Amelia Earhart: Aviator for the Ages

and this is Seneca's one Women to Hear. We are bringing you one hundred of the world's most inspiring and history making women you need to hear. In the nineteen thirties, Amelia Earhart was everywhere in books, newsreels, magazines, advertising. She made fly ing and feminism popular. She was the first woman and second person after Charles Lindbergh to fly solo

across the Atlantic. That was just one of her great achievements, and she remains an object of utter fascination today due partly to her mysterious disappearance during a N seven flight to circumnavigate the globe. We're learning about her today from Candice Fleming, author of Amelia Lost, The Life and disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Listen and learn why Amelia Earhart is one of Seneca's women to hear. I'm delighted to be here today to speak with Candice Fleming about that amazingly

iconic woman in history, Amelia Earhart. Welcome, Candice, Oh, thank you. Thrilled to be here. Maybe you could tell us at the outset what you think Amelia should best be known for in terms of her greatest achievements and her legacy. You know, um, Amelia Earhart, she may be even more famous today than she was at the height of her flying career. UM, and that fascination has shows no sign

of abating. UM. The unsolved mystery of her disappearance has become sort of this industry that we've devoted ourselves to. We want to know what happened to her. UM. We have search expeditions, and we come up with all these supposed facts that are constantly surfacing. But I think what she should be known for is her influence on the development of mass culture and the merchandising and popular figures. Amelia E. Horhart really transformed herself into this sort of

carefully crafted brand. She advocated, and she influenced the emergence of aviation as a major transportation industry. And she symbolized the opportunities for women in modern life. I mean she tirelessly promoted equality and opportunities for women and a time when women were really expected to stay within those traditional roles of wife and mother. Um, she flew not just because she loved it, but she flew for women, and

hers was a real feminist commitment. Eleanor Roosevelt said of Amelia Heart, she helped the cause of women by giving them a feeling that there was nothing they could not do. I just love that. I love that too. Well, let's change that out a little bit, because she was a huge celebrity in her day and a trendsetter. There were magazine covers or newsreels or influence. Uh. It was really quite best. Uh. And she endorsed products as well. Can you tell us more about all of that. Yeah, she

was everywhere. Like I said earlier, she was a brand, and she carefully cultivated her public image. She worked, I mean really worked at being a popular hero. Um. Then that started with the light across the Atlantic. Um that meant that fourteen hours a day, truly fourteen hours of her every day she spent lecturing or at receptions in big and small towns all across the United States. And that also meant cranking out instant books. She actually wrote

two best sellers. She dealt with the newsreel, photographers and reporters right at the very moment of her grueling flights, just when they finished. She would have to deal with the reporters. Um. It also meant always being on display wherever she went. UM. One of her favorite saying, so I hope I can remember this right. No pay, no fly, and no work, no play. She was caught in that cycle public appearances and endorsements. Um, we're all part of what was necessary for her to earn money to fly,

because flying, of course wasn't cheap. So she broke an aviation record, or she did some flying stunt, and then she lectured and wrote about it. And let's not forget that she had a world class promoter and her husband, George Putnam. He was from Putnam Publishing, and he brought in endorsement fees two and endorsements were big business, but only if they were done right. And actually the first

endorsement she did, they did wrong. She took fifteen hundred dollar fee for um Lucky Strikes Lucky Strikes cigarettes after her first Atlantic flight in nineteen and despite it being the rebellious nineteen twenties, it was still not acceptable for

nice women to smoke um. The general public wasn't impressed, and one of the her um fans wrote to her and said, I suppose you drink too, And actually Amelia didn't do either, and she didn't endorse either product after that sort of debacle either, and said she went on to endorse products like Kodak film and Pratt Whitney, wasp

and and Franklin and Hudson automobiles and Timesaver stationary. She also received some royalties for the use of her name for Ornstein Trunk Company's the Amelia Heart air Light luggage, and she had her full size image. I would wish I could have seen this. Her full sized image was

in the windows at Macy's along with her luggage. She also designed and marketed her own line of women's clothing, and she called them Active Clothing, and the tagline, which she wrote herself, read, this is the era of feminine activity. The stay at home and the hammock girl are gone. Modern women are strenuously active. She even modeled her own

creations and magazines and at events. UM in her sportswear, she said, she tried to recreate the beauty of aviation in the color in the line um, and that was that she had found in the air. And by the way, clothes were important to her, and she made the best less arm sorry, she made the best dressed list x times. My goodness. Well, she she certainly knew how to promote herself and all of the causes that she was involved in, and all of the products that she wanted to put

before the public. It's just fascinating to hear you talk about all of that. And you mentioned, of course her flying, which she's probably most noted for. And in the twenties there were other women pilots making headlines as well, probably something we're not so much aware of, and one of them was Bessie Coleman. What was going on in all of that for women flight? Other times women were really you know, no pun intended, but they really were taking wing.

