at night in Pullman cars—in the East belonging to the Pennsylvania Railroad, in the West belonging to the Santa Fe. The planes flew between New York and Columbus, Ohio, and between Amarillo, Texas, and Los Angeles. It took a full forty-eight hours to span the continent from New York to Los Angeles. The total fare varied from a minimum of $337 to a maximum of $403 one way, depending on the standard of comfort on the trains. Special aero-cars transported the passengers from plane to train for the night rides.

Maddux hired Amelia as assistant to the general traffic manager, to work out of the TAT office at 959 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, but he thrust her back into a traditional woman's role: her job was to supply the “woman's angle,” which meant seeing that women's comforts, luxuries, and needs were addressed. It was vital to fill those needs so that women would begin to buy tickets and travel by airlines. Ninety-five percent of airline passengers were men—and if the women didn't join them, the airlines would fail. So since the trimotors had no toilet facilities and made
fifteen-minute stops every two hours, a great deal of thought had to go into making the waiting rooms at airports attractive; airline officials ran the preliminary plans and color schemes by Amelia for her opinion. Each stopping area had to be perfect, each landing field and lounge a “show window” of aviation.

No effort was spared to make air travel seem like ocean voyaging or traveling by train. The planes were carpeted, there were curtains at the windows, the seats were deep, comfortable, adjustable, and upholstered in green leather. A male cabin attendant decked out in a white uniform served meals on a folding table set up for each passenger, complete with a lavender linen tablecloth and napkins. A typical menu consisted of tomato surprise, assorted cold meats, sandwiches, fruit cup, cake, and hot coffee. Passengers were offered a map of the route, postcards of places along the way, and writing paper.

In a flurry of publicity on Sunday, July 9, 1929, the line inaugurated service. On the East Coast, in Pennsylvania Station, Amelia christened the brand-new Ford trimotor the
City of New York,
hauled into the cavernous interior of the station for the occasion, while simultaneously on the West Coast America's sweetheart Mary Pickford christened the
City of Los Angeles.
Then the next day Amelia got on the train and headed west, to join up with the Lindberghs on the last leg.

It was hoped that passengers would flock to TAT for the glamorous trip, but in spite of the excitement and interest (a crowd estimated at a hundred thousand watched Charles take off on the first flight from Los Angeles), it was a rocky road, fraught with accidents to the passengers and ultimately bankruptcies for the investors. Combining her two jobs, Amelia devoted a
Cosmopolitan
article to TAT and the other new airlines crisscrossing America. They all needed help; in spite of the elaborate planning TAT had done, there were soon empty seats. With reason: On the first day, as one of the trimotors taxied across the field at Albuquerque, it was hit by an unexpected gust of wind that caused it to ground-loop and brush a wing against the hangar office. No one was hurt, but the seven passengers had to continue on in another plane.

By the time Amelia's
Cosmopolitan
article on the wonders of the airlines came out in October, TAT's the City
of San Francisco
had crashed into a mountain sixty miles east of Albuquerque in broad daylight, killing all aboard. Amelia fretted that the press overplayed accidents, but there was nothing she could do about it; news was news. Scarcely had 1930 begun than Keys, in an effort to increase passenger traffic, slashed the price of a ticket almost in half. The effect was largely negated, however, because the week after the fare cut another TAT plane crashed, this time in bad weather,
at Oceanside, California, again killing all aboard. Had the public known that the insurance industry considered flying so dangerous they wouldn't write policies for pilots, there would have been even more empty seats.

It had been announced that for the first time ever a women's race would be one of the feature events of the 1929 National Air Races and Aeronautical Exposition. The reasoning behind this surprising development was eminently practical: it would promote aviation. If women flew, it might seem safer, and if it seemed safer, more people would fly. As Frank Copeland, the marketing director of what came to be known as the Women's Air Derby, put it:

The derby was an exciting prospect for the fliers. The women would start out August 18 from Santa Monica and end in Cleveland, Ohio, where the National Air Races would be in progress. It would be a real race—a true test of navigational and piloting prowess, the first ever for women. The winner would get real money for thousands of dollars of prize money were being put up. But then various men on the race committee and some male members of the National Aeronautic Association began to have second thoughts. The specter of accidents bothered them; they didn't want to shoulder the blame if a woman got killed. It was suggested that every woman carry a male navigator with her, and that the race start somewhere east of the Rockies, so that no women would crack up in the mountains. It began to look like it wouldn't be a real race at all.

By this time Amelia had obtained a transport license, the mark of a professional pilot. She was only the fourth woman to pass the rigorous test—the others being Ruth Nichols, Phoebe Omlie, and Lady Mary Heath. This, added to her unique popularity made Amelia the obvious person to voice everyone's anger. She weighed in with the following blast, calculated to hit the newspapers and subject the race committee to public pressure:

The idea was dropped. Those in charge decided the race would take place as planned and that the same rule for eligibility would be applied to women as to men; every pilot had to have flown a hundred solo hours, twenty-five of which must have been cross-country flights of more than forty miles from home port. It was a great victory for the women.