Читать книгу The Deans' Bible - Angie Klink - Страница 19

OFTEN IT TAKES A BRAVE MAN in power to step outside the traditional modes invented by males to make possible the advancement of women. Purdue President Edward C. Elliott was the father of two daughters, and he was exceptionally interested in the education of women. Female faculty members at Purdue and most American universities were scarce. Elliott realized that the more professional women to revere and admire amid the redbrick and limestone buildings of Purdue, the more female students would be drawn to its campus. If those role models were world-famous, that would be an added coup.

Purdue had its first full-time Dean of Women Dorothy Stratton, a grand Women’s Residence Hall with dynamic Director Helen Schleman, and now the University needed a woman to advise and teach science and put the campus on the atlas around the globe. What better woman than one who piloted her own plane across that globe—Amelia Earhart.

It has been said that Elliott had a flare for the dramatic and was always on the alert for ways to stimulate and inspire students to greater aspirations and accomplishments. A meeting with Amelia sparked a flash of brilliance.

In 1934, Amelia was a speaker at the annual Women and the Changing World Conference sponsored by the New York Herald Tribune. By then, Amelia had claimed many flying firsts. She was the first woman to fly the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger. She piloted over the Atlantic alone, and she became the first person to cross twice. Additionally, she set the women’s record for fastest nonstop transcontinental flight. Amelia was a successful author and little-known poetess, who took Eleanor Roosevelt on a night flight to go “skylarking” and became a beacon of hope to unemployed struggling families during the Great Depression.

Elliott also was a speaker at the conference, and he was seated next to Amelia at Mrs. Ogden (Helen) Reid’s luncheon. Ogden Reid’s family owned the New York Herald Tribune. Mrs. Reid was the vice president of the newspaper and a good friend with Marie Mattingly Meloney, who introduced Amelia before she spoke. Meloney was one of the leading United States female journalists, having written for numerous renowned publications including the Washington Post and the Herald Tribune. Both she and Mrs. Reid ran in the same circles as magnificent, powerful women. In the 1920s, Meloney organized a fund drive to buy radium for Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Noble Prize, and she was a friend and confidante of Eleanor Roosevelt. Meloney announced Amelia: “I present to you evidence against a ‘lost generation.’ For I remind you that no generation which could produce Amelia Earhart can be called a lost generation. She has set the pace for those of her age and her time. She has never been content to rest on her laurels. She has worked, and is working, and will continue to work hard to further the science to which she has dedicated her life.”

Amelia’s introduction alone could have been the flicker to fan a flame in Elliott’s mind. An idea crystallized, and later that evening Elliott dined with Amelia and her husband, George Palmer Putnam, at the Coffee House Club in New York. The private social club was located in the Hotel Seymour, where the couple lived in the theater district. Established in 1914, the name of the club was a nod to the coffee houses that first appeared in London and were “patronized by all the wits and talent of the town.” The club was not pretentious but intentionally “very simple and cheap.” Some of the early members were Winston Churchill, Douglas Fairbanks, Herbert Hoover, and Purdue alumnus George Barr McCutcheon.

Putnam described Elliott in his book, Soaring Wings, written in 1940 after Amelia’s death. In the chapter he titled simply “Purdue,” Putnam states: “He is a lean, powerful man who combines the brisk attributes of a dynamo with the important qualities of scholarship and human vision. He has a habit of referring to himself, with humorous deprecation, as just a Hoosier schoolmaster, but no gentleman from Indiana ever knew his way about more competently than Dr. Elliott.”

Putnam goes on to write about the Coffee House Club setting in which a fateful deal was struck between Amelia and Elliott: “That evening we three had to ourselves what I imagine is the most civilized and homely clubroom in America. We sat at a little table in that first-floor front room with its books and paintings, the grand piano and diminutive stage where some of the most lively capers of theatrical tomfoolery in our time have been presented … the setting was superlatively pleasant for the launching of any project.”

After the three ate dinner, Putnam and Amelia sat on a clubhouse couch while Elliott sat in a chair facing the couple. He smiled and got to the point: “We want you at Purdue.”

“I’d like that,” Amelia said, without hesitation. “If it can be arranged. What do you think I should do?”

Elliott told Amelia that Purdue had six thousand enrolled students, of whom eight hundred were women. He said, “We’ve a feeling the girls aren’t keeping abreast of the inspirational opportunities of the day nearly as well as might be.”

