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• 

  BRIAN LAMB, HOST

  At 00:31
  7 seconds

  Susan Butler, author of "East to Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart," where did you get the title "East to Dawn"?
  

• 

  SUSAN BUTLER , AUTHOR, "EAST TO DAWN"

  At 00:38
  22 seconds

  Oh, the title "East to the Dawn" was my h--actually my husband's contribution to the book. I had a very trendy title, "Amelia Earhart, An Extraordinary Woman," and we decided it had to be something really much more interesting, and he came up with "East to the Dawn," which I thought was brilliant.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 01:00
  1 second

  What's it mean?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 01:01
  35 seconds

  Well, it means that her major flights were from west to east, and she was on her solo flight across the Atlantic flying into the dawn. She was on her first flight, where she was just a passenger, from Newfoundland to Europe, flying into the dawn. And on her solo flight from Hawaii to California, she was flying into the dawn. And then, of course, on the last flight, where she was lost, she was lost flying into the dawn.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 01:36
  2 seconds

  When did she live?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 01:38
  7 seconds

  She was born in 1897, and this is the 100th anniversary of her birth.
  

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  LAMB

  At 01:45
  4 seconds

  And when did you get the first idea that you wanted to write this book?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 01:49
  19 seconds

  It was in the back of my head for years. I wanted to write a book about a remarkable woman, and she was the most remarkable woman that I knew. And I had a special reason, actually, because my mother was one of the early fliers, so she was kind of always there for me.
  

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  LAMB

  At 02:08
  2 seconds

  And where did your mother fly?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 02:10
  6 seconds

  She flew out of the Red Bank airport in Red Bank, New Jersey, in the '30s.
  

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  LAMB

  At 02:16
  2 seconds

  How--how much flying did your mom do?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 02:18
  16 seconds

  Well, she did a lot, but this is--she did a lot before the war and then, in the beginning of the war, before anything got really serious, she was in the Civil Air Patrol and--and patrolled the Jersey coast.
  

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  LAMB

  At 02:34
  2 seconds

  Do you fly?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 02:36
  1 second

  No.
  

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  LAMB

  At 02:37
  2 seconds

  Did you ever think you wanted to be a flier?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 02:39
  14 seconds

  I did. I thought about it, but by the time I was old enough to fly, it was after the war and--after the Second World War, and I just kind of got onto other things.
  

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  LAMB

  At 02:53
  6 seconds

  And I think it says in your--in the--the little bio about you that your mother was a member of the Ninety Nines?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 02:59
  2 seconds

  She was a member of the Ninety Nines, yes.
  

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  LAMB

  At 03:01
  3 seconds

  You say in the back of the book there are now 6,500 members of that group?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 03:04
  1 second

  Over 6,500 members.
  

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  LAMB

  At 03:05
  1 second

  What is it?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 03:06
  17 seconds

  It's--it's a women's flying organization. It's--it--it's really the flying organization where all the women join and then they support each other and they have various programs...
  

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  LAMB

  At 03:23
  9 seconds

  Got a picture here I wanna show you of two people. Who are these people? Let me see if we can get it here, this shot. Who are those people? Whoops.
  

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  BUTLER

  At 03:32
  3 seconds

  That's Eugene Vidal and Amelia Earhart.
  

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  LAMB

  At 03:35
  2 seconds

  And who is Gene Vidal?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 03:37
  17 seconds

  Eugene Vidal is the father of Gore Vidal. He was the great love of Amelia's life. He was also the head of the Bureau of Air Commerce, so he was the highest civilian--that's the highest civilian post in aviation then.
  

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  LAMB

  At 03:54
  7 seconds

  Y--in your book, you quote Gore Vidal. Did you talk to him about this--for this book?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 04:01
  4 seconds

  I interviewed him, yes, and that--he gave me this sensational quote.
  

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  LAMB

  At 04:05
  1 second

  What was it about?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 04:06
  10 seconds

  Well, it was about my book. He says that he liked thedbook.
  

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  LAMB

  At 04:16
  5 seconds

  But he also gave you some information that she used to wear men's underwear.
  

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  BUTLER

  At 04:21
  8 seconds

  Yes. She used to wear men's underwear and she didn't--she was too embarrassed to buy it herself, so his father used to buy it.
  

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  LAMB

  At 04:29
  2 seconds

  Why? Why did--why did she wear men's underwear?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 04:31
  24 seconds

  Well, it was more comfortable. Women's underwear at that point--women didn't wear slacks, they didn't wear pants, and so they wore kind of silk things that didn't work well under pants. So--so Gene bought her, I think, Jockey briefs that worked out better.
  

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  LAMB

  At 04:55
  17 seconds

  Now at--i--if we were alive during her most--you know, when she was getting the most attention, what were people saying about her in this country? What kind of publicity, if you can relate it to today, did she get back in the '30s?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 05:12
  57 seconds

  She w--would've been a combination of--of the greatest--like, Jeanne Yeager. I d--I just don't know. There's--if I say that, there probably are people who have never heard of Jeanne Yeager. She was the most famous woman in America. She's probably the most famous woman in--in the world during her lifetime. She was catapulted to fame because she was the first woman to fly the Atlantic when it seemed as it nobody could fly the Atlantic without dropping into the sea. And--and then she went on to become a fine flier and she spent her life on the lecture circuit, in the public eye, deliberately, and then she wrote three books. I don't think there's anybody really in our--on our present-day scene who could possibly be all the things she was at the time.
  

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  LAMB

  At 06:09
  5 seconds

  This cover you have and this photograph of Amelia Earhart comes from where?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 06:14
  10 seconds

  It's a picture--it's just a--a--a picture of her a--after one of her flights. I'm actually not sure which one. It-it comes from one of the archives.
  

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  LAMB

  At 06:24
  5 seconds

  And--and tell us about how big she was, I mean, how tall she was and--and...
  

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  BUTLER

  At 06:29
  32 seconds

  She was 5'8"; she weighed 118 pounds. She was skinny. She was very good-looking, except she had thick ankles. She hated her ankles, according to Gore Vidal. She was obsessed even when she was famous with ho--with her ankles, which is one of the reasons why she always wore pants, 'cause it--it showed off the best of her figure and hid the worst. And she had--she had absolutely beautiful hands--long, tapering fingers--that her husband was in love with.
  

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  LAMB

  At 07:01
  2 seconds

  How many times was she married?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 07:03
  10 seconds

  Just once. She--there were--there were really two great loves in her life: one she married--and that was George Palmer Putnam--and one she didn't--that was Eugene Vidal.
  

