East to the Dawn (57 page)

Amelia and Eleanor Roosevelt had first met at a curiously low point in the latter's life, the end of November 1932. The euphoria of Franklin Roosevelt's election to the presidency earlier that month had worn off, for Eleanor, within a matter of days, whereupon she fell into an acute state of depression, notes the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, sure that her life would soon shrink to arranging and attending endless teas, luncheons, and receptions—that she would be, finally, trapped within the ceremonial side of government. Lorena Hickok, her closest friend, called the book she wrote about Eleanor
The Reluctant First Lady
because the last thing Eleanor wanted to do was perform the ceremonial duties required of a president's wife. She couldn't bear the thought of being just his appendage. She wanted to be out and active and accomplishing things, as she had always been, whether it was making speeches for Franklin while he recovered from polio, organizing the Women's Division of the Democratic Party with Mary Dewson, or teaching literature, drama, and American history to girls at the Todhunter School in New York as the governor's wife. She had always sought out and was happiest in the company of women who worked: she was not a social animal. “I think that every woman has a right to ‘a life of her own,' ” she started out an article for
Cosmopolitan
written just after Franklin was elected. Her closest friend was Lorena Hickok, arguably the brightest and certainly the most widely known female journalist in America. Her other women friends were also successful in their own right—gainfully occupied. Running a beautiful house, even if it
was
the White House, was Eleanor's idea of a nightmare. She was looking—desperately—for a
role she could play that wouldn't be at cross-purposes either with her own beliefs and inclinations or with the demands of her husband.

Amelia and Eleanor had so much history in common: they both had alcoholic fathers, both had been largely brought up by grandparents. There were the physical similarities—imagined and real: they both believed themselves to be ugly ducklings, too tall, with bad teeth (Amelia had a gap between her two front teeth that she tried to hide), and bad legs, and both had unexpectedly long, graceful fingers. They had the same outlook, the same high sense of moral purpose that had led them both into social work, the same fierce need for independence, the same desire to open doors for women that would shortly lead Eleanor to institute weekly White House press conferences in the Treaty Room for women reporters only. (They would be limited to women in order to force editors to hire female reporters if they didn't already have any on their staff, but limited also because Eleanor thought she'd get better coverage if the stories were written by women. Both women were very practical feminists.) There was, as well, the shared dislike of ostentation and ceremony.

It was, significantly, Eleanor, not Franklin, who cabled congratulations to Amelia after her solo transatlantic flight, and it was to Eleanor that Amelia directed her brief reply: “Thank you very much for your message.... It was kind of you and Governor Roosevelt to think of sending it.”

The two women met on November 20, 1932, just weeks after Franklin was elected president. Amelia was giving a routine talk and showing movies at the local public high school in Poughkeepsie, a half hour's drive from the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park. The newspaper notices of her lecture, billed as “Flying for Fun,” mention that Amelia would show movies as well as talk. Nancy Astor, the lone female member of Parliament who had entertained Amelia in England, was spending the weekend with the Roosevelts. Before the publicized lecture, Amelia and George were invited to Hyde Park to dine with the Roosevelts and to renew old ties with the outspoken Nancy. Eleanor Roosevelt always had a special place in her heart for achieving women—and here was the superachiever who had flown the Atlantic. Eleanor went to the lecture and introduced her. By her remarks it was apparent that while other people may have admired
her,
there was no doubt whom Eleanor admired: “I hope to know Miss Earhart more and more but I never hope to admire her more than I do now. She has done so many things which I have always wanted to do.”

At the Poughkeepsie lecture, Amelia described her solo transatlantic flight; ran movies of her incredible receptions in London, Paris, and Rome; and diplomatically praised Poughkeepsie hometown boy Lieutenant John Miller, who had beaten her across the continent in his autogiro. When she
finished, she was given a standing ovation. Nancy Astor, never one to be left out, made some concluding remarks. Poughkeepsie and the Women's City and County Club got more than they had bargained for.

That had been the beginning of Amelia and Eleanor's friendship. Eleanor's introductory remarks had not been idle words. The life of a pilot spoke to her: the freedom, the mastery of the air, the aloneness. It appealed to Eleanor at this critical juncture in her life: she could learn to just fly away. She was a gutsy woman: she took her first airplane ride in 1930 at the age of forty-five, she rode a bobsled at the 1932 Winter Olympics, and as notations in the White House ushers' diaries show, she rode horseback virtually every morning in all the years she was in Washington. She was taught to shoot by the national guard a few years later and usually carried a pistol when she was by herself on car trips. Now she spoke of her desire to fly to Amelia. The timing was perfect—Amelia offered to be her instructor and arranged for the use of a plane at a secluded field and for her friend, Dr. Henry Templeton Smith, to give Eleanor the general physical examination, plus the eye color test, depth perception test, and the equilibrium test that were required for a student pilot permit. Eleanor passed, and the doctor signed her permit. Six weeks later, Eleanor enclosed the permit to her flying mentor, Amelia, with the notation “The question now comes as to whether I can induce my husband to let me take lessons. I will let you know if I am successful with him. I haven't had a chance even to talk to him about it.” But when she did, the answer was no. Not that Franklin forbade her, of course, as she wrote Amelia later; their relationship was much too complicated for that “My husband convinced me that it was a waste of time to learn when I could not afford to buy a plane.” And of course it was out of the question that she would ask him to ask his mother, who held the purse strings.

