Daughter of the Sky: The Story of Amelia Earhart
9781465677822
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
On the pivot of my casual conversation with George Palmer Putnam turned the career of Amelia Earhart, her transformation from social worker at a Boston settlement house to a world figure in aviation. If it had not been for that conversation with Mr. Putnam the chances are that Amelia Earhart would still have become a constructive factor in the industry to which she was so devoted; and that she would be alive today. In the spring of 1928 I dropped in to see Putnam in New York. He told me that Commander Byrd had recently sold his trimotored Fokker to “a wealthy woman who plans to fly the Atlantic.” He did not know her name or anything more about it, except that he believed floats were being fitted to the plane at the East Boston airport. “It’d be amusing to manage a stunt like that, wouldn’t it?” he remarked. “Find out all you can. Locate the ship. Pump the pilots.” In Boston I cornered Wilmer (Bill) Stultz, the pilot, and Lou Gordon, his copilot and mechanic. Stultz admitted he was getting ready for a transatlantic flight, but maintained that he knew only his backer’s attorney, David T. Layman. In New York, some days later, I got in touch with him and learned that Mrs. Frederick E. Guest of London and New York, whose husband had been Secretary of State for Air in Lloyd George’s cabinet, was the mysterious sponsor who had planned to be the first of her sex to fly the Atlantic. Her family, said Mr. Layman, was much concerned. Soon it was agreed that if I could find the “right sort of girl” to take her place Mrs. Guest would yield. When I returned to Boston I telephoned Rear Admiral Reginald K. Belknap, retired. “I know a young social worker who flies,” he said. “I’m not sure how many hours she’s had, but I do know that she’s deeply interested in aviation and a thoroughly fine person. Call Denison House and ask for Amelia Earhart.” Guardedly, when Miss Earhart came on the wire, I inquired whether she would like to participate in an important but hazardous flight. I had to come out with it because she had declined an interview until I stated the nature of my business. That afternoon, accompanied by Miss Marion Perkins, head worker at Denison House, she appeared at my office.
