AVIATION AND I GET TOGETHER
AFTER graduation from High School (where I had become greatly interested in chemistry and physics) I waited around a year and then entered Ogontz School, near Philadelphia. During Christmas vacation of my senior year I went to Toronto where my sister was entered at St. Margaret’s College. There for the first time I realized what the World War meant. Instead of new uniforms and brass bands, I saw only the results of a four years’ desperate struggle; men without arms and legs, men who were paralyzed and men who were blind.
One day I saw four one-legged men at once, walking as best they could down the street together.
“Mother, I’d like to stay here and help in the hospitals”, I said when I returned home. “I can’t bear the thought of going back to school and being so useless.”
“That means giving up graduating,” said Mother.
I didn’t care. I gave up all thought of returning to school and took steps to become a nurse’s aide. Though I endeavored to connect with the American Red Cross, somehow the papers were never completed and I spent months in Toronto working in a hospital until the Armistice.
Nurse’s aides did everything from scrubbing floors to playing tennis with convalescing patients. The patients called us “sister” and we hotfooted here and there to attend their wants.
“Please rub my back, sister. I’m so tired lying in bed.” Or, “Won’t you bring me ice cream today instead of rice pudding?”
We were on duty from seven in the morning until seven at night with two hours off in the afternoon. I spent a great deal of time in the diet kitchen and later in the dispensary, because I knew a little chemistry. Probably the fact that I could be trusted not to drink up the medical supply of whisky counted more than the chemistry.
When the influenza epidemic struck town, I was one of the few volunteers permitted to be on night duty. I was transferred to a pneumonia ward and helped to ladle out medicine from buckets in the overcrowded wards of the institution.
I believe it was during the winter of 1918 that I became interested in airplanes. Though I had seen one or two at county fairs before, I now saw many of them, as the officers were trained at the various fields around the city. Of course, no civilian had opportunity of going up. But I hung around in spare time and absorbed all I could. I remember the sting of the snow on my face as it was blown back from the propellers when the training planes took off on skis.
Time rolled on and I was still in Toronto at the time of the Armistice. What a day!
All day long whistles kept up a continuous blowing. No means of transportation was available and everyone had to walk downtown, and did so I think. Private cars ran the risk of being stalled in the littered streets and the traction company just gave up and let its trolleys stand. Young men ran around with huge dusters of flour and blew it on young women.
“Hey, girlie, the war’s over!” Plop! And the victim looked like a snow man. Supposedly dignified citizens snake-danced and knocked each other’s hats off. I didn’t hear a serious word of thanksgiving in all the hullaballoo!
At the end of my brief hospital career, I became a patient myself. It was probably the case of trying to carry on all day as usual and work all night. Anyway, I collected a bug which took up residence in the inaccessible little hole behind one’s cheek called the antrum. The result was several minor operations and a rather long period of convalescence. Some of this was spent at Northampton where my sister was at Smith and the rest at Lake George. While in “Hamp”, I took a course in automobile engine repair, which laid the foundation of any practical knowledge of motors I have gained since.
But I had acquired a yen for medicine, and I planned to fit myself for such a career. Consequently I went to New York and entered Columbia University, There I took what I could of all the “ologies” which should help toward that calling, mixed with a luxury course in French literature. As usual I had a good tune, though I studied hard and didn’t have any too much money. But students in New York can get so much with so little if they really wish. The steps in the gallery of Carnegie Hall are really not uncomfortable and I enjoyed many a concert from that locality—after I got used to the smell of garlic. Even the Palisades across the river were good for hiking and the cost to get there by ferry is only a few cents.
I suppose I must have been fairly stalwart-look ing for on one of the periodic jaunts to the Palisades, the shopkeeper in a little store where three other hikers and I had stopped to buy sandwiches for lunch, eyed our small group and said,
“I bet you girls iss yust off the farm.”
It just happened that none of us had ever been on a farm at that time, but the man behind the counter was probably not used to city people’s spending their holidays as we were doing.
I was familiar with all the forbidden underground passageways which connected the different buildings of the University. I think I explored every nook and cranny possible. I have sat in the lap of the gilded statue which decorates the library steps, and I was probably the most frequent visitor on the top of the library dome. I mean the top.
I used my knowledge of how to get on the dome a few years later when I was again at Columbia. It proved an excellent vantage point for watching the eclipse of the sun in 1925. I stood there with a well known biologist and looked across at the angel trumpeting on the highest point of St. John’s
Where Amelia Earhart First Worked with Engines—class in Automobile Repair at Northampton, Mass. (A. E. is third from the right.)
Cockpit and Instrument Board of a Fully Equipped Mail Plane
Cathedral. We three appeared to have a better view of the galloping moon shadows than anyone else in the world.
The only other eclipse of the sun I have seen was from the air. I was caught between the mainland and Catalina in the weird darkness of the phenomenon in 1924.
My knowledge of the passageways at Columbia has not yet proved useful, but that could be said of other things one learns at college, too.
It took me only a few months to discover that I probably should not make the ideal physician. Though I liked learning all about medicine, particularly the experimental side, visions of its practical application floored me. For instance, I thought among other possibilities of sitting at the bedside of a hypochondriac and handing out innocuous sugar pellets to a patient with an imaginary illness.
“If you’ll take these pills”, I heard myself saying in a professional tone, “the pain in your knee will be much less, if not entirely eliminated.”
This picture made me feel inadequate and in sincere. I did not see then that there was just as much of a problem in curing the somewhat men tally ill as those physically so—even though the methods used might differ.
But when you are young, you are apt to make important decisions for reasons that later on seem quite superficial. And I decided against medicine in just this way, hearkening to the pleadings of my mother and father, leaving Columbia and going to California.
