Whistled Like a Bird, page 21
Amelia begins the final page of the communication:
I HAVE WORKED VERY HARD LAST TWO DAYS REPACKING PLANE AND ELIMINATING EVERYTHING UNESSENTIAL HAVE WEIGHT WE HAVE EVEN LEFT OUT AS MUCH PERSONAL PROPERTY AS WE CAN DECENTLY AND HENCEFORTH PURPOSE TO TRAVEL LIGHTER THAN EVER I RETAIN ONLY ONE BRIEF CASE IN WHICH ARE PAPERS AS WELL AS CLOTHING AND TOOTH BRUSH HE HAS SMALL TIN CASE WHICH PICKED UP IN AFRICA I NOTICE IT STILL RATTLES SO CAN NOT BE STUFFED PARA
WISH COULD STAY HERE PEACEFULLY AND LEARN TO KNOW SOMETHING OF COUNTRY STRANGE THINGS TO ME HAPPEN FREQUENTLY…
Amelia and Noonan finally lifted the gleaming silver bird over the sea at 10:00 A.M. local time in a spectacular takeoff, beating the end of the runway by fifty yards. The flight was expected to take eighteen hours. Seven hours later, she reported by wireless that they were flying at an altitude of 7,000 feet and at 150 miles per hour. My grandfather arrived at the Coast Guard headquarters in San Francisco to wait for her radio messages and plan her joyous homecoming in a few days. For the last month he had maintained a close connection to his wife through her regular dispatches radioed back to him in the United States from the well-publicized stops along the route.
But on the afternoon of July 2, he received the disturbing news that contact with Amelia’s plane had been lost. In a radiogram sent from the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, which was cruising just to the north of Howland Island, the dispatcher begins by saying, “…Broadcasting to Steamers but few in this area.” The weather was overcast and cloudy, and “Earhart’s direction finder apparently not functioning well.”
The radiogram also said, “She had barely sufficient fuel under the conditions to make Howland.” The Coast Guard believed that Earhart had passed “close to and to northward of Howland,” but Amelia only acknowledged receiving the Itasca’s signals once and did not answer questions as to her position or course. Fearing the worst, the ship said it was using “every resource to locate plane.”
From Oakland, California, my grandfather immediately wired William D. Leahy, the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon:
TECHNICIANS FAMILIAR WITH MISS EARHARTS PLANE BELIEVE WITH ITS LARGE TANKS CAN FLOAT ALMOST INDEFINITELY STOP WITH RETRACTABLE GEAR AND SMOOTH SEA SAFE LANDING SHOULD HAVE BEEN PRACTICABLE STOP RESPECTFULLY REQUEST SUCH ASSISTANCE AS IS PRACTICABLE FROM NAVAL AIR CRAFT AND SURFACE CRAFT STATIONED HONOLULU STOP APPARENTLY PLANES POSITION NOT FAR FROM HOWLAND.
He requested government assistance and heard from the commandant of the Fourteenth Naval District, who replied,
PEARL HARBOR HAS BEEN DIRECTED TO USE IN ANY PRACTICABLE WAY THE FORCES UNDER HIS COMMAND TO AID IN SEARCH FOR MISS EARHART. WILLIAM D. LEAHY, CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS.
Stamped in half-inch black letters across this telegram is the word: PRIORITY.
On July 3, G.P. also wired Daniel Roper, the secretary of commerce, that a signal should be broadcast every hour asking that Amelia should
CONCENTRATE ONE WORD “LAND” OR “WATER” SETTLING WHETHER AFLOAT OR ASHORE ALSO WORDS “NORTH” OR “SOUTH” DEFINING POSITION RELATIVE TO EQUATOR STOP THANKS
PUTNAM
The next morning, the world learned what a heartsick George had known for the last twenty-four hours: Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were missing.
At the very end of my grandfather’s biography about Amelia, Soaring Wings, he recalls a poignant conversation:
It was wintry blue dusk, and all around us buildings were checkered with gold when AE stopped her car at a traffic light. The wheels were still rolling just a trifle when a man—an old man, ragged, weary, pale—stepped out from the curb.… We went home, and nothing more was said about the old man through dinner or the evening. But later, when the world was closed down and still, Amelia said, “It is hard to be old—so hard. I’m afraid I’ll hate it. Hate to grow old.”…And then, as one who may be imagining or simply comprehending a fact, she said slowly, “I think probably, GP, that I’ll not live—to be old.”