In the nineteen twenties, it was a period of huge change. Um. The First World War had really debunked women's ideas of self sacrifice and duty and that working for the greater good. Um. They asked themselves what had it all been for millions of people at die um. Add to that to the success of the suffrage movement, women could now vote and they were politically engaged in ways they hadn't been before.

And all of this sort of led to this expansion of thinking of women in the nineteen twenties, this idea of freedom, their own personal freedom, um, and they began to struggle for freedoms in their own personal lives. Suddenly morality resided in being true to oneself rather than a cause. At the same time, you had some dramatic changes in the work patterns. Something like one third of unmarried women

moved into paid employment. This made women a consumer power, and their sexual morays were changing too, and women were beginning to claim that same sexual license as men. So what you see in women in the nineteen twenties with Amelia Bessie Coleman, you see them puzzling out what freedom means,

testing personal limits. They were really trying new things. They were being bold, and they were embracing adventure and interestingly individualistic heroines like Amelia and Bessie Coleman, they were sympathetically reported in the media and spread by popular culture, and this really had an effect on that ordinary woman who lived in Indiana. For Kentucky or Nevada, they too began

to see that they could have adventures themselves. So a real lesson in how more people adopted to these changing times. What prompted her to become a flyer, And maybe in answering you could also say a little bit about her instructor, who was also a woman. I love that a snook. I love her name right, and it isn't wonderful. And at our house we actually when something goes bad, we go, oh, not a snook, because it's such a such a just

great name. Um Amelia's interest actually was sparked when she was a twenty year old um and she was working in a Canadian military hospital during World War One and it was near nearby. The hospital was close to up An airfield and she sort of hung around. She loved hanging around and listening to the pilots talk about there's exciting adventures with bad weather and with air battles, and

she loved watching those planes take off. And she claimed it was the first time that she actually felt that pull to fly, But it wasn't until nineteen twenty when she moved to California that aviation, as she says, caught her. Um. Flying was all the rage, especially in southern California, and every week there was something going on. So they had plane races and somebody was doing stunt flying or wing walking.

And Amelia and her father attended an air air meat and she watched these amazing flyers and then turned to her father and said she thought she would like to do that too. Um. Her father, of course, he was not enthusiastic. What parents would want their daughter to go up, and especially in n I mean airplanes were basically kites with with an engine, not say um. But she convinced him that to arrange a flight, a trial flight for her um. And so she went up the next day

was the first time she'd ever flown. Now, her father really intended for her to be terrified and get over this idea of flying, but instead she was exhilarated and she just had to learn how to fly. She was completely hooked, so that backfired. UM. She chose Netta Snook because Netta was the only female flyer in southern California who was in the business of giving lessons, and Amelia thought she would feel much more comfortable with a woman instructor. Um,

and Netta snook while she was something. She was this feisty, redheaded twenty four year old. She taught herself or she'd um paid for her own lessons and had learned to fly as a teenager. And then then when World War One started, she tried to bull her way, bulldoze her way into the U. S. Air Corps. Um. Of course they wouldn't take her because she was a woman. She was a fantastic pilot, so they missed out. Um, she became an airplane mechanic instead. I mean, think about that,

she's a mechanic during World War one. Um, when the war did end, she bought herself a wrecked warplane. She repaired it, and then she barnstormed across the country. She charged passengers I think it was fifteen dollars for a fifteen minute ride. And like I said, she was a great pilot. And so besides the basics of flying, which in those days were pretty basic, he had a stick in a rudder. Um, Netta taught Amelia had to keep her mind focused on flying. Netta always claimed that Amelia

daydreamed during flying, which wasn't safe. She taught Amelia to always check her fuel gauge before they took off. Amelia tended to hop into the plane and want to hit the clouds immediately, and sometimes safety did not come first, And Netta taught Amelia about what to do in emergencies. Want to pull up the nose, want to shove that nose down? Um. Netta went on to not be particularly

complimentary about Amelia's flying abilities. Um. They only flew together for about seven months, and then Amelia changed in structures instructors left Anetta behind. Oh wow, but it sounds like Nedda was quite entrepreneurial herself of fixing that plane and charging people to go for rides on it. They must have been quite a duo as long as it lasted. Yeah, I think there was probably some jealousy there on both parts. Yeah, it's fascinating. Well, so she makes the famous flight, that

solo flight across the Atlantic. What can you tell us about that? What was it like? Physical and mental challenges surely must have been there for her. You're such a wonderful scenes setter. Help us understand what that was like. Oh, you know, it was a amazing flight, at least I think so. I think Melia probably would not call it amazing. UM. She took off on two and I love the reason that she took off. It was the fifth anniversary of

