Amelia Earhart in Albany

While we’re talking aviation and Albany:

In 1935, Amelia Earhart was one of the most famous people in the world, a pioneer in aviation and women’s causes. She was well-known even before her 1932 solo flight across the Atlantic, but that act propelled her into the stratosphere, so to speak. She wrote a book, went on exhaustive lecture tours, endorsed consumer products like luggage and cigarettes, and promoted a line of clothes sold by Macy’s and inspired by her own sensibilities. So wherever she went, it was a big deal. And at the end of 1935, she came to Albany.

We’ve found a dozen or more articles announcing her impending visit, which was to be sponsored by the City Club of Albany and would take place in the Philip Livingston Junior High School on December 19, 1935. The club publicized the heck out of this.

“The entire membership of the City club is lined up back of the activities committee in their efforts to make the visit of Amelia Earhart at Albany on Thursday, December 19, one of the outstanding events in this city. ‘Adventures of the Skyways’ is the topic Miss Earhart has chosen for her talk … Hailed everywhere as a speaker of exceptional freshness and charm, Miss Earhart will, in her talk, share with her audience the experiences and thrills of the preparation, the hours in the air and the aftermath of her record-breaking flights. In spite of the many honors that have been heaped upon Miss Earhart due to her distinguished air service, she still retains a naturalness and modesty that endears her to her public.”

The article then goes on to name 39 women working on the event (most of them as ushers) in four groups. It wasn’t the only time every committee member would be named, either. Mayor John Boyd Thacher would be on hand to greet Miss Earhart, and Dr. Paul Hemke, head of the department of aeronautical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was invited to sit on the platform. The Exchange Club’s aeronautical committee, “which sponsors the building and study of airplanes among boys ranging from 15 to 20 years of age,” would be on hand to present her with a model of the plan in which she flew the Atlantic, and would have a display of other model planes at the school.

On the day of the event, the Times-Union printed an article headlined “Earhart Would End Wars By Making Women Go,” saying that in the afternoon Earhart talked equal rights and equal responsibilities for women, especially in warfare, a “thesis with which she shocked a national congress of Daughters of the American Revolution months ago.” She argued that putting women in uniform would “take all the fun out of war,” and that militaristic women should be psychoanalyzed. It appears that this was just lunchtime conversation with a reporter wherever she was prior to her speaking engagement that evening.

“There was nothing of the traditional suffragist mein about this young woman whose pacifist convictions are as well known as her airway exploits. Often described as ‘boyish,’ there is nothing of the ‘mannish’ about her. Her manner is quiet, friendly, earnest, or amused, by turns, wholly feminine and gentle … Earhart’s major interest is women. She wants to know why women are not news photographers, why they do not invade every field monopolized by men.”

Just a few days before that, the Times-Union had run an article headlined “Girls of Today Intent on Jobs, Says Earhart.” She was then acting as a consultant lecturer at Purdue University, and said “Ninety-two per cent of the Purdue girls who came to me while I was lecturing there wished to occupy themselves gainfully. This shows a tremendous advance, in that, that women are interested industrially, economically. And I don’t think it means that the material, the domestic instinct is erased in their attitude. The home is still predominant, but modern appliances – the machine age, have corrected things so that women have more leisure to adapt themselves to an outside sphere.” She said the girls at Purdue had inquired about every field from radio to running a hotel. “‘There were some,’ she says, ‘who were interested in becoming hostesses on planes.'” By the way, this is the only article that also mentioned that Earhart would speak in Schenectady on Dec. 20, twice – once in the afternoon for children, and in the evening for the general public.

In her Albany speech, Earhart disclaimed any scientific contribution to flying, in spite of her intense interest in science, and said the lure of flying is the lure of beauty. “Her response to the beauty of scattered clouds, billowing mountainous clouds, endless expanses of black water with starlit highlights, thousands of brilliant white stars blazing in the blue-black of a midnight sky – this has been her dominant experience during her trail-blazing flights that have arrested a world.” The newspaper said she sketched the highlights of her career, and tried to clear the record on a famous communication she made on her then-recent trans-Pacific flight from Honolulu to Oakland, CA, where it was reported that she had said “I am getting tired.” “‘I had been flying for some time over fog, creamy white and piled high, like the beaten whites of eggs,’ she said. ‘What I actually said was: “I am getting tired of this fog.” The land stations missed the last words, because I spoke carelessly.'”

Already faced with the kinds of rumors about her personal life that are nowadays considered news, she addressed that she had taken on the flight because she was bored with her husband, publisher George Palmer Putnam, saying that without him, there could be no flights, and that she was reassured by the sound of his voice on the other end of the radio

“A determined but very feminine feminist, Miss Earhart is eager for the acceptance of aviation by women – and their participation in aviation. ‘Women should try to get outside their platitudinous sphere,’ she said.”