Evening star., 1937-09-23

r YER aviation exploits launched
IL Amelia Earhart on life full
of active interests. Perhaps
4 4 what she liked best was the
chance given her to know women
everywhere, who shared her own con-
viction that there is much IN the
modern world that women can and
may do, and which they should be
permitted to do, irrespective of sex.
1 suppose A. E. was technically
feminist. But not gracelessly so. Often
when she was asked whether she
should be called Miss Earhart" or
Mrs. Putnam" if I were around she
would humorously jerk thumb in my
direction with the remark, You'd bet
ter ask him" cannot remember ever
introducing my wife except as Miss
Earhart." The things she did, she did
of her own capacities, and Amelia Ear
hart was her name.
However, she carried no Lucy Stone
ish chip on her shoulder. She cared
little what she was called, and less
what was said about her. In a life
pretty we'll associated with celebrities,
A. E. was the only genuinely modest
one encountered. Once she ruefully
remarked: I'm hardly home enough
ever to get homesick." At that, she
had gift for practical housekeeping.
and loved it--as she did reading, gar
dening, swimming. riding and most OF
the simpler things.
OF our life togther she said, ours
has been a contented and reasonable
partnership, my husband with his solo
jobs, I with mine. But always with
work and play together, conducted un-
der a satisfactory system of dual con-
troll" Which is a pretty good marital
formula.
Her Interest in Gadgets.
Amelia's interest in gadgets I've
mentioned. When she was designing
clothes for women who live actively
she fashioned fastenings and decora-
tions in the manner of piston rings,
nuts, bolts and the like. She had her
own difficulties in the early days, get
ting chance to work out her mechan-
ical bent; she thought it wrong that
it was not easier: she thought, grad
ually, that there should be "gadget
and hickie shops" developed expressly
for girls. She thought so particularly
when she associated herself with Pur-
due University at Lafayette, Ind,
whose f1lexibility and breadth of vision
delighted her.
Her personal relationship at Purdue
was as a periodic and peripatetic fac
ulty member. Purdue is one of the
few universities in the world with its
own landing field.
Also it is co-educational. OF the
5000 students, approximately 1000 are
women. A. E. thought of the problems
and opportunities of these girls in the
large, rather than merely as they
related to aviation. She often ad-
mitted she probably had something OF
a chip on her shoulder with regard
to modern education for women. She
knew lots of girls who she felt should
be tinkering with mechanical things
instead of learning how to do pot
hooks and design dresses and bake
bread. She knew, too, boys who would
make better chefs than they would
engineers.
She plotted to help girls whose in
terests weren't routine, wanting to aid
them homehow to get a fair break
of opportunity to be themselves. She
saw mechanically-minded boys getting
all the scope they wanted from the
time they were knee-high to a flivver
But if a girl wanted to monkey with
piston rings and carburetors, where
could she get at them?
She wanted to see catch-as-catch-
can machine shops set up where girls
wouldn't be considered visiting poison