13.A Real Heroine
It was not until after she had climbed up through the hatchway that Amelia noticed a cottage at the edge of the meadow. Flying over and making her passes she had not seen it.
A man came running out from the cottage. When he reached the plane, breathless, Amelia said to him, “I’m from America.”
It took awhile for the farmer to understand: a woman, from America, flying the Atlantic, all alone? He shook his head in disbelief.
As they walked to his cottage, Amelia learned that she had landed in Culmore, Ulster, near Londonderry, the city she had circled. There was no mistaking that she was in Ireland: the accent of the farmer, and his name, Patrick Gallagher, were sufficient proof. Amelia asked to be taken to the nearest telephone.
Gallagher commandeered a neighbor’s car and drove her to The Elms, the home of Mrs. Francis McClure, five miles down the road. Amelia put through her call.
“I did it!” she said to GP in New York; then she told him about the altimeter, and the tachometer, and the gas leak, and the broken manifold.
George Putnam thanked God that she had made it safely.
Amelia then returned with Gallagher to his home. He asked her if she were tired, if she wanted to sleep.
“I haven’t slept since Friday morning,” she told him. “But I don’t feel the least bit fatigued.”
She slept until the next day.
Amelia Earhart had become what she was in the eyes of her public—the great American woman flier. She had regained her self-respect; she was no longer what she considered a “phony heroine.” The eighteen tons of ticker tape and torn telephone books that had greeted Lindbergh five years before in New York could now scatter down on her. She had paid her debt. She was now ready to play the part of a true heroine. A smooth lyrical grace, the romantic quest of old, and the chivalric spirit of adventure had now combined in the boyishly slender figure of—this time—a woman. Like the lone eagle who preceded her, Amelia acted with ease, modest self-effacement, and exemplary good manners, becoming a good-will ambassador for America.
On Sunday, May 22, Amelia left Londonderry for London in a plane provided by Paramount News. Cables and telegrams had already reached her. “We do congratulate you,” said the Lindberghs. “Your flight is a splendid success.” Lady Astor wired to her: “Come to us, and I will lend you a nightgown.” The one message Amelia would never forget was in the cable from her cleaner, Phil Cooper, in Rye. “Congratulations!” it said. “I knew you’d do it. I never lost a customer.”
At the airport in London AE was met by Ambassador Mellon. They were driven through the cheering crowds to sanctuary at the embassy. Not having brought any clothes other than those she flew in, Amelia was eager to change out of the jodhpurs and sports shirt into something feminine. After a long night’s sleep at the embassy, AE, in dress, coat, shoes, hat, gloves, and purse borrowed from Mrs. Mellon, went forth to shop at Selfridge’s and to sign her name with a diamond-pointed pencil on the plate-glass window that served as the Selfridge autograph album for celebrities.
The British conferred upon her an award that had been givento only one non-British subject before. Norman Selfridge, who had AE’s Lockheed Vega on display at his store and who was its official custodian for the time being, flew Amelia to Brooklands. Here she received the Certificate of Honorary Membership of the British Guild of Air Pilots and Navigators.
Luncheons, dinners, receptions, more awards and decorations followed. Amid all the fanfare Amelia said, “I realize this flight has meant nothing to aviation.” The remark went unnoticed; the press continued in notes of triumphant praise—except for one discordant chord sounded by M. E. Tracey in the New YorkWorld-Telegram: “Amelia Earhart has given us a magnificent display of useless courage.... The interest in such performances is one great weakness of the present age.”
Amelia retained her composure. “If science advances,” she said, “and aviation progresses, and international good will is promoted because of my flight, no one will be more delighted than I—or more surprised.”
For millions of people in America, however, Amelia’s solo flight across the Atlantic was not a display of “useless courage,” nor was it a “tremendous trifle.” Here was a feminine successor to the long list of heroes whom Americans had idolized and adored. Amelia took her place with Lindbergh in aviation, in the glittering gallery that included Bobby Jones in golf, Babe Ruth in baseball, Bill Tilden in tennis, Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney in boxing. In an age of heroes, a heroine was most welcome.
To help manage the avalanche of invitations that had engulfed her, Amelia sent for her husband. GP sailed on theOlympic; when he arrived in Cherbourg, Amelia was there to meet him on board theEvadne, the yacht of C. R. Fairey. GP scrambled up the ladder. AE stood in the doorway, grinning in the morning sun.
“Hi!” she said to her husband, as if he had just come home from work. Man and wife joined arms and went into breakfast with the others.
She told him about her visit with the Prince of Wales. She had a private audience with him in his library at St. James’s Palace. He had pinned a dark pink rose on her blue suit, and escorted her back to her car. The prince was a pilot, but they would never let him fly solo.
“We just talked shop,” Amelia said. “That is, we did a little ground flying. I told the prince all about my flight. He was most warm in his congratulations.”
Of his guest the prince had been quoted as saying: “She is just as charming as I had expected.”
On they went to Paris. The French people were most excited by her visit, and the French Senate extended an official reception. Gallic wit glittered, turning on a pretty compliment from the modest American flier.
“But after all, m’ssieurs,” Amelia concluded her little speech before the Senate, “it is far more difficult to make good laws than it is to fly the Atlantic.”