In Fort Pierce, Dorothy and her two sons had been mapping Amelia’s world flight since her departure from Miami. From San Francisco, George wired David and Nilla with the devastating news. David immediately wired back his love and support, and received his father’s reply on July 3: “Thanks dear boy. It helps. There’s plenty hope yet. Love, Dad.”
David packed hurriedly, drove to Immokolee to say goodbye to his mother, and left for the West Coast. For days, David and G.P. went without sleep, my grandfather weeping at times. Their mood veered from cautious optimism to despair, but G.P. knew that he was the only one who could direct the massive search for the missing plane. They had known the flight was dangerous and had weighed the odds. Still, it was impossible to believe that the plane could disappear without a trace. My grandfather held the telegrams and said a silent prayer. He kept returning to one line in the first Coast Guard dispatch: “Earhart apparently handicapped through night by cloudy weather…”
On July 5, three days after communication had been lost, the Itasca wired:
1904 0700 TO 0704 HEARD FOUR SERIES OF DASHES FROM 0714 TO 0716 HEARD FOUR SERIES OF DASHES FROM 0727 TO 0731 HEARD EIGHT SERIES OF DASHES FOUR OF WHICH WERE VERY STRONG VOICE INDICATED BUT NOT DISTINGUISHABLE ALL ON 3105 KCS 2045.
Then, only silence.
18
TRANSITIONS
An old photo album: and each picture is a tomb where a dead heart lies buried.
MORE THAN HALF A DOZEN WARSHIPS, countless airplanes, and thousands of naval and Coast Guard officers were involved in an effort to locate the missing aviatrix. Wireless operators were ordered to stand by. There were news reports that the search for Earhart was costing $250,000 a day. Franklin Roosevelt defended the cost of the mission, and joined the nation in prayer. The Coast Guard cutter Itasca radioed back to my grandfather that they thought they saw flares from the downed plane, but that slim ray of hope vanished with the news that the flash was only lightning.
For the next two weeks, radio messages spawned countless rumors about possible sightings, and my grandfather, exhausted and emotionally spent, moved with David into the home of close friends. Back in Fort Pierce, my mother’s dream of Amelia kept her awake at night. She desperately wanted a better ending than the one that haunted her sleep.
On July 18, the U.S. Navy abandoned its search, having covered 360,000 square miles of sea and coral islands.
My grandfather’s private search was just beginning.
George was aware of Amelia’s interest in the supernatural, and he was not surprised to receive a letter immediately after news of her disappearance from a medium saying that the famous flyer “knew her end was inevitable that the fall was the worst part owing to fear. She then floated for hours…clung to a wing…until the last moment a big wave…swept her into a new life. She describes it as a last breath being the first for a baby it was so swift.”
There is a second typewritten, unsigned letter. For years I wondered who might have written it. At first, I thought it was from some unknown psychic, but now I believe it may have been written by the flyer Jackie Cochran, and that my grandfather—in order to protect her identity—may have destroyed her original notes and retyped them. Cochran had requested that he “keep her name out of it.” At that time, “channeling” was considered bizarre, and my grandfather himself did not want anyone to know that he too had resorted to such unorthodox measures to aid his desperate search. In this letter, the author claimed to have connected with Amelia’s spirit.
I want you to tell Mr. Putnam there are no regrets and none should feel that way a bit about this. He must go on and live as he always has to try and know in his soul that I am alive and will now do a greater work than I ever dreamed was possible to do.… Not for one moment did I lose consciousness. I know that we were hit by lightning. We were heading north again and I believe that I might have made it, but when the ship was struck I slowly went into the water.… I felt that I had fallen asleep—just dreaming—dreaming that I was flying, going higher than I had ever gone before.… If Mr. Putnam would sit in our room alone, I shall try and make my presence felt and try to impress him with my thoughts. May all the good things of this earth come to you, my dear friend.
How this letter must have torn him apart, sitting alone for hours. Waiting.
