celebrated plane on display, behind a fence…. My father told me it was a flying machine. To me, it was a funny- looking crate of rusty wire and wood. I was much more interested in the merry-go-round at the time.”
Laughter rippled through the hall.
“In his generous introduction, Mr. Cornelison mentioned our courageous pioneer forefathers,” she said solemnly, “and I realized suddenly what a terrible mistake I’d made…”
The grave timbre of her voice quelled the laughter.
“…being born a woman,” she said, her voice now mischievously lilting, “and not a man.”
Laughter almost exploded from the women in the hall, their menfolk smiling nervously.
“When heavier-than-air craft were first invented,” she said, “women followed just a few years behind in flying them. Today women hold various records, and I’m lucky enough to hold a few of those myself…though one recent article in the French press concluded, ‘But can she bake a cake?’”
Gentle laughter, now.
“More important in my view than record-setting is the everyday flying done by five hundred cake-baking women in this country, on missions of business and pleasure. How many of you have flown? Show of hands.”
Around the hall, perhaps twenty men raised a hand, and only four women.
“Please keep in mind that the flights I have made were simply for the fun of it…”
This reference to her book was contributed by Putnam, I would bet.
“…and have really added nothing to the progress of aviation. The time will soon come when what Colonel Lindbergh and I and a few others have done will seem quaint. Safe, regularly scheduled transoceanic flights will take place in our lifetime.”
This exciting news caused a mild wave of whispering to break out.
“Could I have the lights dimmed, please?” she asked, and they were.
Then, using a pointer but never turning her back to the crowd (a nice piece of public-speaking savvy), she guided them through a lively, personalized slide show of her Atlantic crossings and other record-setting adventures. Throughout she maintained an unaffected, friendly tone, rarely getting overly technical, and even then projecting so much enthusiasm about her subject, her audience never grew bored.
When the lights came up, she shifted subjects, with the startling statement, “Sex has been used too long as an excuse by incompetent women who like to make themselves and others believe that it is not their incompetence holding them back, but their womanhood.”
The crowd didn’t know what to make of that one, and I could spot a few frowns, though they seemed to be thought-induced. And the men were shifting in their seats, fidgeting; the word “sex” spoken in public, when a husband was seated next to his wife, was apparently unsettling. In Des Moines, anyway.
“Don’t take me wrong,” she said, and flashed that gap-toothed, just-one-of-the-girls, just-one-of-the-boys smile, “I’m no feminist. I merely indulge in modern thinking.”
And she spoke of science having cut back on household drudgery, that a woman could run a home and have a career, that husbands could and should share household and child-raising duties.
This all sounded pretty good, but when I plugged Amelia Earhart and her husband George Palmer Putnam into the equation, something didn’t add up—I couldn’t quite picture either one of them doing a dish or pushing a sweeper, and I figured both were too self-centered to ever have a kid.
But it made for a good, mildly controversial speech, which received a standing ovation, the Coliseum director returning to the microphone to let the crowd know that, shortly, Miss Earhart would be signing copies of her book in the lobby. Soon I was making change and dispensing full-price copies of a three-year-old volume that was available in a cheaper edition, but not here.
Amelia signed three hundred and some copies of her book, and spent time with every customer, shaking hands, laughing, listening, each treated as an individual, and if she felt any condescension for any of her public, her eyes did not betray it; she did the same with those who bought no book, merely came through the line with a program to sign.
With Amelia piloting her big, powerful, twelve-cylinder Franklin, we left the Coliseum shortly after ten o’clock and, following the practice that was a constant over our two weeks of appearances, set out immediately for the next stop on the schedule—Mason City, the easiest drive of the tour. We checked in at the Park Inn, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel, around midnight.
Usually we drove all night, checking into hotels at dawn, frequently granting the press an interview over a room-service breakfast prior to getting in a few hours of sleep before the next lecture. She gave the reporters more outspoken stuff than her lecture audiences.
“If women were drafted,” the dyed-in-the-wool pacifist modestly proposed to a gaggle of golfball-eyed Iowa scribes, “they would share the privilege with men of killing, suffering, maiming, wasting, paralyzing, impoverishing, and dying gloriously. There’d soon be an end to war.”
For the first several days and nights, she and I had said little, nothing beyond polite conversation; Amelia was cordial, if not quite friendly, and seemed distant, if not quite cold. I didn’t understand it, since I felt we’d hit it off pretty well at the Field’s opening and at the Palmer House dining room, after.
But driving through the night, in the Franklin, with her at the wheel more often than not (she loved that big car, loved to drive it, and I didn’t mind letting her, because it handled like a boat), we sat in silence. I didn’t take offense; hell, I just worked here.
Everywhere we went, it seemed, Amelia was claimed as a native daughter—whether at a Women’s Christian Temperance Union meeting in Lawrence, Kansas (“What a pleasure to welcome home a Kansas girl”), a Zonta International tea at St. Louis, Missouri (“This outstanding woman grew up here and really took our ‘Show me’ state motto to heart!”), even an American Association of University Women lecture in Minneapolis (“Minnesota’s own!”).
She got $250 for each appearance—I was frequently handed the payment checks, as I was mistaken for her manager—and she earned her dough. Detroit was particularly grueling.