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  LAMB

  At 07:13
  3 seconds

  George Palmer Putnam was who?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 07:16
  46 seconds

  George Palmer Putnam was a--a--a publisher, a very good publisher and--and a--an extrovert, a--an entrepreneur who was famous in his own right. He was the--he was the publisher who snared Lindbergh and--which was the greatest publishing coup of--of--of that era, and put him on the map. And he also published all the other explorers and adventurers. He was really in love with--with the great outdoors and--and a--and adventurers. And when he kind of stumbled onto Amelia Earhart, he was just totally bowled over because she was everything. She was--she was his--she was his dream woman.
  

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  LAMB

  At 08:02
  2 seconds

  W--where did they meet?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 08:04
  1 minute

  Well, they actually met when he interviewed her. He had been given the job of finding a woman to fly the Atlantic in the place of Amy Guest, who had bought an airplane and planned to fly--and be the first woman to fly the Atlantic, and it was her notion that she would take off from the United States, fly to London, land in the Thames in front of the houses of Parliament, and it was going to be a gesture of friendship between the United States and England. So, therefore, she named the plane Friendship. And she was from a very wealthy family and she was 55, very headstrong, very intelligent. And her--her family didn't know what she was about. She kept it quite quiet, and she had Commander Byrd helping her organize this, and he found her the plane, he found her the pilot, he found her the co-pilot. And then when her family found out about it, they, not too surprisingly, hit the roof.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 09:09
  1 minute

  And so they talked her out of it, and so she said--stubborn lady-she said, `Well, OK. I won't do it, but then it has to be--it has to continue--the project has to continue, and I want my place taken by an American woman who will be a credit to her sex and a credit to her country, has to be somebody educated, a flier and a wonderful person,' because there were various people--var--various women who were trying to be that first woman--who wanted to be the first woman across the Atlantic because they knew that they'd become the most famous woman in the world if they could just get on a plane. And there was one in particular, one woman by the name of Mabel Ball, who was just after the publicity and she was very good at getting publicity, and she had fashioned herself a--a--a vest of--a gold link vest with diamond buttons and a platinum collar, and she had huge diamonds on her hands and, as The New York Times said, just to be photographed upon landing in that outfit was, to her, the dream of a lifetime. And she was always shopping and doing all the things that--and garnering for publicity and doing all the things that Amy Guest thought was terrible. And there were other people also that wanted to be the first famous woman to fly across the Atlantic, so for those reasons, Amy Guest had decided that she just had to do this.
  

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  LAMB

  At 11:05
  4 seconds

  Wh--who--where did--wha--what citizenship did Amy Guest have?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 11:09
  3 seconds

  She was an American, although her husb--her husband was English.
  

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  LAMB

  At 11:12
  1 second

  And where did she live?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 11:13
  7 seconds

  She lived in--in London and in Long Island.
  

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  LAMB

  At 11:20
  3 seconds

  What kind of a plane was it that they bought?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 11:23
  7 seconds

  It was a Fokker--a Fokker with three engines--huge-just one of the biggest, one of the best planes of the day.
  

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  LAMB

  At 11:30
  2 seconds

  Pontoons?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 11:32
  1 second

  Pontoons.
  

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  LAMB

  At 11:33
  7 seconds

  That's, o--obviously, how they would land out on the Thames. And--and were--were those the kind of planes that they flew in those days?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 11:40
  

  Mm-hmm.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 11:40
  1 second

  What year are we talking about here?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 11:41
  4 seconds

  We're talking about 1928. We're talking about the year after Lindbergh.
  

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  LAMB

  At 11:45
  2 seconds

  And what had he done?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 11:47
  25 seconds

  Lindbergh had w--wanted something called the Orteig, which had fired up the world's imagination, which was to fly from New York to Paris, and Raymond Orteig, a Frenchman, had put up $25,000 to the first person who could accomplish this. And many tried, many died. Lindbergh was the first to succeed.
  

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  LAMB

  At 12:12
  1 second

  And he flew from where to where?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 12:13
  4 seconds

  He flew from Roosevelt Field to La Bourget.
  

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  LAMB

  At 12:17
  3 seconds

  And Roosevelt Field is located where?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 12:20
  1 second

  Long Island.
  

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  LAMB

  At 12:21
  3 seconds

  Long Island. And La Bourget is in Paris.
  

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  BUTLER

  At 12:24
  

  In Paris.
  

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  LAMB

  At 12:24
  1 second

  A--and...
  

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  BUTLER

  At 12:25
  2 seconds

  And...
  

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  LAMB

  At 12:27
  1 second

  Go ahead.
  

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  BUTLER

  At 12:28
  1 second

  And it took him 33 hours.
  

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  LAMB

  At 12:29
  3 seconds

  Did he stop anywhere along the way?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 12:32
  1 second

  No.
  

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  LAMB

  At 12:33
  8 seconds

  And it--had any woman flown--in 1927, that would've been, I guess--had any woman flown over the Atlantic at all?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 12:41
  2 seconds

  Oh, no. No.
  

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  LAMB

  At 12:43
  1 second

  Not in any planes?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 12:44
  1 second

  No.
  

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  LAMB

  At 12:45
  7 seconds

  'Cause somewhere in your book, you say that back when flying was really active, in the early days, that 95 percent of the passengers were men.
  

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  BUTLER

  At 12:52
  1 second

  Yes.
  

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  LAMB

  At 12:53
  1 second

  Why was that?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 12:54
  25 seconds

  Well, because w--women were afraid of flying, so one of the reasons why--but--but this comes later, a few years later, when--when airlines started to come into being, they decided that they had to give publicity to women so that women would begin to think that they could, in fact, fly and that men would realize that if women flew, they shouldn't be afraid of airplanes.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 13:19
  4 seconds

  We'll come back to the book in a moment. I wanna ask you a little bit about yourself. Where do you live?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 13:23
  3 seconds

  I live in--in Pine Plains, New York.
  

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  LAMB

  At 13:26
  1 second

  Where is that?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 13:27
  2 seconds

  That's 100 miles north of the city.
  

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  LAMB

  At 13:29
  1 second

  And how long have you lived there?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 13:30
  3 seconds

  Fifteen years.
  

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  LAMB

  At 13:33
  2 seconds

  Is this your first book?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 13:35
  1 second

  Yes.
  

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  LAMB

  At 13:36
  6 seconds

  A--and d--what did you do for a living before you got into the bookwriting business?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 13:42
  9 seconds

  I tried to make a living at--at writing, but I really find it very difficult. It's almost impossible.
  

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  LAMB

  At 13:51
  1 second

  How much education do you have?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 13:52
  4 seconds

  I've gotten as far as a master's degree at Columbia.
  

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  LAMB

  At 13:56
  1 second

  In what subjects?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 13:57
  1 second

  Political science.
  