Notes and papers from Amelia mailed after her departure from Lae continued to arrive at George Putnam’s office. Among them was a silver cigarette case etched with a map. It was a gift for David—engraved “D.B.P. from A.E.” (My father later gave this to me when I made my first solo flight.)
A month after Amelia’s disappearance, George still refused to give up hope that his wife was alive, and continued his search, following any leads. He was contacted by another psychic, J. Lacey, who advised him of the downed plane’s position, and invited Putnam to a séance. In his reply, my grandfather informed the psychic that the detailed position given matched exactly the location of an uncharted island on the eastern fringe of the Gilbert Islands.
Lacey also told my grandfather that telepathic messages were being received and that
the plane was damaged in the forced landing as undership caught on reef. High winds and rough seas later released plane which floated out to sea and sank in deep water. It has been definitely given to us that only hope of rescue will come from help of natives in surrounding islands and Japanese fisherman now in those waters. Some of these natives who are very psychic know of the plight of the castaways and by some means of telegraphy have broadcast the news throughout the islands. Noonan was badly crippled in landing and little hope is held for him. Rescue must come long before your expedition could reach those waters or the worst can be feared.
Yours very sincerely and in full sympathy,
J. Lacey.
George frantically wired Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, who sent a telegram to the American Embassy in London asking that the British join in the search, concentrating specifically on the Gilbert Islands. “It is of course a forlorn hope,” my grandfather wrote Welles, “but one which, you will understand, is of utmost concern to me.”
Three days later, he wired Welles again. “Forgive me for being a nuisance,” he wrote, “I expect to leave for Coast Tuesday.… Is there any possibility of getting definite word from British…?”
On August 24, Welles replied that “all Gilbert Islands” had been searched, but that another cutter had been dispatched to the position recommended by the psychic. “I am sorry that this whole matter has caused so much trouble to you” my grandfather responded; “…it was impossible for me to rest until this specific matter had been run to earth, remote as is any hope that it could produce results.”
But the British were unsuccessful in their search.
Growing more desperate, he offered a cash reward of $2,000 to anyone who could provide information on Amelia’s whereabouts. This naturally resulted in a succession of false leads and my grandfather—vulnerable and willing to stake everything on getting his wife back—became the victim of several cruel hoaxes. In one, a Bronx janitor sent him a note at the Hotel Barclay in Manhattan where he was staying, claiming to be a crew member of a gun-running ship that had rescued Amelia and Fred Noonan in Pacific waters. My grandfather met the man at two in the morning. The next day, accompanied by an FBI agent, he met the man again: He produced a brown and white scarf that Amelia’s secretary (Margo de Carrie) later recognized as belonging to Amelia. He said he was holding Amelia—ill and malnourished—on his ship, and would release her for $2,000.
Investigators determined that the man had not been to sea in twenty-two years. He was later arrested and charged with extortion. In his confession, he admitted that the scarf was one Amelia had lost during takeoff several years earlier and that he had found it on the dirt runway and kept it as a souvenir. Desperate for any connection to his wife, George nonetheless paid him $50 for the scarf, against the advice of the authorities.
My grandfather could not bring himself to return to Rocknoll, and decided to sell the rambling estate. He never returned there after Amelia’s disappearance. The house simply held too many memories—a wall of one room papered with aviation maps, the trophies and her mementos, the gardens where they walked together planning their next adventure. (Some of their treasures had been destroyed in a 1934 fire, including autographed pictures, first editions, and a collection of Rockwell Kent paintings. My father’s room was also badly damaged, and he lost many of his souvenirs from his Arctic trips, as well as a model of Amelia’s plane.) What was left in the house was packed into storage boxes and sent to California, where George would remain for the rest of his life.
During the construction of Immokolee in 1930, Don Blanding had visited Fort Pierce. Dorothy had hired her friend to paint a colored version of his trademark Hawaiian fish mural on two paneled doors in one of the guest rooms. “Don’s undersea panels (really on guest room doors) for the new house are colorful and original. They work out very well. He’s going to do one Florida one, a silhouette of live oak, air plants and Spanish moss. On the specially fine fir doors with their beautiful grain in the wood.”