For two hours into the night, the three discussed the idea of Amelia coming to Purdue and how she could work with the female students. Then Elliott had to catch a midnight train from Grand Central Station to head to a morning conference. The plan was settled. Amelia would spend as much time as she was able at Purdue, which for such a busy woman would total about six to seven weeks out of the academic year. For Amelia, one of the attractive qualities of Purdue was that it was the only university in the United States with its own fully equipped airport for day and night flying. Amelia would have a free hand in “ventilating” her philosophies to Purdue’s women students as a counselor and also as an advisor in aeronautics.

In June 1935, Elliott announced the appointment: “Miss Earhart represents better than any other young woman of this generation the spirit and the courageous skill of what may be called the new pioneering. At no point in our educational system is there greater need for pioneering and constructive planning than in education for women. The University believes that Amelia Earhart will help us to see and to attack successfully many unsolved problems.”

That fall, Amelia became a visiting faculty member at Purdue University and began her friendship with Dean of Women Dorothy Stratton and Women’s Residence Hall Director Helen Schleman. Years later, Helen said of Elliott’s methods:

We used to joke, albeit very respectfully, that sometimes President Elliott hired a person he knew would be great to have on campus and then wrote the job description later. Sometime this aspect of the agreement between the university and the new personality, if it happened to be a feminine one, fell to the Dean of Women to fashion. This was largely true in the case of Miss Earhart. Dean Stratton, with her rapport with student groups of all kinds, saw to it that women students had all possible opportunities for contacts with Amelia Earhart.

On September 21, 1935, Dorothy wrote a letter to President Elliott outlining how she believed the aviatrix could be most effective on campus. She suggested that Amelia meet informally with students as well as talk to groups. Amelia could be of service through conferences with individuals and with families, where she could highlight new progress and opportunities for women. Dorothy penned:

It seems to me that one of the best ways to provide for informal student contacts with Miss Earhart would be for her to live in the Women’s Residence Hall during at least part of her stay on the campus.… In order to introduce Miss Earhart informally to the campus, it would be my suggestion that the Women’s Self-Government Association and the Student Senate arrange a meeting in the Union Building.…

Miss Earhart has no doubt made considerable study of the careers for women and would welcome opportunities to discuss this problem with students.

Helen wrote Amelia at her home at the Hotel Seymour in New York City on September 7, 1935, inviting her to stay in the Women’s Residence Hall. It is curious that Helen corresponded with Amelia prior to Dorothy sending her letter to Elliott that suggested Amelia live in the residence hall. Helen sent copies of her letter to President Elliott and Dorothy. She wrote:

My Dear Miss Earhart,

The Women of the Residence Hall should like to extend to you an invitation to be their guest while you are in Lafayette. We have a very nice guest room with private bath, located on the first floor, and we should be very glad to have you use this room at your convenience while you are with the University. We thought perhaps that such an arrangement might give you the opportunity of knowing the freshman women particularly well and we are sure that they would gain much from whatever casual contact they might have with you while you are in the house as a guest.

All of the women of the University are looking forward to your coming and we of the Residence Hall should feel most pleased to have the privilege of entertaining you.

Helen secured a garage on campus to house Amelia’s eye-popping car. Decades later, Helen described Amelia and commented on her automobile, which had been manufactured by the Auburn Automobile Company in Auburn, Indiana:

Those of us who lived in the only women’s residence hall at the time … were the luckiest of all. The opportunity to know her, even a little bit, is one of my most cherished memories. What was she like? What endeared her to all of us? … I always think of her as a beautiful woman—tall, willowy, and very graceful in movement. She could and did wear any kind of clothes with grace and ease, but I remember best in her everyday clothes that she wore on campus and round the hall at mealtime.

She was probably the first woman who ever wore slacks on the Purdue campus with impunity. I see her in my mind’s eye in impeccably tailored brown flannel slacks, a small figured “coordinated shirt, open at the collar, and a brightly colored handkerchief knotted around the throat. The shoes were soft brown leather, low-heeled. If it were cool, she wore a soft brown leather jacket. In those days, this was considered somewhat “mannish” attire, but Amelia came across as feminine and attractive. In fact, whether she was in a long evening dress or in this typical workday outfit, the word one heard was “glamorous.” It fitted perfectly. I’ve also thought, too, that the long, sleek grey Cord sports car that she drove enhanced this image. And flying, of course is still glamorous, even though we are apt to take it for granted.

The Auburn Automobile Company, with its stylish headquarters in northeastern Indiana, formed Cord Corporation in 1929. The Cord was marketed as a world-class car that provided performance and style. Clark Gable and Babe Ruth also owned Cords.