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  LAMB

  At 13:58
  6 seconds

  And when you went about doing this book, where did you go to get the information?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 14:04
  16 seconds

  Well, I went wherever it--it--wherever it--it took me. I went out to Ohio to visit Katch Challis, who was one of A-Amelia Earhart's dearest friends and cousins. I went to...
  

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  LAMB

  At 14:20
  2 seconds

  Alive?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 14:22
  2 seconds

  Well, she died after I interviewed her.
  

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  LAMB

  At 14:24
  2 seconds

  What year did you interview her?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 14:26
  2 seconds

  I interviewed her in 1989.
  

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  LAMB

  At 14:28
  2 seconds

  So you've been working on this book for how long?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 14:30
  2 seconds

  Ten years.
  

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  LAMB

  At 14:32
  3 seconds

  And what else--where else did you go?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 14:35
  18 seconds

  I went to Newfoundland, I went up to Trepassey, and then I went to Harbour Grace to see the field where Amelia Earhart took off on her solo flight, and Trepassey is where she--where--where the Friendship took off from.
  

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  LAMB

  At 14:53
  3 seconds

  How hard is it to get to Trepassey from here?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 14:56
  2 seconds

  It's not hard.
  

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  LAMB

  At 14:58
  2 seconds

  How long does it take?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 15:00
  1 second

  Oh, I can't remember.
  

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  LAMB

  At 15:01
  3 seconds

  And why Newfoundland?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 15:04
  13 seconds

  Newfoundland juts out--if you look at a map of North America, you see that Newfoundland juts out as far east as--it's the furthest eastern point. It's the closest to Europe.
  

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  LAMB

  At 15:17
  7 seconds

  And so when you're writing the rulebooks, you had--you could do that. I mean, if you're going from North America, you'd find that point that would be the closest to Europe?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 15:24
  7 seconds

  Yes. Yes. Many--es--particularly the f--the field in--in Harbour Grace was a takeoff point for many planes.
  

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  LAMB

  At 15:31
  3 seconds

  Where else did you go for your information?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 15:34
  5 seconds

  Well, I spent a lot of time at the Schlesinger Library in Cambridge.
  

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  LAMB

  At 15:39
  2 seconds

  Why there?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 15:41
  18 seconds

  Well, because they had most of the Amelia Earhart m--material that was given by the family. And--and then I went to Medford, Massachusetts, where Amelia Earhart's sister, who is still alive, lives.
  

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  LAMB

  At 15:59
  1 second

  How old is she?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 16:00
  3 seconds

  She was born in 1900.
  

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  LAMB

  At 16:03
  1 second

  She's still alive?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 16:04
  4 seconds

  She's still alive, and she was very helpful-very helpful.
  

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  LAMB

  At 16:08
  2 seconds

  Which sister?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 16:10
  1 second

  Wh--it's--there were just the two of them.
  

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  LAMB

  At 16:11
  1 second

  What--and her n...
  

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  BUTLER

  At 16:12
  1 second

  It was Muriel Morrissey.
  

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  LAMB

  At 16:13
  1 second

  Yeah.
  

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  BUTLER

  At 16:14
  1 second

  Her name is Muriel Morrissey.
  

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  LAMB

  At 16:15
  1 second

  And what did...
  

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  BUTLER

  At 16:16
  1 second

  And her daughter was very helpful, too.
  

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  LAMB

  At 16:17
  3 seconds

  And what did Muriel Morrissey remember?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 16:20
  21 seconds

  Well, it wasn't so much what Muriel Morrissey remembered, although she remembered a great deal. It was more getting from her a feeling--a feeling of what--of what their life was like. And also, she pointed me in quite a few new directions so that I came up with more new material.
  

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  LAMB

  At 16:41
  2 seconds

  What was their life like?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 16:43
  43 seconds

  When they were children? Amelia--their--their li-the two of them had, in their young--first childish years, very different lives, actually, because Amelia was sent to live with her grandmother in Atchison, Kansas, 'cause her grandmother was quite elderly and lonely, although she did have a husband. He was--he was a bit withdrawn and there'd been a few deaths, and so she was sent to live in Atchison with her grandparents and comfort her grandmother. And Muriel lived in Kansas City, but they were always very close and they were always together in the summer and there was a lot of visiting back and forth.
  

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  LAMB

  At 17:26
  2 seconds

  What year did you f--visit Muriel?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 17:28
  13 seconds

  I visited Muriel in '87 and then I visited her subsequently a few more times. I would keep going back and she would keep opening her door for me. She was very helpful.
  

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  LAMB

  At 17:41
  3 seconds

  And you say she sent you in--in new directions.
  

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  BUTLER

  At 17:44
  

  Mm-hmm.
  

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  LAMB

  At 17:44
  1 second

  Give us an example.
  

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  BUTLER

  At 17:45
  1 minute

  Well, she helped--she sent me to her daughter, whom-who also opened the door to more leads, and so I ended up finding more cousins who gave me letters, and so I had--I had letters from cousins that had never been found before. And then besides that, then I had the Katch--when I visited Katch Challis, I had--I was given, after Katch died, by her daughter--I was given diaries. The diaries were fabulous, the diaries of--of Katch's sister, who--Lucy, who lived with Amelia when she was older a--when--when she was married.
  

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  LAMB

  At 18:45
  6 seconds

  What different cities did Amelia Earhart live in?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 18:51
  7 seconds

  Let me see, she started out in--as an adult or as a child?
  

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  LAMB

  At 18:58
  1 second

  Just her--in her life.
  

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  BUTLER

  At 18:59
  17 seconds

  Because, as she said, she rolled around a lot when she was a kid. She lived in Atchison, Kansas; Kansas City, Kansas; Des Moines, Iowa; St. Paul, Minnesota; Boston; New York. She went to Columbia.
  

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  LAMB

  At 19:16
  5 seconds

  I remember Philadelphia. She went to school--did she go to school in Philadelphia?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 19:21
  3 seconds

  Well, she didn't actually, but her--her family originally came from Philadelphia, yeah.
  

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  LAMB

  At 19:24
  2 seconds

  California?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 19:26
  1 second

  Oh...
  

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  LAMB

  At 19:27
  1 second

  Where?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 19:28
  6 seconds

  ...absolutely. She ended up in California in the Tal--Talooka Lake district outside of LA.
  

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  LAMB

  At 19:34
  10 seconds

  So as you went about your task, how much other literature had been written about Amelia Earhart, how many other books? And were you looking for a new angle?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 19:44
  52 seconds

  There are tons of books about Amelia Earhart. I mean, It--I--I'm stunned when I--if--if I had realized how many books there were, I probably wouldn't have started. The literature about her is--is--is getting longer all the time, too. The thing is that-what I found is that--the book showed a continuing or possibly even a growing interest, which I--I had--actually hadn't realized. I think there are probably right now--I see a growing interest maybe just because I'm so involved with Amelia Earhart. But I found that the books were really interesting, but you can't rely on books if you're a biographer. You have to go back to sources--source material.
  