When I left New York I intended to follow up Medical Research—that, at least, still greatly appealed to me in the field of medicine. But somehow, I did not get into the swing of the western universities before aviation caught me. The interest aroused in me in Toronto led me to all the air circuses in the vicinity. And, by dragging my father around and prompting him to make inquiries, I became more and more interested.
One day he and I were among the spectators at a meet at Long Beach.
“Dad, please ask that officer how long it takes to fly”, I said, pointing out a doggy young man in uniform.
“Apparently it differs with different people”, my good parent reported after some investigation, “though the average seems to be from five to ten hours.”
“Please find out how much lessons cost”, I continued.
“The answer to that is a thousand dollars. But why do you want to know?”
I wasn’t really sure. Anyway, such were the second-hand conversations I had with the patient pilots of those days. And, somehow or other, I felt in my bones that a hop would come soon.
The field where I first went up is a residential suburb of Los Angeles. Then it was simply an open space on Wilshire Boulevard, surrounded by oil wells. The pilot of the airplane has since become famous as one of the greatest exponents of speed in the world. His name is Frank Hawks and he holds more records for fast flying than any one else.
As soon as we left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly. Miles away I saw the ocean and the Hollywood hills seemed to peep over the edge of the cockpit, as if they were already friends.
“I think I’d like to learn to fly”, I told the family casually that evening, knowing full well I’d die if I didn’t.
“Not a bad idea”, said my father just as casually. “When do you start?” It would need some investigation I told him, but I’d let him know shortly. Mother seemed equally non-combative.
There were no regular schools at the time, and instruction was mostly given by men who had returned from the war. Within a few days I had signed up for lessons, and went home with the proposition that somebody pay for them.
“You really weren’t serious, were you?”, my father said in surprise. “I thought you were just wishing. I can’t afford to let you have instruction.”
I saw if he had ever liked the idea, he was completely unsold then. Evidently, he thought that if he didn’t pay, I would not fly. But I was determined, and got my first job—in the telephone company, it was—to pay for the lessons I so dearly wanted.
From then on the family scarcely saw me for I worked all the week and spent what I had of Saturday and Sunday at the airport a few miles from town. The trip there took more than an hour to the end of the carline, and then a walk of several miles along the dusty highway. In those days it was really necessary for a woman to wear breeks and a leather coat. The fields were dusty and the planes hard to climb into. Flyers dressed the part in semi-military outfits and in order to be as inconspicuous as possible, I fell into the same style.
One day as I was striding along the dusty road, a friendly motorist offered me a lift. My costume and destination explained my errand. There was a little girl in the car who became exceedingly excited when she found out for a certainty that I flew.
“But you don’t look like an aviatrix. You have long hair”.
Up to that time I had been snipping inches off my hair secretly, but I had not bobbed it lest people think me eccentric. For in 1920 it was very odd indeed for a woman to fly, and I had tried to remain as normal as possible in looks, in order to offset the usual criticism of my behavior.
My learning to fly was rather a long-drawn-out process, principally because—no pay, no fly and no work, no pay. However, when the time at last came to solo, the period of training seemed to act to banish nervousness. I went up five thousand feet and played around a little and came back.
“How did it feel?”, the watchers on the ground wanted to know when I returned. “Were you scared?”
“I sang”, confessed one pilot who was standing nearby, “as loud as I could.”
I felt silly. I hadn’t done anything special. My first solo had come and gone without anything to mark it but an exceptionally poor landing.
“You didn’t do anything right but land rottenly”, said another pilot. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to be so ground shy you stay up until the gas tank runs dry?”
After I had really flown alone. Mother was good sport enough to help me buy a small second hand plane. It happened to be the only one the builder had so he and I worked out a scheme to use it jointly. For free hangar space to me, he was privileged to demonstrate with it. As both of us were equally fond of the little contraption and equally impecunious, this arrangement worked very well. And I spent many hours in this and other planes I occasionally had a chance to fly.
If Mother was worried during this period, she did not show it. Possibly, except for backing me financially, she could have done nothing more helpful. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the cooperation of one’s family and close friends is one of the greatest safety factors a fledgling flyer can have. After a year had passed, I achieved the only type of license issued at that time, the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. And Mother was so interested by this time I am sure she would have accepted a ride with me. However, I didn’t start her aeronautical education until a long while afterward.
In passing I should call attention to the fact that it wasn’t really necessary to have any license at this period. There were no regulations such as exist today. People just flew, when and if they could, in anything which would get off the ground. Methods of teaching flying have greatly improved over those of the dim dark ages when I learned. There were no schools then, as we know them now, nor standardized equipments. Fundamentally, of course, the principles are just the same and so are the fledgling flyers.
Perhaps the easiest way for me to give a picture of what flying instruction is like is to tell just what I had to do at first, and to compare that with the present requirements for obtaining a flyer’s license. As I have said, my training took place in California. The plane used was a Curtiss Canuck very like the famous Jenny of war time memory. Both of these planes and their motors, as well, have been replaced by improved equipment.
In 1920, two years after the Armistice, airplanes were not so well built as at present and motors had bad habits of stopping at inopportune moments. Pilots just naturally expected to have to sit down once every so often because of engine failure. The power plants of today are a happy contrast. It is rare indeed that one “conks”, if properly cared for, so great has been the increase in reliability. Consequently, the modern pilot’s attitude is quite different from that of the post war flier.
The development of flying is somehow synonymous with automobiling of a decade ago. If you don’t remember, your parents will, the Sunday rides of yesterday. Roadsides were always lined with cars in trouble—some with flat tires, and some with puzzled begoggled drivers peering anxiously under raised hoods at engines they didn’t understand. To add to the complications, there were few service stations and few good roads.
Now yours may be among the 20,000 cars going to a football game, say, not one of which will experience a single mechanical failure on the way.