Amelia saw her role at Purdue as an exploration in professional needs and the development of new fields for women students. She was a proponent of matching a student’s natural skills with his or her course of study and profession, and she voiced her resolve to Purdue faculty. Amelia expressed her hope that the time would come when psychologists would determine a child’s bent at preschool age so as the child wouldn’t waste time studying and working in the “wrong direction.”

Though not a mother, Amelia sensed that in the heart of every child, the seed of their future germinated. This deep understanding may have come from her girlhood experiences. As a youngster, Amelia played in her backyard on a flying Dutchman, a leg-propelled merry-go-round; she zipped down steep, icy hills on a sled; and she built her own roller coaster—all in an attempt to satisfy a calling that summoned action steadfastly from her core.

Amelia was glad to be associated with Purdue. She said, “It is my kind of school, a technical school where all instruction has practicality, and where a progressive program for women is being started, too.” Amelia’s office was set up near Dorothy’s in the Office of the Dean of Women, which was “attractively furnished,” where she would meet female students for “heart-to-heart” career discussions.

Amelia sent out a questionnaire to women students to explore their post-scholastic plans. She wanted to help Purdue’s faculty to develop appropriate courses and to help the women clarify their thinking about goals. Student Miriam Beck described Amelia: “Tall, skinny, handsome, tousle-headed, smiling, the students were transported with delight, and even the most skeptical of older residents charmed.”

Purdue’s first annual career conference for female students was held in 1935, and Amelia spoke on the findings from her questionnaire. She began her talk by referring to a previous speaker’s remarks—negative words that women still hear in the twenty-first century. Amelia said, “Mrs. Woodhouse apologized last evening for ending her talk on ‘Why Women Fail in Business.’”

Amelia continued with some positive reflections from the questionnaire. She said that 92 percent of the women who answered planned to work after leaving college, and the reasons given for seeking employment were not economic necessity, as one might think during the Great Depression years, but to achieve professional success. The second most popular reason for working after college was to attain personal independence; and the third was economic necessity.

Amelia said, “These results are very interesting, since women as a whole have not had enough experience to know the joy of independent work as men know it. All too often women have had to bury what they had of the creative in routine tasks which have not brought them even the reward of a little spending money of their own.”

Amelia also learned that those women who did not have the experience of earning their own money voted more strongly for personal independence than those women who had earned money. Amelia said, “Working for pay gives a truer measurement of the individual outside the sympathetic circle of the home, a measurement women have been escaping a long, long time.”

In all likelihood, Dorothy and Helen sat in the audience as Amelia spoke at Purdue’s career conference. Amelia’s remarks foreshadow the career that was yet to be for Helen. In decades to come, Helen would conduct surveys, give speeches, and create strategies to help Purdue’s female students think about their lives and plan their career goals. Amelia said of her feedback:

The fifth question was, “If you were the wage earner and your husband ran the home, would you consider his work financially equivalent to yours?” Sixty-seven percent said yes, thirty-three percent said no.… I wonder if the wife would not soon think her husband had the easier task. Imagine yourself, every one of you who answered the question affirmatively coming home from a long day’s work and saying to your husband, “Well, my dear, what did you do today?” “Oh,” he would reply, “I washed the dishes, dusted, planned the meals, made a cake, and was just going to do some ironing, when Mr. Jones came by on his way to market. He asked me to go along, so I did, and bought some new towels. Then I called up Mary’s teacher and told her she was marking Mary too low in arithmetic. Then I fed Junior, and dinner’s ready now.”

The only estimate I have on the value of a housewife’s services, just as a housewife, mind you … is $500 a year.

Only 21 percent of Purdue’s women students planned to work after marriage in 1935. The reason given for not working was that it would interfere with managing the home. Amelia took the opportunity to pointedly address the reasoning behind the statistic to her captive audience of women: “Again, I know it is very hard to look ahead and see yourselves as married women of forty, with your children away at Purdue, your husband busy with his work, and you with no particular interest but the four walls of your home. My hope is that none of you who decide so positively that women should under no circumstances work after marriage will not be victims of your present outlook.”

Amelia ended her talk with a paragraph that rings familiar today and causes one to think the world is a slog for change: “A secondary answer to question ten was the large vote for the husband’s taking an equal part with the wife in running the home, if both were employed outside. This last reply may point a prophetic finger to what may be the ideal state, that is, when both husband and wife earn and are jointly responsible for the home (of course, with credit on the ledger for the wife who bears children).”