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  LAMB

  At 20:36
  4 seconds

  So what's different about this book compared to all the other books you read?
  

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  BUTLER

  At 20:40
  1 minute

  Well, I had--I had the--the--it sounds corny to say, but I had the real details of her life, which I found were missing, and I--it took a lot of digging, took a lot of interviewing and it took a lot of time because it isn't the kind of thing you can force. You--you can't even figure out where you're going to go until each thing happens. And th--for instance, Gore Vidal had told me that there was a lost biography and he knew about it because the woman was a friend of--of--of his father's as well as of Amelia, and--and he had spent time with her. And she had advised him about how to go about publishing his first book, and that--his first book was accepted and her first book was turned down, so he'd do this, so he said to me that there was this lost biography. And I suppose that he told other people because, really, it's no se--it was no secret, but I just happened to find it. So I had this lost biography and then, of course, I had to rewrite the whole book again.
  

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  LAMB

  At 21:51
  4 seconds

  When did you find it, and when did you have to start rewriting?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 21:55
  26 seconds

  Well, that was a few years ago, and I was--I was in the Schlesinger and I had--I was not even--I wasn't thinking--I'd just really given up on it, and then as I was going out, I saw that they had recently gotten the papers of Janet Mabey, who was this-this woman that had written the biography. And it was just that, and I turned on my heels and went back in and...
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 22:21
  2 seconds

  What's--what was new?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 22:23
  22 seconds

  It was details. It was, again, details. She had-she was there, and so she--she was there and she interviewed people that had known Amelia, and so I had suddenly--at my fingertips, I had anecdotes, things that really happened, not just the general things that we all know.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 22:45
  8 seconds

  Go back to--we started talking about her husband or who-when she met the man that she was going to marry, George Putnam. Was he married then?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 22:53
  

  Yes.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 22:53
  2 seconds

  What were the circumstances?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 22:55
  40 seconds

  He was married to Dorothy Binny Putnam, who, by all accounts, is quite a woman in her own right, and her granddaughter has just written a book about her. But--and they--she and Amelia were first friends and--and Amelia was enormously grateful to her in 1928. In fact, she dedicated her first book to her because she thought she'd been so helpful. But then she had other interests, actually. Dorothy...
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 23:35
  1 second

  Male interests.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 23:36
  49 seconds

  Dorothy Binny Putnam had other male interests, and it became obvious that George Palm--Palmer Putnam was simply mesmerized by Amelia, and so they got divorced and then Amelia was not too happy about having anything to do with a divorce, but he overcame all her objections and--and they eventually got married. He had to propose to her a number of times by his own admission before she agreed. She was not--she was not actually planning on getting married. She'd always--as a child, she and--and her cousins, the Challises, Lucy and Katch, had always had great dreams and plans for exciting careers. They'd never really had any plans for great marriage, but he talked her into it.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 24:25
  1 second

  They married in what year?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 24:26
  2 seconds

  1931.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 24:28
  3 seconds

  So we're still in '28, where she's going to take that first trip.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 24:31
  1 second

  OK.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 24:32
  4 seconds

  But the--probably oughta do this now in case we forget it.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 24:36
  1 second

  Yeah.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 24:37
  3 seconds

  When they got married, there was a letter that you publish here...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 24:40
  

  Yes.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 24:40
  3 seconds

  ...to her husband-to-be...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 24:43
  

  Yes.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 24:43
  2 seconds

  ...from her. Has that been published before, by the way?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 24:45
  1 second

  Yes, it has.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 24:46
  5 seconds

  And it reads--I'll read just a little bit--`There are some'--this is--when did she give this letter to him?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 24:51
  1 second

  The morning of the wedding.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 24:52
  2 seconds

  The morning of the wedding.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 24:54
  4 seconds

  Morning of the wedding. Doesn't seem to have fazed him a bit.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 24:58
  38 seconds

  `Dear G.P., there are some things which should be writ before we are married, things we have talked over before most of them. You must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work which means to--so much to me. I feel the move just now is foolish as anything I could do. I know there may be compensations, but I have no heart to look ahead. In our life together, I shall not hold you to any medieval code--code--code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly.' What's she saying here?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 25:36
  11 seconds

  She's saying--she's saying that she's not going to be faithful to him and that he doesn't have to be faithful to her, that he has to let her have her freedom, and...
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 25:47
  19 seconds

  And she also writes: `Please let us not interfere with the other's work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements. In this connection, I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure all the confinements of even an attractive cage.' What was your reaction when you read that, by the way?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 26:06
  27 seconds

  I thought it was absolutely fascinating. I mean, I thought--for me, it kind of showed the steely hand in the velvet glove, which I think I--I wrote, but--because it was--can you imagine doing that with an enormously--I mean, it came from an inner need, but it was also i--in--a very gutsy thing to do and it shows that she had to be the way she was and damn the consequences.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 26:33
  9 seconds

  Now we were talking about 1928, when the selection was made to fly over the Atlantic. They got married in 1931.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 26:42
  

  Mm-hmm.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 26:42
  4 seconds

  And what was the year that she died or the plane went down?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 26:46
  1 second

  1937.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 26:47
  2 seconds

  So we're talking about a period here of--very short period of about nine years.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 26:49
  1 second

  Very short period.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 26:50
  1 second

  And she was how old when she died?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 26:51
  1 second

  Thirty-nine.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 26:52
  6 seconds

  Is there any--by the way, is there any question in your mind that--that she died during the flight?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 26:58
  1 second

  No, absolutely none.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 26:59
  3 seconds

  And did you--how far did you go to research that, by the way?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 27:02
  38 seconds

  I--well, a--a--actually, I think I've come--it--it-I found it as definitive source as there is, which is--I came-somebody told me about the writings of a Japanese woman by the name of Fukiko Ioki, who had been a very good writer, who had written a book about it and--and an article, and she'd been the bureau chief of Newsweek, so we're not talking about somebody that is inconsequential or doesn't know what she's doing. I just wish her book was translated.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 27:40
  38 seconds

  And she ran down every single lead that she could find because she didn't--from the Japanese point of view, she just wanted to find out whether, in fact, Japan was the perpetrator of any of the crimes that they've, over the years, been accused of being. And so she interviewed every single person starting with the people that-Fred Warner, who had started the whole thing--interviewed and in no case was ever--was there ever any corroborating evidence that--that the Japanese had ever picked her up. In fact...
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 28:18
  3 seconds

  And what year did she write that, the Japanese reporter?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 28:21
  3 seconds