Eleanor gracefully—perhaps with a tiny sigh of relief—gave up the project, but she remained gamely air-minded. She once stated to reporters that she only took trains when her secretary accompanied her, so she could get work done: “But I always fly when I travel alone.” And her admiration for Amelia continued to grow.

She put Amelia on the White House invitation list. She invited Amelia to a small luncheon with Frances Perkins, Franklin's new secretary of labor, the first woman appointed to a Cabinet-level job, shortly after the inauguration, then invited her and George for dinner and to spend the night, on the evening before Amelia's lecture to the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) on April 21, 1933. A few days before, Eleanor had been made honorary chairman of the United States Amateur Pilots Association. Now Amelia arranged for Eastern Airlines to loan her
a plane—a Condor—and flight crew and after dinner, having waited to make sure the sky was clear and the stars brilliant, asked Eleanor if she wanted to taste the experience of night flying for the first time. She did. So not bothering to change, in their elegant satin evening dresses, fur coats, and white kid gloves, accompanied by several reporters, Eleanor's brother Hall, and George, they went up in the Condor. Amelia had the cabin lights turned out so that Eleanor could savor the full beauty of the night. Amelia spent a bit of time demonstrating that she could fly the plane, and Eleanor took a turn in the cockpit so that the captain could explain the controls to her.

They were all on a high after the flight, particularly Eleanor. When they got back to the White House, the new car Hall had driven east for his sister, washed and shining, was standing just beyond the portico. “Amelia, lets see how it rides!” Eleanor exclaimed, and they hopped in and took a spin before calling it a night.

The next day in her talk to the DAR, Amelia praised Eleanor's spirit: “The example set by the first lady of the land has done more to advance aviation among women, I think, than any other factor.”

Eleanor thought so much of Amelia that she kept her poem “Courage Is the Price” in the desk drawer where she kept special items that gave her strength and inspiration. Later she would also keep a photograph of Amelia in her sitting room. Franklin, too, enjoyed Amelia's company, appreciated her fresh good looks, her sense of humor, her flying ability, and her intelligence, and didn't hold her project of teaching Eleanor how to fly against her. He thought highly enough of Amelia's input to grant her that most-highly-prized commodity in Washington, time with him whenever she requested it. He held her in such high esteem that she had but to ask Louis Howe, Franklin's liaison in the early years, for an appointment for the request to be immediately granted. For example on April 5 she sent a telegram to Howe, requesting a three minute interview with the president, “tomorrow, Thursday or Friday.” It wasn't quite done on those days, but it was arranged for Wednesday, April 12, at 3:30 P.M.. At the time when Franklin was debating the merits of forming an umbrella organization (a department of transportation) to regulate rail travel, flying, roads, and the nation's waterways, he listened to what Amelia had to say on government regulation of flying and how the department could operate most efficiently—she thought an umbrella organization was a good idea.

The Bendix race was without a doubt the most exciting annual event in American aviation—the Kentucky Derby of the air world. Two generations
of fliers would struggle to win the Bendix, promoted by Clifford Henderson to spur pilots, plane designers, and manufacturers to ever-faster speeds in ever-more dependable machines. Held annually since 1931, it was a free-for-all cross-country race designed by Henderson to “force airplane designers, builders and pilots to really get down to business.” It always ended at the airport where the National Air Races were held and served as its opening event. The race was named for Vincent Bendix, the tough, bright, high-profile inventor, pilot and head of Bendix Aviation, who each year donated half the cash prize, $15,000 (Henderson put up the other half), and the trophy. Ex-army pilot Jimmy Doolittle, the first person to make a landing flying blind (cockpit hooded over) won the first race in a Laird, flying the route from Los Angeles to Cleveland at an average speed of 223 miles an hour. In 1932 Captain James Haizlip, former air corps test pilot, flying a Wedell-Williams, flew the same course at 245 miles an hour.

The third year, 1933, Henderson suddenly decided that women could enter. June 30 was the race date and Henderson waited till the beginning of the month before announcing his decision. It wasn't nearly enough time to get a plane up to racing speed, nevertheless, Amelia thought it was important to enter, as did Ruth Nichols, even though both knew they couldn't win against the men who were flying planes equipped with engines twice as powerful as theirs that they had been fine-tuning for months. They were the only two women to enter.

After her solo flight Amelia had sold her plane, minus its engine, to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia for $7,500 for exhibition in their new Hall of Aviation, presumably because she felt that it had seen its best days. Indeed, Clarence Belinn, an engineer whom she knew from TAT, who examined it sometime after her transatlantic and cross-country flights thought it was in dangerously bad shape. Dot Leh, another Ninety-Nines friend of hers, has suggested that as a replacement she buy the Vega that Elinor Smith had once owned, which Elinor had sold to William W Harts, Jr., a few weeks after Amelia's transatlantic flight—not having any use for it after Amelia had bested her—which was languishing in dead storage at Floyd Bennett field on Long Island. Amelia had taken possession of the plane and its license number 965Y in April “hanging” into it her 500-horsepower Wasp engine, which was still in excellent shape. The plane was quite similar to her old one but in much better condition.