rockfordamelia

Amelia Earhart Putnam, pictured above, as she alighted from her automobile on a former visit to Rockford in 1933, will describe the thrills and trials of ocean flying when she addressed an audience at the Rockford theater at 8:15 o’clock tonight under auspices of the Rockford Woman’s club. Twice across the Atlantic and once across the Pacific from Hawaii to California is Mrs. Putnam’s remarkable air record.
--Rockford Republic, 02-22-1935

MAYOR INVITES LADY LINDY TO SEE ROCKFORD
First Woman to Fly Atlantic to be Entertained in Chicago on July 19

Invitation to Miss Amelia Earhart, the first woman to complete a nonstop flight across the Atlantic, to visit Rockford after she in entertained at Chicago on July 19, was extended last night my Mayor Burt E. Allen and W.E. Burwell, president of Rockford Chamber of Commerce.
The telegram, sent to Miss Earhart in care of Grover A. Whalen, chairman of the mayor's reception committee in New York, where she and her companions will and be entertained today, read:
"In congratulating you upon the great honor you have won, I wish to extend to you a sincere invitation to visit Rockford when you come to Illinois. W.E. Burwell, president of Rockford Chamber of Commerce, joins me in this invitation. Rockford is sponsoring a one-stop flight to Stockholm over Greenland this month. Your presence will mean much to aviation interest here.
Burt M. Allen, "Mayor of Rockford"
Miss Earhart's plans call for a visit of three days in New York, where she, Wilmer Stultz, her co-pilot, and Lou Gordon, mechanic, arrived last night on the liner President Roosevelt. This morning the fliers will be greeted by the city through Acting Mayor McKee. From New York they will fly to Boston, and on July 19 they will arrive in Chicago, where extensive plans for their welcome have been made.
Gotham Welcomes Amelia
New York, July 6--Miss Amelia Earhart, the tall, slim Boston settlement worker who was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in an airplane, and her two companions on that dramatic adventure, Wilmer Stultz, pilot, and Louis Gorder, mechanican, returned today in triumph to their native country and were warmly welcomed by the city of New York.
"Welcome Amelia", was the greeting shouted from the windows of skyscrapers as the flyers were escorted by blaring bands up Broadway after they had been taken off the liner President Roosevelt which came in from Southampton, England, this morning. The blonde, brown-skinned Amelia, who bears a striking resemblance to Col. Charles. A. Lindbergh and who has been referred to as "the girl Lindy" blushed profusely time and time again as she acknowledged the tribute with a wave of her hand.

--Rockford Republic, Friday, July 6, 1928

WE'LL HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO WELCOME AMELIA EARHART PUTNAM
Famous Woman Flyer to Speak Here This Fall

Amelia Earhart Putnam, the world's most famous and beloved woman flyer, will be welcomed enthusiastically by members of Rockford's Woman's club as their guest speaker on the afternoon of Tuesday, Oct. 24.
Mrs. Putnam's distinguished record as a flyer has made her "front page news" ever since 1928 when she the first woman to cross the Atlantic ocean in an airplane, and her fame had been international since she achieve her solo flight to Ireland in May, 1932.
This summer she set the first woman's transcontinental non-stop flight record in the fast little monoplane which carried her across the Atlantic.
Rockford Woman's club members are awaiting her visit her with keen anticipation, for the noted aviatrix is known as a fascinating person and a delightful speaker. Her experiences as a "ladybird" have given her the unqualified right, of course, to voice her enthusiastic hopes for the future of aviation.
Those who have met Mrs. Putnam have been impressed with her charm, her lack of affectation, and her sincerity. She is a friend of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt and not long ago she piloted the nation's first lady on an evening flight over Washington.
Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, Kas., July 24, 1898. She was graduated from Hyde Park high school, Chicago, in 1915 and studied at the Ogontz school for girl, Rydal, Pa., and Columbia university.
She was married to George Palmer Putnam, the former publisher, Feb., 7, 1931. Before her flight to Europe she was in charge of girl's work at Denison house in Boston and an extension teacher of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
From 1928 to 1930 she served as aviation editor of the Cosmopolitan magazine, and in 1930 she became vice president of Ludinton Airlines, Inc., serving for a year in that capacity.
Mrs. Putnam is the vice president of the National Aeronautic association and a member of the advisory and contest committees. She is a member, too, of the Guggenheim committee on aeronautical education, and a director of the National Glider association and of the Institute of Woman's Professional Regulations. She is also a member of the National Air Pilots association.
Two books have been written by Mrs. Putnam, "The Fun of It" and "Twenty Hours, Forty Minutes."
--Rockford Morning Star, Sunday, Aug. 27, 1933