  She wrote it in the 1980s.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 28:24
  1 second

  And you had to have it translated?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 28:25
  15 seconds

  I had parts of it translated and then the--and then I-I was lucky and I found out where she lived, so--she lives in-in Wallkill, New York, and so I called her up and--and we talked.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 28:40
  4 seconds

  Can you still get an argument started about what happened to Amelia Earhart in this country?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 28:44
  19 seconds

  Oh, sure. I can't believe it, but there are still people--there--I think there are always people who are just mesmerized by the--by what might've happened. The conspiracy theories on every single event in United States history can't seem to be--I mean, they just keep rising up again.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 29:03
  11 seconds

  In 1928, when George Putnam met her and they started selecting the person to go on the Friendship, how visible was Amelia Earhart in the country then and what did she do?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 29:14
  23 seconds

  She was a social worker at Denison House in Boston. And she flew in her spare time. She had been in the papers a couple of times because she was a pilot and she had done a publicity stunt for Denison House. But she was not--she was just kind of a local celebrity. She was not well-known at all.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 29:37
  5 seconds

  And how did--then did--did she get into this mix of who was going to be chosen?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 29:42
  48 seconds

  Well, that was just pure luck. The--Amy Guest had told the lawyer, family-friend lawyer, David Lehman, to find somebody to take Am--to take her place. And he was trying to decide what to do next, it being a little bit out of his line of work. And then George Putnam heard about it through somebody else and went to see him, and said that he would like to try and find that woman and--I mean, it was just right up his alley 'cause it's the kind of thing that he'd been doing. And so David Lehman said, `OK. Sure,' you know, `have a go at it.'
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 30:30
  31 seconds

  And that afternoon, according to Putnam, a friend of his from Boston popped into his office, a publicist friend of his. And so Putnam said, `Look, this is this--this is this most interesting thing that's happening right now. Let's find--let's find this woman flier. Let's find this woman who--to take the place of Amy Guest.' And then, of course, he could see all the possibilities and it was a really exciting project.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 31:01
  28 seconds

  So--so he, in fact--in effect, had assigned Hilton Railly, and Hilton lived in Boston, went back to Boston that afternoon, and he asked a friend of his i--if--if his friend knew any--anybody in Boston in the aviation world. And, really, there was only Amelia in Boston. So they asked her down in New York and they interviewed her, and she was perfect and everybody fell in love with her.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 31:29
  20 seconds

  In fact, David Lehman liked her so much he was--for one moment, Amelia felt, as--after she wrote about it later, she was afr--she was afraid that he liked her so much, he was afraid to send her because she might die. So she had to kind of pull back and...
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 31:49
  4 seconds

  Was she going to fly the plane or ride in the plane?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 31:53
  10 seconds

  She was just going to ride in the plane. There were two pilots and she was just going to be the passenger. She hoped to be ac--actually to get her hands on the controls, but she never did.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 32:03
  1 second

  So it...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 32:04
  16 seconds

  But she wa--but she was more, actually, than just a passenger because--whether or not they had originally planned to do this, I don't know, but by the time the plane took off, she was-they had given her authority to run the project. She was, in other words, in control.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 32:20
  6 seconds

  And how big a deal was it that the flight was even going to happen? And how public was it?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 32:26
  25 seconds

  Until it took off, it wasn't public at all. When it took off, then all of a sudden, the world knew about it and every reporter that could get on a plane--not a plane, excuse me, but every reporter that could get up there did, so that by the time she was in Trepassey, there was--the publicity was in place.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 32:51
  6 seconds

  Now had she sold her story to any newspaper? Because I know you talk about later on, she sold a bunch of stuff to The New York Times.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 32:57
  35 seconds

  Well, Putnam did. George Palmer Putnam did. She was a writer even then. She had sold a--a story to The Bostonian, which was the local Boston magazine, and--and on the basis, I suppose, of that, or--he had sold her story to The New York Times. So she was writing her story. While she was on the plane, she was keeping a log. When she--when she landed in--in--when she landed in Burry Port, Wales-but when she got to London, she handed--she handed a story, a finished story, which was published in the papers the next day.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 33:32
  3 seconds

  Did they have an trouble on that flight? And how many people were on it?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 33:35
  1 minute

  There were three of them that were on it. They-the only trouble they had was that they only had 700 gallons of gasoline because they were in a--a plane which had been fitted out with pontoons. Pontoons don't really--they're not efficient. Once you have pontoons, they can't lift as much as whe--as the wheels that they replaced. So although they should have been able to take double the amount of gasoline that they took, they had a great deal of trouble even getting--even becoming airborne, as happened often in those days because the planes were underpowered and--and the pontoons were just a terrific strain. So they didn't have any really serious problems except they weren't sure, of course, where they were. When they finally--and then the engine started to sputter. And they were all afraid that--that they were going to be lost at sea. And then they finally landed in Burry Port, Wales.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 34:40
  2 seconds

  How long did it take?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 34:42
  2 seconds

  It took 20 hours and 40 minutes.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 34:44
  2 seconds

  And that's the name of a book.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 34:46
  1 second

  That's the name of her first book.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 34:47
  8 seconds

  And if I remember correctly, when she died, that that trip was already in its 20th hour and like 14 minutes. So it was very close.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 34:55
  1 second

  It was--actually, I'd never thought of that. Yes. Yes.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 34:56
  2 seconds

  The--the later around-the-world trip.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 34:58
  4 seconds

  Ye--yeah. The--the--the last leg of it.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 35:02
  

  The last...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 35:02
  

  The last leg.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 35:02
  1 second

  The last--yeah.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 35:03
  

  Yeah.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 35:03
  1 second

  The last leg.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 35:04
  8 seconds

  Nobody really knows how--how many--guess--but it was 20, 21, 22 hours. Nobody knows how long.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 35:12
  5 seconds

  Now on that first trip, why do we remember her name, and don't remember the two fellows she was flying with?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 35:17
  47 seconds

  Well, it's so amazing. It's just--it just shows that this state of the world--the--the world's mind-set at the time. It happened immediately, immediately when--when she landed. Nobody paid any attention to Wilmer Stul--Stultz and--and Lou Gordon. They just didn't pay any attention to them at all. And she was continually saying, `Look, I was just a passenger. I didn't do anything.' And then, you know, later she said, `I was just a sack of potatoes.' I mean, she was always with her arms around them trying to push them forward. And it was just this stunned amazement of the world that a--that a woman had been able to do this or that she hadn't passed out or that she hadn't died. It just seemed--it just seemed too incredible to believe.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 36:04
  5 seconds

  You have a--in different places of the book, you show us how many people were dying in those years.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 36:09
  1 second

  It was--oh, unbelievable.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 36:10
  3 seconds