Charles Lindbergh's famous solo flight. So there's our girl promoting herself as much as she can. It was a good choice for a date. She left from Harvard Grace, Newfoundland. UM in her cockpit she took along some tomato juice, canned tomato juice, and a couple of squares of chocolate for sustenance. UM. And things went pretty well, at least in the daytime. And then it got dark and her ultimater failed, and without it, she had no way of

knowing how far above the ocean she was actually flying. Luckily, the night was bright so she could see the water below UM. Then she smelled something burning. She stood and she saw this flame out front, and she realized that it was UM a manifold seam that had broken a broken weld in the manifold seam, and hot exhaust gases were escaping from her plane cylinders, causing this flame. She hoped the fire wouldn't spread, and she flew on just

I think it's amazing because she's over the Atlantic. Um. But she kept looking out the side window, and she worried. Later on, she actually admitted that she thought about turning back, but she was already four hours out and so it would be four hours back, so she might as well just keep on going. Then the weather turned absolutely awful. A rainstorm came alound around and just pummeled her little aircraft, reduced visibility to almost nothing, and so she really was

now lying blind. Um. She felt sure that she had been buffeted way off course. And then the rain turned ice, and it coated the plane and it weighed it down, and the plane went into a spin. Amelia claimed she doesn't know how long she was in a spin, but of course she managed to pull it out. Um. But then she had no choice but to descent to the warmer weather or warmer air, closer to the water so

that the ice on the plane would melt. But sometimes she dipped too low, and then the waves would lick at the landing gear, and just when you think that's bad enough, the fog rolls in and so now she really cannot see. So she would climb again in hopes of getting above the fog, and then they would start to ice up, and she would lower down into the fog to let the ice melt, and then she would ascend to get above the fog, up and down and

up and down. It must have been harrowing. She actually had some smelling salts with her that she used to maintain her concentration, and she later admitted to almost losing her nerve over the ice and fog. Um. It really was a nightmare. Daybreak finally came and that flaming broken weld was shaking and rattling um, and she was really

worried about that. And then when she went to switch on her reserve fuel tank, which was overhead the switch was overhead, she discovered that the gauge linked and so gasoline was trickling down her neck. I couldn't I know, It's like so many bad things at once. And so she made a decision right there and then that she was planning to go all the way to Paris and do the Lindbergh, you know, do what Lindbergh had done. But now she decided that she would just land at

the first possible place. Pretty soon, she sees a meadow, she circles down, she lands beside a herd of astonished cows, and then she I bet they were astonished. And then she climbs out of the cockpit and calls to an equally astonished farmer where am I? And he calls back Gallagher's pasture and she had actually landed in northern Ireland. Um didn't make it all the way to Paris, but still becomes the first woman to fly solo two thousand

miles across the Atlantic Ocean. I mean, you've described that in such dramatic ways that I felt myself on the edge of my my seat here as I'm taking the flight with her, truly harrowing, truly harrowing senecas one hundred women to hear will be back after the short break? Well, I know she. Um went on to create the ninety Nines and International Organization to Advance Female Pilots. Did that organization have impact? It? Did? It still does? Um. There

were what twenty six female pilots. They got together in an air hanger and Curtis Field UM in New York and they decided that they would create this organization. And I love this because it is such an Amelia heart thing to do. She felt that women pilots, women in aviation needed a group to support each other and perhaps look for employment for each other UM, and keep information

on women in aviation and their achievements. She also wanted to promote the advancement of aviation and women's place in it. She did not want people to forget about women's place in aviation. UM. The name came from the sum number of their members, and originally it was so the group was originally called the eighty six is, and then they were the ninety seven's and finally the ninety nine and

that name stuck UM. Although the group does still exist and the group has membership that is far surpassed ninety nine. It's worldwide and it includes not just pilots, but technicians, mechanics UM. Any woman who has had achievement in aviation, and I think she would Amelia would just love that well and so interesting that her legacy also continues in that way as well. Well. Let's fit it now to that much discussed topic that you mentioned at the outset