In the summer of 1937, Dorothy took Junie and returned to the Hawaiian Islands to visit Don. She had long admired his work from the time they both lived in Bend, Oregon, and it was during her first trip to Hawaii, when Junie was recuperating from a long illness, that Dorothy realized the depth of affection Don felt for her. As she wrote now: “Mt. Haleakala. A strange talk with Don last night, as tho’ we’d stayed exactly as we were 14 years ago. He swears I’ve influenced him more than any human being and that things now he knows he took from me. He’s been very unhappy and is just finding himself again.”
His book of poetry, Vagabond’s House, was published in 1928. In a subsequent printing (1943), he dedicated the book to Dorothy: “The Lady of Vagabond’s House Who Was the Inspiration for the Dream That Made Itself Come True.”
Blanding was a dapper, highly sophisticated man with a courtly, gentle bearing. After the ambitious George Putnam and the abusive Frank Upton, his sensitivity appealed to Dorothy’s creative side. He had been dubbed the Poet Laureate of Hawaii, and once described himself as “a painter, poet, vagabond, and lusty liver of the physical and a tireless aviator among the higher, luminous clouds of idealism.” Extremely handsome, he still possessed an athletic physique and his year-round tan lent him a certain exotic masculinity. Dorothy, acting as a sort of benevolent patron, once again found herself falling in love. The fact that they were simply good friends should have affected her judgment, but she was facing middle age alone and longing for companionship.
My grandfather declared Amelia legally dead in 1939, two years after her disappearance. That year, he published Soaring Wings, which sold well and received good reviews as well as bringing in much-needed income (he had received an advance of $1,000 from Harcourt Brace). * The income helped restore his financial security, but the book did not earn as much as he expected.
With a nearly depleted bank account as a result of his ongoing search for his wife, G.P. accepted a job from Paramount Pictures as a story editor. I was saddened to find among his papers a 1938 letter of resignation from the Explorers Club in New York.
Gentlemen:
Inasmuch as I have moved permanently to the coast, and due to recent events it is necessary for me to economize pretty drastically. I am regretfully obliged to discontinue my membership in The Explorers Club. This is my resignation, effective immediately.
Very Truly Yours,
G. P. Putnam
Severing ties with his fellow members must have been painful for my grandfather. I know how deeply he valued his association with the club and its purpose. In 1926 he carried the Explorers Club flag on board the Morrissey to Greenland. On March 22, 1997, at their annual dinner, it was my privilege to return this flag to the club.
At fifty-one, my grandfather was lonely and in need of companionship.
In 1938, he had met Jean Marie Consigny, a petite blonde with blue eyes and finely chiseled features. The twenty-three-year-old Hollywood socialite told my grandfather that she wanted to write a book on small gardens, and he offered to publish it. They were soon seen together at Hollywood parties, but both denied any romance, apparently because Jean Marie was still married to her first husband. Her mother objected to the relationship because of their age difference, but in May 1939 newspapers reported an engagement. Three weeks later, the couple were married at the Boulder Dam Hotel, eluding reporters who were led to believe by my grandfather that the ceremony would take place in Las Vegas.
It was during his marriage to Jean Marie that my grandfather wrote his autobiography, Wide Margins. In recalling Amelia, he did not disguise his feelings for her, saying “In life she denounced the difference between men and women. She wanted an equal chance in the air, the right to fly wing to wing with other pilots, to go where they went, take the risk that they took, and, if necessary, to die as they died”
The book was dedicated “For Jeannie.”
Although my grandfather rarely spoke of Amelia, Jean Marie felt her presence. She once said that she lived in fear the famous aviatrix would walk in the door any day. It must have been an impossible position for any woman, let alone one so young and rather shy. How could she compete with a ghost?
George was much in demand on speaking tours, and the couple needed the income to finance their lifestyle, which included talked-about dinner parties with my grandfather’s coterie of famous friends. Several years later, Jean Marie announced to George she wanted a divorce. In an interview with Mary Lowell in 1988, published in The Sound of Wings, she said, “I always loved him… I’ve never stopped loving him. I should never have divorced him!” The divorce, after only five years of marriage, came as a complete surprise to George. Acquaintances had noted their opposite personalities, however, and were not so surprised by the breakup.