  Can you tell us--wha--what are some of the statistics?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 36:13
  17 seconds

  Well, after Lindbergh, because Lindbergh was in May of--of '27, 18 planes took off. Both sides of the Atlantic, 18 planes took off. And three made it.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 36:30
  2 seconds

  What happened to them?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 36:32
  3 seconds

  Well, most of them died. Most of the people died.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 36:35
  1 second

  Why were they doing this?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 36:36
  9 seconds

  Well, because it was like climbing Everest. It was-it was just the most exciting thing that could happen.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 36:45
  1 second

  Was it expensive?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 36:46
  2 seconds

  Hugely expensive.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 36:48
  9 seconds

  Now you say here, I--I wrote this down, `Twelve months after, 55 people tried in 18 planes. Three made it, one came close, and the rest failed.'
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 36:57
  1 second

  Yeah.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 36:58
  5 seconds

  When was her next flight? And--and wh--when did she actually fly herself?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 37:03
  8 seconds

  Five years to the day after Lindbergh, May 21st, 1932...
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 37:11
  1 second

  Now married to George Putnam.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 37:12
  35 seconds

  Now married to George Putnam. It had always bothered her that--that she hadn't flown the plane herself and that she was so much in the public eye and everybody attributed things to her that she thought she hadn't earned. And she was always a--I mean, she was--she had a very serious side, although she didn't let it show all that much. But she wanted to earn her spurs. She felt she hadn't. So shedecided--it was something--everybody was calling it the Lindbergh trail.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 37:47
  30 seconds

  Every--every woman in--really, every woman flier wanted to do what Lindbergh had done and be the first woman to solo the Atlantic. And no--there hadn't been any--in fact, nobody had gone--had flown the Atlantic alone after Lindbergh, man or woman. But the women, particularly, were on the Lindbergh trail and there were quite a few American women who had planes and were trying.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 38:17
  33 seconds

  One woman--one woman, Ruth Nichols, an American from Rye, New York, had actually tried and she had crashed before she ever got up to Newfoundland. And there were a couple of others in the wings waiting, getting their planes ready. And Amelia decided that she was going to do it. She didn't tell anybody. She was always a very self-possessed, self-contained person. And so she had the whole thing organized.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 38:50
  35 seconds

  And exactly five years to the day after Lindbergh, she took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, and--and fl--and spanned the Atlantic and that took 14 1/2 hours. And although she had st--although her plan was to land at La Bourget and the American ambassador and everybody else had gone out to La Bourget to wait for her, she didn't-she didn't make France because the winds went against her and she was also having all kinds of--of equipment--instrument problems.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 39:25
  2 seconds

  What kind of plane did she fly?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 39:27
  5 seconds

  She was in a--a Lockheed Vega--single-engine Lockheed Vega.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 39:32
  1 second

  Who paid for it?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 39:33
  18 seconds

  Well, she did. By this time, she was very much of a-of a one-woman industry. She was--she was on the lect--lecture circuit and she was probably, I suppose, the most highly paid woman going around the country.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 39:51
  10 seconds

  You say in 1935, she was the most--that was her most productive year, that she spoke 136 times before 80,000 people at $300 a lecture, grossing $40,000.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 40:01
  3 seconds

  Yeah. That was--that was big bucks in those years.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 40:04
  4 seconds

  And you also point out that a steno--a stenographer then was paid $20 a week.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 40:08
  2 seconds

  I know. It's amazing.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 40:10
  4 seconds

  What would that Vega plane have cost if you bought it? Do you know?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 40:14
  19 seconds

  I think it would probably have cost about-about $15,000, but that's probably a guess on my part. The--the Lockheed Electra that she bought in 1937 cost, fully equipped, $73,000. But that was a much bigger plane.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 40:33
  12 seconds

  You--in Chapter 17, you say--you lead off as--by saying, `By 1934, Amelia had become so involved in her various projects, lecturing, fashion designing...'
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 40:45
  

  Mm-hmm.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 40:45
  2 seconds

  `...starting airlines...'
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 40:47
  

  Mm-hmm.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 40:47
  1 second

  `...running the Ninety Nines...'
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 40:48
  1 second

  Mm-hmm.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 40:49
  13 seconds

  `...encouraging flying competitions and signing on to teach at Purdue, that she barely had time to fly.' Go through a little bit of all that so we can see what--all the different things she was doing. Encouraging flying competitions, what was that?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 41:02
  24 seconds

  Well, she was very involved in this women's flying organization, the Ninety Nines, so she was always--whenever they were doing anything, she was always spending time with them. She was always working with other women to--she gave trophies for various races.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 41:26
  2 seconds

  Would it be--I mean, I know you talk about the Bendix, which...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 41:28
  2 seconds

  She flew in the Bendix.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 41:30
  1 second

  And what--what was the Bendix?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 41:31
  5 seconds

  The Bendix was a trans-Atlantic flight which was the-it was the most exciting trans-Atlantic flight.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 41:36
  1 second

  A race?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 41:37
  23 seconds

  Race. Excuse me. It was a race. It w--it was the big race. It was the one that got all the publicity. It was started by--Vincent Bendix gave the prize. It was started by a man called Henderson because he wanted to push planes and push pilots. So he-he got Vincent Bendix to give a prize for the fastest transcontinental flight.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 42:00
  2 seconds

  Do they still do the Bendix?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 42:02
  2 seconds

  I don't think so. If they do, I don't know about it.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 42:04
  5 seconds

  Fashion designing. Right--right in the middle of all the other stuff she's doing...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 42:09
  39 seconds

  Right in the middle of all the stuff, she decided that she was going to design wearable women's clothes. She was sick of clothes that weren't wearable and she thought it would be a good business enterprise. And she loved getting into new businesses. She was always trying different--different things and so there she was. She was--she deci--she decided to design women's clothes, but she was going to put shirts--and at that point, women's shirts were blouses, and so she designed shirts that were with long enough tails so that if they stood on their head, as she said, they s--they--they would still stay tucked in. And then she used parachute silk for the blouses. And--and then she just did very wearable clothes.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 42:48
  3 seconds

  Now I remember flying Northeast Airlines...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 42:51
  

  Yeah.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 42:51
  2 seconds

  ...out of this town to Boston...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 42:53
  

  Yeah.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 42:53
  3 seconds

  ...and I think it went to the Eastern Airlines, then to USAir, I can't--I don't know how all the...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 42:56
  1 second

  Yeah. Yeah.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 42:57
  2 seconds

  ...mergers went. That's an airline she started?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 42:59
  15 seconds

  Yeah. She was one--she was the first vice president. Yeah. There were four of them. They sat around their house in Rye and--Sam Soloman and--and Amelia Earhart and Gene Vidal and Paul Collins, and they each threw in $10,000 and they started Northeast Airlines.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 43:14
  2 seconds