Amelia Earhart Putam Is Woman's Club Speaker Oct. 24
Famous Aviatrix to Be Guest of Program Committee at Luncheon Tuesday
One of the most interesting personalities on the season's program (and indeed one of the most interesting personalities in the world) will occupy the platform at Rockford Woman's club next Tuesday afternoon when Amelia Earhart Putnam address club members on Flying for Fun."
Preceding here address, Mrs. Putnam will be the guest of the program committee at luncheon in the Food shop.
For her speaking tour Mrs. Putnam has forsaken the "stick" of her airplane for the wheel of a sixteen cylinder car which she will drive out from Chicago. She goes on from here to Janesville for an address there.
It is safe to predict that more than the usual number of Rockford men will avail themselves of the privilege of purchasing tickets for next Tuesday's program as the opportunity of hearing the most famous aviatrix--who is renowned for her personal charm as well as her courage and skill as a flier--is one that but few cities afford. Women from out of the city are also privileged to obtain guest tickets for the Woman's club program.

--Rockford Republic, 10-21-1933

MISS EARHART VISIONS AGE WHEN ALL WILL FLY
Woman Who Flew Atlantic Alone Advises Mothers To Fly With Youngsters In Woman’s Club Address

Who’s afraid of the Atlantic ocean?
Certainly not Amelia Earhart, the tall, slim, clear-eyed young woman who won the world’s plaudits when she flew her rd and gold monoplane across the sea in May, 1932; and who appeared before Rockford Woman’s club members and their guests in Rockford theater yesterday afternoon to talk about Flying for Fun.”
The two times Miss Earhart has been abroad, she had traveled by airplane. Within the next few years, she predicted, she will meets some of the people who heard her speak in Rockford on Oct. 24, 1933, as fellow-passengers in an airplane in regular trans-Atlantic passenger service.
She also prophesied that many of those who think now that they would refuse to fly will be traveling by air within the next two years.
Miss Earhart’s advice to mothers and fathers is: “Fly with you children.” she told the parents to take the youngsters for their first flights on licensed passenger planes with experienced pilots at the control, instead of letting little Johnny hoard his dimes and sneak off for his first flight in a cheap built plant with a “green” pilot.
Recalls Flight with Hawks
Since 1920, when she made her first flight with the famous speed-flier, Frank Hawks, Miss Earhart has flown many types of planes and in all kinds of weather, day and night. Al of her previous flying she regards as preparation for her solo trans-Atlantic flight, she said yesterday.
“I attempted to fly across the Atlantic ocean for my own person satisfaction.” she explained. “My flight added nothing to aviation. Literally hundreds of persons have crossed the Atlantic by aircraft, and one flight adds little to the starting sum total.
“If my flight interested women to learn to fly as pilots or to fly as passengers on air lines, or to let their husbands and children fly as passengers, or to let their children embark on careers aeronautical engineers, then I think that my flight was worth while,” she declared.
“I think that 60 per cent of the success of any expedition is in preparation, not only preparation of the plane itself but in the experience of the personnel,” she continued.
She tossed a verbal bouquet to her husband, George Palmer Putnam, the former publisher, for his cooperation in her plans for the trans-Atlantic flight. “I couldn’t have made the flight without his help,” she said, “He placed no obstacles in my path, and I did not have to combat his anxiety.”
Miss Earhart was much too busy to grind a motion picture camera during her solo flight to Ireland, but she showed several reels of film taken before her take-off from Harbor Groce, Newfoundland, and during her stay in Europe following the flight, when she was feted in many cities.
There were included in the films a breath-taxingly beautiful shot of the monoplane’s taking off from the rocky run-way at Harbor Grace, and views of its lone passenger’s enthusiastic welcome to Londonderry, Ireland. There were numerous shots of celebrities whose names makes news: the King and Queen of Belgium with Mr. and Mrs. Putnam; Andrew Mellon, as ambassador to Great Britain; General Balbo (in full dress uniform, with beard); and Primo Carnera tossing a medicine bal on shipboard to America’s premier lady-bird.
There were shots of “Jimmy” Walker, then mayor of New York, wise-cracking glibly as he pinned a medal on Miss Earhart’s frock; former President Hoover and Mrs. Hoover greeting the flier in Washington; Miss Earhart and her husband, who, she says, objects to being called Mr. Earhart; and New York’s hilarious welcome to its home coming heroine, who expressed relief that the New Yorkers tore up the telephone books before they them at her.
How She Looks and Sounds
Miss Earhart’s hair is cut short, and worn in windblown style. She wore no hat yesterday. Her wool suite was of dark checked knitted material, set off with a trim white blouse with a tie at the neckline. Her voice, low and well modulated, carries well. She speaks slowly, and in occasional descriptions she reveals an amazing talent for mimicry.
She closed her address yesterday with an almost intimate story of her flight across the ocean, telling it as if she were visualizing it and re-experiencing it for a few friends around a fire at dusk in her own home.
With the farewell words of her technical advisor, Bernt Balchen, :O.K., so long, good luck!” in her ears she soared into the skies of a dark spring evening to conquer some 2,000 miles of cloud-swept seas. Her last contact with humanity on her outward journey came when she sighted a small fishing vessel about 125 miles from North America’s shore.
Yesterday’s audience caught from her words an impression of courage and sane judgment; and of a sense of beauty which could appreciate the golden sunrise on the ocean waves, even when there was a blue flame burning at the exhaust well and the plane’s altimeter had failed to function.
Her picture of the hours of night flying, with rain and sleet beating down and ice forming on the windows of the cockpit, was a vivid one. She broke the tale’s tension with a dietary revelation: she never drinks coffee or tea; tomato juice was her mainstay on the journey, supplemented by sweet chocolate. She tried some hot soup from a thermos jar, but found in too salty.
The first sign that she was surely nearing land came when, some time after daylight, she saw a fishing vessel which saluted her by blowing its whistle, and soon she spied two more vessels.
After reaching the Irish coast she followed a railroad track and sighted Londonderry. As there was no flying field, she chose a hillside pasture and landed, weary but content.
When you’ve had your “photo in the roto” and on the front page as often as has Miss Earhart, you may expect to be identified by the public in widely varied characters, she said yesterday. She told of being addressed as Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt by a train conductor within the week, and of a small boy who looked at her picture and told his father that Col. Lindbergh’s mother was to speak.
In another town she was described as the girl who swan the English channel’ and a dining car porter once identified her as the woman who swan the Atlantic ocean!
Incidentally, she said that the fact that her trans-Atlantic flight came on the anniversary of the Lindbergh flight was not by plan, but by the coincidence of favorable weather conditions on the same day, five years later.
Miss Earhart was introduced to yesterday’s audience by Leslie Hamilton Geddes, president of Machesney Aviation club of Rockford. She paid tribute to an “unknown husband” who directed her to the Woman’s club building when she stopped to question a policeman. She drove here alone from Chicago in a large sedan.