Helen was unaware of her destiny as she sat in the audience of the career conference listening to the brilliant, brave, prophetic Amelia Earhart. Helen would carry Amelia’s mantel into the twentieth century, urging Purdue’s women students to plan the full span of their lives and realize their potential, long after the aviatrix would be lost at sea.

WOMEN STUDENTS CAME TO KNOW Amelia personally during mealtimes in the Women’s Residence Hall. Her husband wrote in Soaring Wings of the fun she had “with a different group of girls sitting at her table each time.” The young women vied for dining spots close to their heroine, and they peppered her with questions. Putnam also noted, “She had a room in one of the halls, too, and was right among girls ‘where they lived,’ more senses than one.”

Dinner was a formal affair. Helen led the women, clad in their dresses and nylons, into the dining room, and a prayer was delivered in song. James R. Brown, a 1938 mechanical engineering graduate, worked in the dining room. Years later he said, “I still recall the first night, as it was my duty to start the singing. The waiters were stationed around the room and were taught to sing also. It seemed as though I was singing a solo. It took several days before the girls joined in.”

People wondered how Amelia, so independent, could fit into the rigid life of a women’s dormitory, yet, according to her husband who also stayed in her suite, she enjoyed every minute of her sojourn with the coeds. Putnam wrote in his book, “Sometimes she absent-mindedly broke the rules. She came to dinner once in her flying clothes, and the freshmen waited ecstatically to see if she wouldn’t be sent back to get properly dressed for dinner. Very early in the proceedings she asked if she could have buttermilk—whereupon calls from the student body for buttermilk increased fortyfold overnight.”

The buttermilk was ordered from the Purdue Creamery, and the sudden increase in demand caused some quick reordering of supplies. Formal dining called for proper etiquette. Helen recalled, “One thing you were supposed to do was keep your elbows off the table. Amelia’s posture at table, when she was deep in conversation, was apt to be sitting forward on the edge of her chair—both elbows on the table and chin cupped in hands. Naturally, the question was, ‘If Miss Earhart can do it, why can’t we?’ The stock reply was, ‘As soon as you fly the Atlantic you may.’”

Students were not allowed to leave the dining room until all had finished eating. After dinner, many followed Amelia into Helen’s suite of rooms, just outside the dining room. Amelia sat on the floor, and the women gathered around to talk and listen. She was “adaptable, easy, and informal.” This was the time when Helen and the students came to know the real Amelia—her beliefs, hopes, and dreams.

The conversations invariably centered around Amelia’s conviction that women had choices about what they could do with their lives. She said women could be engineers or scientists; they could be physicians as well as nurses; they could manage businesses as well as be secretaries to the managers. She believed in women’s intelligence, their ability to learn, and their ability to do whatever they wanted to do. Amelia saw no limitations. On pages 228–29 of Soaring Wings, she is quoted:

After all, times are changing, and women need the critical stimulus of competition outside the home. A girl must nowadays believe completely in herself as an individual. She must realize at the outset that a woman must do the same job better than a man to get as much credit for it. She must be aware of the various discriminations, both legal and traditional, against women in the business world.… If you want to try a certain job try it. Then if you find something on the morrow that looks better make a change. And if you should find that you are the first woman to feel an urge in that direction—what does it matter? Feel it and act on it just the same. It may turn out to be fun. And to me fun is the indispensable part of work.

In the next decade, both Dean of Women Dorothy Stratton and Director Helen Schleman would “find something on the morrow” and make unprecedented career changes. Dorothy and Helen would experience their share of firsts. And they would most certainly have fun.

Helen said of Amelia, “There was no question that she, through her own achievements and persuasiveness, was an effective catalyst to heretofore unthinkable thoughts for all of us.”

In Soaring Wings, Putnam wrote of his wife’s “favorite thesis that men have need—among other things—of domestic education.” Amelia said to women students:

You may find your own fun in what is called “a man’s work.” I don’t like these discriminations between men’s work and women’s work. There is too much arbitrary division between the two. But we have to accept these separations until women catch up with the procession.… As it is, men enter into marriage with little training in domestic economy, know little about food and how it should be prepared, little about child-training and their duties as parents. What, I wonder, is going to be done about all that. Perhaps some of you will have an idea.

These voiced “unthinkable thoughts” were not wanted by some. Word spread around campus as to what Amelia was telling female students. A “prestigious men’s senior honorary group” (perhaps Iron Key) asked for a meeting with Amelia. The purpose of the meeting was to protest her counseling practices. Amelia pressed the young men for their reasons as to why she shouldn’t talk about high aspirations, many choices, and such for women. Their reply: “It’s hard enough to get the girls to marry us, as it is.”