  Did she work there?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 43:16
  1 second

  Yeah. She did.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 43:17
  1 second

  For how long?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 43:18
  2 seconds

  Oh, about a year. About a year.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 43:20
  4 seconds

  And then the last thing is signing on to teach at Purdue. Why is that significant?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 43:24
  35 seconds

  Well, I--it's very significant because, to me, I mean, I think it's kind of a hallmark of her personality. I think it sh-all of a sudden, Elliott, who was the president, met her and was totally mesmerized by her and wanted to get her on the Purdue campus. And she thought it was a wonderful idea and I think she would have probably spent the rest of her life doing that, being at Purdue, because she was a s--a strong feminist. Although she didn't come across as one, she had very strong beliefs.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 43:59
  38 seconds

  And what she always wanted to do was to get women to be the best that they could be. She wanted them to lose their sense of inferiority. She was always trying to enhance women's self-esteem. And there shewas--she was offered a job to be on the faculty of--of--of Purdue, to be a consultant for careers for women. Well, of course, she was a huge hit and she was there and the--and the girls just--just adored her. And I think--I think it was probably very satisfying for her and I think it would have taken more and more of her time.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 44:37
  5 seconds

  You say that Purdue got involved with a research foundation and was there a time where they were even going to buy her a plane?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 44:42
  23 seconds

  Well, they kind of did. They kind of did buy her a plane. Two of the wealthy alumni who were head of the Purdue research foundation each kicked in $20,000 and then--so that gave her the-kind of enough to buy the Lockheed Electra. And then equipment manufacturers gave her the rest.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 45:05
  13 seconds

  So at this point in her life, in the '34, '35, '36 time frame,how many other flights did she get involved in? And when did shestart doing--thinking about the around-the-world flight?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 45:18
  12 seconds

  Well, let's see, she flew--she flew from--in 1935, she flew from Hawaii to Oakland, California. That...
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 45:30
  2 seconds

  In the Electra?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 45:32
  3 seconds

  No. In a Vega.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 45:35
  1 second

  A Vega?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 45:36
  6 seconds

  In a Vega. And that was the first solo flight on that--over that piece of water.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 45:42
  2 seconds

  For anybody?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 45:44
  1 second

  For anybody.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 45:45
  4 seconds

  And, by the way, along the way, she--coming close at all to crashing?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 45:49
  2 seconds

  No. No.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 45:51
  1 second

  No serious problems?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 45:52
  41 seconds

  No serious probleNo. And then--and then later in '35, she flew to Mexico City, which is quite high, it's 7,500 feet, and then--which means from an altitude, it--it--air is thinner, it's hard to load up enough gasoline. So then she flew from Mexico City to Newark Airport and that was a first. And--for solo, man or woman, non-stop. And for that, she went into the record books again. So she had these great solo flights.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 46:33
  3 seconds

  When did Eleanor Roosevelt get interest in her?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 46:36
  2 seconds

  When she met her.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 46:38
  1 second

  When?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 46:39
  6 seconds

  Oh, she met her right after the--after Roosevelt was elected for his--to first his first term.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 46:45
  1 second

  '32.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 46:46
  1 second

  In '32. Yeah.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 46:47
  5 seconds

  And there was a time where Eleanor Roosevelt wanted her to fly her all around the United States?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 46:52
  3 seconds

  Yes. Yes.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 46:55
  1 second

  What happened?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 46:56
  44 seconds

  Well, she would have, except that she wanted to--to have a--to have a--be able to fly her around so that she could publicize the Arthur Dale project, which was sub--assistance housing in Virginia. And the administration and Rexford Tugwell weren't really ready to have Eleanor Roosevelt do it right then. They were still arranging things. This was quite--quite new and quite radical. And I think probably Tugwell didn't really want her to do it. So he put it off and then--and then other commitments--time commitments interfered.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 47:40
  5 seconds

  B--but you said at one point, I--I--if I remember correctly, that Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to learn to fly and sh...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 47:45
  2 seconds

  Oh, before that, she wanted to learn to fly.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 47:47
  1 second

  But i...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 47:48
  23 seconds

  Oh, when she first met Amelia, she wanted to learn how to fly and she wanted Amelia to arrange it. And so Amelia got her a student pilot license--organized a student pilot license for her. And--and everything was going on absolutely beautifully. She'd organized whoever was going to teach her and then Eleanor told Franklin and Franklin said, `Forget it.'
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 48:11
  2 seconds

  No deal.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 48:13
  1 second

  No deal.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 48:14
  6 seconds

  At one point, again, in your book, you say that she held the nation in the palm of her hand, including the president of the United States.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 48:20
  1 second

  Yeah.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 48:21
  15 seconds

  And you learn as you read that the Navy had offered to refuel, as she flew around the world, all these kinds of things. Tell us about the last flight. How did that come about and what--what time of year was it?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 48:36
  1 minute

  Well, she always wanted--as she told her friend, her--her flying friend, Louise Thaddon, she just wanted to do it because she thought it would be fun. And she--it was the only flight that she undertook for--in a sense, she said for a selfish reason because it--she just wanted to do it. And so she wanted to do it at the--she wanted to go around the world at the world's waistline, 27,000 miles around the equator, which would mean that she wouldn't have to--there were no time constraints. It simply had never been done because there weren't that many people that had flown around the world. And--but it was a huge undertaking. She hoped to do all kinds of--of experiments and--and--while she was doing this trip. She wanted to see wh--the fatigue factors and she had all kinds of general things that she was hoping to figure out.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 49:36
  2 seconds

  Still married to George Putnam?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 49:38
  2 seconds

  Always married to George Putnam.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 49:40
  3 seconds

  And what's the relationship with Gene Vidal during all this time?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 49:43
  47 seconds

  Well, it's very difficult to organize a trip like--of--of that magnitude. I mean, it was very difficult to organize a trip of that magnitude. Besides the fact that she had to have gasoline shipped to various places around the world, because you couldn't rely on anything, she had to get permissions from every country that she flew over. And, basically, Eu--Eugene Vidal really organized the trip for her. He put the Department of Commerce at her--at her--for her--for her to use. He assigned a--an--an ex-Navy pilot who worked for the Department of Commerce by the name of Bill Miller. He basically assigned him to--Amelia to run interference.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 50:30
  3 seconds

  But at the time, she had helped get Gene Vidal the job.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 50:33
  35 seconds

  She had helped Gene Vidal--definitely, she'd helped Gene Vidal get the job. She not only helped Gene Vidal get the job, she helped him to keep the job because at one point, Washington being Washington, there were some senators that thought they had a better--better man for the job. And they were pressuring Franklin Roosevelt to fire Eugene Vidal, at which point--and at one point, Roosevelt actually issued an order saying--saying that he was going to fire Vidal and put in somebody else.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 51:08
  36 seconds