HERE ON FEB. 22

Amelia Earhart Putnam will lecture here Friday evening, Feb. 22, telling of her solo flight from Hawaii to California. She’ll speak at Rockford theater under Rockford Woman’s club auspices.
It was on Oct. 24, 1933, that America’s greatest woman flier spoke to the Woman’s club here on her trans-Atlantic flight. Her visit here next week will give a Rockford audience opportunity to hear of her daring flight form Hawaii last month

--Rockford Morning Star, 02-15-1935

CAREFREE AMELIA WINS ACCLAIM OF AUDIENCE HERE

By THE GIRL REPORTER--Amelia Earhart attaches little significance to her solo flight form Hawaii to California as an advancement for aviation. That and other admissions she made to the large audience which greeted her with a genuine ovation when she spoke at Rockford Theater Friday evening on “Aviation Adventures.”

“My own wish do so was my only reason for making the flight.” she said simply.

GREETS AN OLD FRIEND

“I’ll tell mother I saw you”, Amelia Earhart told Mrs. Walter Hyzer, 222 Waldo street, when Mrs. Hyzer greeted her at Rockford Woman’s club last evening. Amelia was quite a small girl when she and Mrs. Hyzer last met in Des Moines, Ia. “That was when Mrs. Hyzer was Miss Hazel Clarke, a young business woman employed by Mrs. Earthart’s father, who was claims agent for the Rock Island railroad. Occasionally when the Earharts wished to go out, Amelia’s father would ask Miss Clark to look after his daughters.
America’s premier ladybird won the enthusiastic approval of her audience from the moment she stepped on the platform with a friendly smile for the small girl in the second row with a red ribbon on her dark curls. Men, quite a lot of men, in fact, and woman, boys, and girls listened intently until her final “Good night again.” after she’d answered a last question from a woman listener about radio beams.
She describe her flight from Honolulu as one might tell of a day’s motor trip. Her radio, she said, brought her dance tunes as she sped over the Pacific at an 8,000 foot altitude six weeks ago. There were moments of lyric beauty when she felt close to the stars; and there prosaic interludes--when, for example, she ate a hard-boiled egg.