It was student Marian Frazier who Putnam said “drew a picture of [Amelia] as I like to think of her in her university tour of duty.” Frazier said:

One night I was sitting in my room studying, and Miss Earhart stuck her head in the door and asked if she could borrow my pen. She said, “I’ll bring it back in a sec,” just like any girl would do. I guess I couldn’t keep it to myself, because, when she did bring it back, there was a bunch of girls in my room—just to get another look at her. But really, you know, I don’t think she gets enough sleep. She’s terribly busy. I often hear her typewriter clear up to midnight.

Amelia’s self-contained dream was to become a poetess and writer. She savored words as much as she did soaring airborne. When she wrote of flying, she melded her loves: “After midnight the moon set, and I was lone with the stars.… The lure of flying is the lure of beauty, and I need no other flight to convince me that the reason flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the esthetic appeal of flying.”

Often, the reason writers write, is the esthetic appeal of writing.

By the time she was at Purdue, the artistic and progressive Amelia had written two nonfiction books, chapters for several children’s tomes, and stories on aviation for numerous magazines and newspapers, such as the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. For a short interval, she was aviation editor for Cosmopolitan magazine, answering readers’ questions about flying. But her cloistered poems and short stories were her heart’s fancy. She had written many drafts before she became a famed aviator. A treasure-trove of Amelia’s papers is now housed in the George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers at Purdue University. Putnam wrote of his wife’s writing: “At one time and another, [Amelia] wrote many fragments of verse, for she found deep pleasure in building little images with words. That aspect was very private—almost secret.”

After Amelia’s first stay on Purdue’s campus, her husband, who was also her promoter, typed Helen a letter on December 9, 1935, on headed stationary printed simply with capitalized words: AMELIA EARHART. Putnam wrote:

Dear Miss Schleman:

Miss Earhart has asked me to write and thank you on her behalf for your hospitality and for all your friendly helpfulness. Unfortunately this last week she has been ill—laryngitis which compelled the cancellation of three lectures—and today she is shoving off for a fortnight in New England. So … she at least wants you to know how greatly she appreciates all you did for her and has asked me to pitch-hit as a correspondent.

By the way, I note in a Kansas City Star interview that some of your girls “felt sure this was the first night Mr. Putnam had ever spent in a woman’s dormitory.” You can assure them that they are correct!

STUDENT HELEN HALL, who was president of the Women’s Self-Government Association (WSGA), had frequent talks with Amelia. Hall said to a reporter for the Indianapolis Star, “You should have seen her at the waffle supper at Dean Stratton’s one night. She curled up before the fireplace just like one of the girls.”

There was no dining service at the residence hall on Sunday evenings, so often Dorothy invited Amelia to her home for dinner, even though Dorothy did not cook. Dorothy and Amelia had much in common and developed a friendship, both being bright, independent advocates for women. Amelia was one year older than Dorothy. In later years, when Dorothy’s good friend Sally Watlington heard Dorothy invited Amelia for dinner, she was fascinated. Sally knew Dorothy disliked cooking. Sally said, “Dorothy, you did not have her over for dinner.” To which Dorothy replied, “I did, too. I cooked waffles.”

Waffles, it appears, were Dorothy’s specialty. Perhaps she used Amelia’s recipe. An October 1936 This Week magazine issue ran an article entitled “Ace-High Dishes: Amelia Earhart, Feminine Ace of the Air, Takes a Successful Flyer in Waffles and Sunday Night Suppers.” It included Amelia’s recipe for sour cream waffles. The article states that Amelia likes to cook but has little time to do so and, “‘She makes extremely good waffles,’ says Miss Earhart’s husband.”

When people asked, “What did you talk about with Amelia?” Dorothy would invariably say, “cabbages and kings.” Ever lean with her words and always to the point, Dorothy was secretive about her conversations with Amelia. Although in a 1999 interview on her one hundredth birthday, Dorothy revealed an intriguing tidbit: “[Amelia] was interested in a lot of things including extrasensory perception. She believed it was possible.”

“Cabbages and kings” is a phrase from the poem “The Walrus and The Carpenter” in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll. The verse reads:

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,

“To talk of many things:

Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—

Of cabbages—and kings—

And why the sea is boiling hot—

And whether pigs have wings.”

Oh, to have been a fly on Dorothy’s wall, when she and Amelia ate waffles and talked of many things.