  And when Amelia heard about it, she sent a blistering telegram--it was just before the 1936 election, Franklin Roosevelt's second-term election. And Amelia Earhart sent a blistering telegram to Eleanor Roosevelt saying that--that if Franklin fired Gene Vidal, she wasn't going to go on--she wasn't going to campaign. Aside from all the other things that she disapproved and it was a bad thing to do, she said, `And furthermore, I'm not campaigning for Franklin if this goes through.'
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 51:44
  33 seconds

  So within 48 hours, Franklin Roosevelt was having lunch with Eugene Vidal's boss at the Department of Commerce, because the bureau of air commerce was at--was a subdepartment in the Department of-of Commerce, and--and--and he changed his mind. And--and within 48 hours, Am--Amelia is--is sending another telegram to Miss--to Eleanor Roosevelt saying, `Thanks very much. Appreciate your help.'
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 52:17
  8 seconds

  What was the date that they took off and where did they-which way did they head? Because you talk about the--you know, the title of your book, "East to the Dawn."
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 52:25
  42 seconds

  "East to the Dawn." They originally took off from California and it was going to Hawaii. And then from Hawaii, it was going to--but then--this is the last flight--and then there was an accident. Taking off--the first time that she started on their-her around-the-world flight, there was a--an accident as she took off for--for Howland Island from Honolulu. She ground looped and the plane was damaged, and by the time it was fixed, quite a bit of time had gone by and so weather patterns had changed and she decided to change the direction of her flight.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 53:07
  2 seconds

  In...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 53:09
  6 seconds

  So then she took off--when she started again, she t-she took off from Miami on June 1st.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 53:15
  1 second

  Nineteen...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 53:16
  1 second

  '37.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 53:17
  2 seconds

  The Electra?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 53:19
  1 second

  In the Electra.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 53:20
  1 second

  How many people were on board?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 53:21
  3 seconds

  Just herself and Fred Noonan.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 53:24
  2 seconds

  What was her relationship to Fred Noonan?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 53:26
  3 seconds

  Just good friends. No relationship.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 53:29
  8 seconds

  And when they took off, 27,000-mile trip, how many stops did they make before the crucial last flight?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 53:37
  2 seconds

  I have to tell you the truth, I've never counted them.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 53:39
  3 seconds

  Roughly, though. Would you--is 10 or 15 fli--stops?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 53:42
  1 second

  Oh, yeah. Fifteen, probably.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 53:43
  3 seconds

  Going which--where were their first stops out of Miami? Which way would they go?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 53:46
  5 seconds

  Their--their first--their first stop was--was San Juan, Puerto Rico.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 53:51
  1 second

  And then...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 53:52
  16 seconds

  Then they went down to South America; Venezuela, Natal and then across the--across to Africa. And then they flew across Africa and then they flew--flew...
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 54:08
  1 second

  Pakistan.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 54:09
  2 seconds

  ...Pakistan and...
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 54:11
  

  Yeah.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 54:11
  1 second

  ...all those countries whose...
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 54:12
  1 second

  India. I'm looking at it right now.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 54:13
  1 second

  And India.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 54:14
  6 seconds

  It's--but eventually, the last flight, where did it--where did they leave from when sh--when the plane went down?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 54:20
  3 seconds

  Oh, I'm sorry. Lae, New Guinea.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 54:23
  1 second

  Lae, New Guinea.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 54:24
  1 second

  Yes.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 54:25
  3 seconds

  How many days later was it? Do you remember? From the June 1st takeoff?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 54:28
  5 seconds

  It was--I think it was 28 days late--later.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 54:33
  3 seconds

  And had the plane been performing OK?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 54:36
  12 seconds

  They've had--they'd had minor difficulties with it. There'd been a couple of short circuits the--in the equipment. They'd had to go back several times when they were in Bandung, Indonesia.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 54:48
  2 seconds

  Was the--was the world paying attention to this?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 54:50
  9 seconds

  Yes. She was a syndicated columnist for the Herald Tribune and every single time she--she wrote a--a dispatch, it was on the front page of the Herald Tribune.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 54:59
  1 second

  I wrote...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 55:00
  1 second

  So the world was very much aware of it.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 55:01
  6 seconds

  I wrote somewhere where The New York Times, at one point, paid her $125,000. Is it for this flight or...
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 55:07
  2 seconds

  Not for that flight. No.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 55:09
  

  Oh, that was Herald Tribune.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 55:09
  2 seconds

  The--the--this was syndicated by the Herald Tribune.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 55:11
  2 seconds

  What in the end happened?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 55:13
  53 seconds

  In the end, nobody can--nobody can know for sure. It--except that--I mean, I--I--nobody can know the details for sure. But certainly what happened was that there was something wrong. Navigation in those years was not as exact as it is now. I think there was probably an equipment failure. She couldn't--she was not communicating with the people that she was supposed to on Howland Island. And the plane--she was circling. She was definitely circling. They were going north and south. They'd thought they'd gone far enough east and west. They thought they'd far--they'd--they'd gone far enough. And so they were going north and south--was the last communication. And somewhere, somehow, when the plane ran out of gas, they crashed into the sea.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 56:06
  1 second

  What was the world's reaction?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 56:07
  32 seconds

  The world's reaction was stunned amazement because she really had never had a problem before and they couldn't believe it. Her navigator was supposed to have been a very good navigator. He was a good navigator. Later, speculation has always centered on the fact that he might have been drinking because he had--did--he had an alcoholic past. However, Amelia was much too smart to have taken off with a--with a pilot that wasn't in--in shape. She was just too intelligent to do something like that.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 56:39
  5 seconds

  Did you ask her sister Muriel about--what her reaction was when she lost her sister?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 56:44
  3 seconds

  I didn't have to because she'd already put it down.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 56:47
  1 second

  Had she written a book herself?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 56:48
  2 seconds

  Yes. She's also written a book.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 56:50
  3 seconds

  What was the toughest thing for you in doing this book?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 56:53
  6 seconds

  The toughest thing. Cutting it down. I had so many more facts than I had room for.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 56:59
  2 seconds

  Going to do another book?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 57:01
  1 second

  Sure.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 57:02
  1 second

  What on?
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 57:03
  3 seconds

  I haven't decided. I'm still decompressing from Amelia.
  

• 

  LAMB

  At 57:06
  8 seconds

  Here's the cover of the book. It's called "East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart," and the author is Susan Butler. And we're out of time and we thank you.
  

• 

  BUTLER

  At 57:14
  46 seconds

  Thank you.