LAUGHS AND THRILLS

The audience laughed when she told of sighting a Dollar liner 300 miles out, dropping rapidly from 8,000 to 200 feet, and circling several times so that the captain would be sure to notice her.
And the audience was thrilled when she described the sighting of the flashing light, “too pink to be a star” of the first steamer she sighted, which assured her that she was on her course.
Slim, straight and decidedly feminine in her floor-length brown frock with short taffeta jacket trimmed with a large tan bow, Miss Earhart stood in one spot on the platform. She gestured frequently and effectively with her slender capable hands. Her short, light brown hair was worn in the famous Earhart wind-blown fashion.
She hasn’t anything special in mind to do next, she said with a smile which carried the implication “at least, not anything I’m talking about yet”.
Although she’s a young woman who’s been much in the spotlight she expressed a decided aversion to having the footlights turned on. “I don’t like the footlight,” she told the Woman’s club committee; but when it was explained that her auditors couldn’t see her facial expression if the lights were turned off, she agreed to have some of them on.

SHE RESEMBLES EVERYBODY

She’s been mistaken for everyone from Mrs. Roosevelt to Lindbergh’s mother, she said. Recently she was even mistaken for herself by the wife of a gasoline “prop” who asked permission to introduce the flier “as Amelia Earhart” to some friends passing by, because she looked so much like her from a side view.
Miss Earhart explained that she did not make her first flight on the “Friendship” for the reason sometimes attributed, to raise the mortgage on the old homestead, because here wasn’t an old homestead, and neither did she undertake this last flight because she was bored with her husband, as someone had suggested. (In private life she’s Mrs. George Palmer Putnam).
As a woman, she said, she felt proud that Miss Helen Richey, a transport pilot, recently was employed by Central Airlines as co-pilot on a passenger route; and she expressed the hope “that women will strive for goals outside of what is platitudinous in their sphere”.
“I look for a bright and happy day in which individual aptitude will be a criterion, and not sex,” she said.
Believing that two-thirds of success of any expedition depends upon preparation, Miss Earhart explained how her equipment was put in the best condition possible and how it was tested to prove that it was suitable to the trip contemplated.
The only kind of worrying she believes in is the kind to be done months before an expedition is embarked upon. Clear-cut decisions are impossible under a strain of worry, she’s found.

DOUBLE SAFETY DEVICES

She flew the same type of plane for her Atlantic and Pacific solo hops, she explained, but her equipment was better for the Pacific flight and she had double safety devices and some duplicate instruments. She used the same motor which she had tested and found adequate on the Atlantic flight. The rubber boat which she took with her in the tail of her plane could be inflated “by turning a gadget”, she said.
Her standby, tomato juice, a canteen of water, malted milk tablets, and some beans were stored in this boat; also a pistol for sending red and green flares, and some large balloons. She wore over her heavy flying suit a life-preserver-vest, complete with hatchet and knife.
Vividly she described her take-off from Wheeler field, Honolulu from a soggy field on a rainy day, carryin 3,000 gallons of gasoline. She soared above Honolulu around 5 o’clock and thought a bit pensively, “Everybody’s going home to supper but me.”
Each half-hour she set a “very business-like broadcast” by her voice radio, and she once heard a program of music halted to allow Mr. Putnam to advise her to talk a little louder.
She spoke of flying through “fluffy, woolly clouds,” and through the moonlight. Although the sunrise was beautiful, she was amazed at the sun’s position. “Finally, I decided the sun was wrong and my compass was right,” she said.

THE LAST LAP

When she said into her radio that she was getting tired of the fog the message was picked up that she was getting tired. The last hour was the hardest, she declared, and she described her genuine surprise when she arrived at San Francisco bay.
“Then all I had to do was go across the bay and sit down,” she said.
Contrasting her landing at Oakland with the swarms of people, cameras clicking and microphones being thrust at her with her landing Ireland, where she came down in the backyard of a little farm, she concluded her talk by offering her audience “a statistic” to prove that flying is really a safe method of transportation.
Miss Earhart motored out from Chicago with a pilot, George Fisher, and returned after her talk to catch a midnight train from Chicago for Detroit, where she speaks tonight, where she speaks tonight. She had dinner at the Food shop with the Rockford Woman’s club program chairman, Miss Juanita William, and Miss Jessie I. Spafford, president of the Woman’s club, which sponsored the lecture. Miss Spafford introduced the flier to last night’s audience.

--Rockford Morning Star, 02-23-1935

Rockford and Amelia Earhart