“Ah, madame,” crackled the president, “when you fly the ocean, what you do is a danger only to yourself, while the laws we make are a danger to so many.”
At the American embassy in Paris Amelia was awarded the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor. “Five years ago,” M. Painlevé said at the ceremony in the drawing room, “I had the pleasure to decorate Colonel Lindbergh after his remarkable flight. And now I have the honor to bestow this cross upon the colonel’s charming image.”
Rome followed. The Italian Government invited the couple to a gathering of fliers who had flown the Atlantic. For the Italians Amelia’s sex was a problem. A woman simply did not set aviation records; she stayed home and had babies. Amelia was a kind of curiosity whom they could not understand.
From Rome they went to Brussels. King Albert and his queen received them at their summer home in Laehen. Amelia loved the easy affability of the king and his dainty wife. They lunched, talked about flying, and took snapshots of one another. ForAmelia there was yet another decoration, the Cross of the Chevalier of the Order of Leopold.
On June 15 they sailed for home. Aboard theIle de FranceAE rested for the ordeal ahead in New York. When she arrived, the city clasped her to its breast: she was their heroine, and thousands cheered her as they had Lindbergh.
The climax of all receptions came on June 21, 1932, when AE had the gold medal of the National Geographic Society presented to her by President Herbert Hoover. In contrast to the warmth of the royal reception in Brussels, the atmosphere of the dinner at the White House was formal and cold.
After dinner they removed to Constitution Hall for the actual ceremony. The President rose to a respectful silence and made his address.
It is a great pleasure to come here and share in your honoring of Mrs. Amelia Earhart Putnam. She has shown a splendid courage and skill in flying alone across the Atlantic Ocean.... She has been modest and good-humored.All these things combine to place her in spirit with the great pioneering women to whom every generation of Americans has looked up, with admiration for their firmness of will, their strength of character, and their cheerful spirit of comradeship in the work of the world....Her success has not been won by the selfish pursuit of a purely personal ambition, but as part of a career generously animated by a wish to help others to share in the rich opportunities of life, and by a wish also to enlarge those opportunities by expanding the powers of women as well as men to their ever-widening limits.Mrs. Putnam has made all mankind her debtor by her demonstration of new possibilities of the human spirit and the human will in overcoming barriers of space and the restrictions of Nature upon the radius of human activity.[The President turned to Amelia] The nation is proud that an American woman should be the first woman in history to fly an airplane alone across the Atlantic Ocean. As theirspokesman [he moved to Amelia now standing beside him] I take pride and pleasure in conferring this rarely bestowed medal of the National Geographic Society upon Mrs. Amelia Earhart Putnam.
It is a great pleasure to come here and share in your honoring of Mrs. Amelia Earhart Putnam. She has shown a splendid courage and skill in flying alone across the Atlantic Ocean.... She has been modest and good-humored.
All these things combine to place her in spirit with the great pioneering women to whom every generation of Americans has looked up, with admiration for their firmness of will, their strength of character, and their cheerful spirit of comradeship in the work of the world....
Her success has not been won by the selfish pursuit of a purely personal ambition, but as part of a career generously animated by a wish to help others to share in the rich opportunities of life, and by a wish also to enlarge those opportunities by expanding the powers of women as well as men to their ever-widening limits.
Mrs. Putnam has made all mankind her debtor by her demonstration of new possibilities of the human spirit and the human will in overcoming barriers of space and the restrictions of Nature upon the radius of human activity.
[The President turned to Amelia] The nation is proud that an American woman should be the first woman in history to fly an airplane alone across the Atlantic Ocean. As theirspokesman [he moved to Amelia now standing beside him] I take pride and pleasure in conferring this rarely bestowed medal of the National Geographic Society upon Mrs. Amelia Earhart Putnam.
Amelia took her place behind the microphone. She spoke calmly in a low, well-modulated voice. “I think,” she said, reaffirming the position she had often taken, “that the appreciation for the deed is out of proportion to the deed itself.... I shall be happy if my small exploit has drawn attention to the fact that women, too, are flying.”
Later, at a less formal occasion, Mrs. Hoover added her personal opinion to what her husband had said in his prepared statement. “I often think,” the President’s wife said, “that if a girl was to fly across the Atlantic alone and so, in a sense, represent America before the world, how nice it is that it was such a person as Miss Earhart. She is poised, well bred, lovely to look at, and so intelligent and sincere.”
It was not until the Roosevelts came to Washington, however, that Amelia became a close friend of the White House. AE gave Eleanor Roosevelt her first experience in night flying, both women taking to the air in evening clothes. The first lady of the nation and the first lady of flight became fast friends. At one time Mrs. Roosevelt decided to take flying lessons from AE, and even went so far as to get her student pilot permit. But the President strenuously objected to the idea of his wife becoming a pilot, and the matter was finally dropped.
After her solo flight, Amelia could count enough awards and decorations to fill a display cabinet, but she cherished one above all. In tribute to her accomplishment the Congress of the United States presented her with the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Not content to rest on her Atlantic laurels, AE now turned to more challenges, some in the air and some on the ground. The Pacific Ocean, Mexico and its gulf, the transcontinental speed record: each in turn presented the unexpected in life that could indeed become the inevitable.