her disappearance. It's a whole cottage industry UM has been put in place to deal with that. What do we know exactly about what happened. Here's what we do know, verifiable right. We know that on July two, Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan, they took off from New Guinea in her big Lockheed Electra. They were headed for Howland Island. Howland Island, of course, is this tiny spit of coral

sand in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Because it was so small and thus so hard to locate from the air, the US coastcard Um had sent out the Itasca to help make it easier for her to spot, and at dawn the Itasca began belching out these thick clouds of black smoke as a visual signal, and the ship's radio men waited to receive an send messages to her when she got within signal distance. They also had been sending out a set a steady stream of Morris code the letter A A A A A A as

a guide to help her find the island. Um the radio man first heard her, we know from the log book at a m and she sounded very calm and reported on the weather. Cloudy and overcast is what she said. The rest of her message got lost in static. No one was particularly worried because they felt she was too far out yet. Um at five am they heard her again again. She was reporting on the weather. It was partly cloudy, she said, and then again lost in static.

At six fourteen a m. They heard her say it Taska, this is k A j Q, which were her call numbers, want bearing and will whistle in mike. And so she told them she was two hundred miles away, and she began whistling into her radio's microphone, and this shocked the ray you A men on the itasca Um. They did have a direction finder on the ship that could pick up radio signals and could determine where they were coming from. But Amelia was using the wrong radio frequency for that. Yeah,

and they realized. They were horrified that they realized they could not help her, not the way that she needed. So thirty minutes passed and there were no transmissions from her, and then at six forty five she came back at least take bearing at us, and she whistled in the microphone again. For the next hour, the TESCA radio man sent signals and messages in Morris code and they were absolutely frantic. Um. They knew she'd been flying about nineteen hours at this point they knew that her fuel had

to be running low. At seven forty two, she breaks through again and she says, we cannot we can. We must be on you, but cannot see you. We're flying at an altitude of a thousand feet. The Itasca has had radio man at this point I thought the signal was so sad, so strong. He actually stepped outside because he was sure that she was right overhead, and of course she wasn't. At she said, we are listening, but cannot hear you. And at eight am she said, please

take bearing on us an answer. Those radio men were sick. They tried everything for forty five minutes. They tried, They got pretty creative. Um. One of the chief radio men actually said I was sitting there sweating blood. And then she said, we are online thirty five. We will repeat message. We are running online north and south, and her voice, according to that same radio man, sounded frantic. And then

there was nothing all day. At six pm that same day, at six pm that evening, radio men thought they heard her, but the signal was too weak, and so they asked the sender the center to give them a series of long dashes, and in reply they heard this on and

off again, sound like a generator starting and stopping. And radio men actually disregarded the sound because normally Morris code is sent with a sending key, and what they didn't know is that Amelia did not have a Morris Code sending key on the plane, and so for her to send Morris code, she had the pot had to actually pushed the two talk button on a radio microphone UM, and when she did this, it sounded like a generator

going on on and off. UM. They actually recorded their long while all of this in their log book UM. And then there was something else too. Later a man's voice could be heard on that same signal, and there was some this terrible miscommunication because ITASCA didn't know that fred Noonan was along with her. She they thought she was actually flying alone, and so when they heard a

man's voice, they chucked that signal up to being a hoax. Eventually, the coast Guard, along with the Navy, searched for for sixteen days and it one point UM a biplane spotted um signs of habitation on Gardner Island, which was about or is about three fifty miles south of Holland Island, UM, but he didn't report what he saw, and no one followed up. And I think this is amazing that the US government actually spat four point five million dollars on

searching for her. Now, this is during the depression, which comes to about fifty eight million dollars nowadays, and they still came up at d handed. Um. Curiously, during this time, dozens of ordinary people who had short wave radios in their homes claimed to have heard her calling um, and some of them seem legitimate to modern day Earharts scholars, But back then officials just thought they were all pranks. Wow,

And the industry continues to to go on speculating correct. Indeed, I've just recently we had a national geographic team out looking right off the coast of Gardner Island for her. Again they came up empty handed, but I understand they'll be returning soon. Well. I know you wrote the book Amelia Lost, The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart. What were some of the most interesting and little known facts you discovered about her, separate from everything you've already told us. Oh,

you know, there were so many little things. I loved it that she had an open marriage with her husband, George Putnam. What I love about that is that she actually sent him a letter prior to the wedding pretty much spelling out, um the terms of her marriage. I mean that is I love that women just to do that right um. Or that the fact that she was not the best pilot out there, She was just the gutsyst and the best promoted. But I think what what I found most fascinating was that she was um a

bit of a fiber um for example. And there's this famous anecdote about her, so it appears, I think in almost every air heart book I've read about how in nineteen o eight, when she was an eleven year old, she went to the Iowa State Fair with her family where she saw her very first airplane. She described it

as a thing of wire and wood. But she was not remotely interested in what basically was her future, because she was wearing this absurd little or this absurd little hat that was made out in of an inverted peach basket, and she was just too um interested in her hat

to notice a plane. And this is such a charming story, but when you place it in aviation history, it can't possibly be true because the Right brothers just five years earlier in nineteen o three had made that first sort of bumbling flight, and they didn't fly again in public until the very year that she claimed to have seen a plane at Iowa State Fair. Um, in nineteen eight. But we know that Wilbur was doing demonstration flights in France and Orville was doing flights in Virginia. So was

there a plane at the Iowa State Fair. I actually called the Iowa State Historical Society and they said no, no planes, And I thought, well, that's too bad. It was a good story, I can't use it. Um. Then I discovered that that wonderfully tussled hair, which the press and during her life really sort of had a fixation on. They would always say, take off your hat, Amelia, show us your hair. That sort of tussled hair do that she had, I discovered was very carefully quaffed. She took

up curling iron to it every day. Um. So there was another great story I couldn't tell. And then there was this wonderful story about how fred Noonan never sat in the cockpit with her, but instead would tell her when to change course by by writing a note that he would attach them to a fishing pole of bamboo fishing pole, and he would. I know, it's ridiculous when you think about it, but people actually believed in it. It gets reported even today, and of course that's completely

not true. And all of these stories were stories that Amelia told herself. Um. At one point, I remember coming out to my family when I was in the middle of writing this book. I had all these wonderful anecdotes that I've now discovered I can't use because they're not true. And I remember coming out and saying to my family, I'm going to call this book flyer flyer pants on fire. Um. But I realized that, of course that was all part of that promotional that need to be palatable to the

public so that she could continue to fly. Well, I guess she was ahead of her time in that respect too, because we have a lot of that sort of thing today. We're running out of time, I regret to say, But let me just ask you before we have to stop. If she were alive today, what causes do you think she'd be involved in? And clearly she was interested in the ninety nine, but were there other kinds of things

as well? You think, oh, definitely, Wow, I think I think I can actually envision her doing something like UM an Amelia Earhart Foundation to encourage girls to get involved in technology and science and advocating STEM education particularly for females, even providing scholarship for females who want to enter those types of fields. I mean, that was something that she was really interested in just before her death, and she was doing it at for Due University UM, encouraging girls

and to go and going into aviation and engineering. So I think she would definitely have continued with that UM and I have no doubt that she would have been a feminist organizer. I think if she was alive today, she'd be mobilizing a diversity of women UM across countries, across groups of women. UM. When I think about what her message was, it still rinks pretty fresh and compelling today. I mean her message was women are the equals of men,

both should have equal opportunities. Now, her message was there are no limits to what a woman can do if given the chance, and that women and men must live together as equal partners. Well, we we hope we get to that place some days. Certainly the journey continues. Bit shirt us. Thank you so much, Candice for really bringing Amelia Earhart's story to us in such a lively way and helping us to understand her better, her times, her pioneering spirit, and her sense of adventure. Clearly so, we

are very very grateful to you. Thank you, Candice Fleming, Thank you well. You can see why Amelia Earhart remains an icon for more than eighty years after her disappearance. Here are three things I took from my conversation with biographer Candice Fleming. First, Amelia Earhart showed the world what a strong independent woman looked like. She chose the career she wanted, she dressed as she pleased, and she encouraged

other women to follow her example. Second, she was ahead of her time at a moment when mass media was a new phenomenon. She understood the value of publicity. Every action she took, every interview she gave, and every endorsement she made was done to enhance her carefully cultivated brand. And finally, Amelia Earhart believed in bringing other women along with her. She helped found the ninety Nines, an organization

to support and advocate for other women pilots. Her message was that women could and should do anything men can do. Tune in next Tuesday to hear about our next featured woman, and discover why she's one of Seneca's one Women to Hear. Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with support from founding partner PNG Have a Great Day.