The Truth of It by Brian Carland

Author:Brian Carland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: eleanor roosevelt, fdr, george putnam, amelia earhart, womens rights, first woman, solo flight, 1930s aviation, aviatrix, roundtheworld, atlantic flight, 1930s politics
Publisher: Brian Carland

1931

NOANK, CONNECTICUT—FEBRUARY 7, 1931

As I write this journal entry I sit by a window in the little front bedroom of Frances Putnam's house. Below me Noank is spread in all its picturesque Christmas card quaintness. Snow covered cottages with straight gray plumes rising from brick chimneys. Heavy boughed pine trees. In the harbor all the boats battened down for winter. Beyond, in the sound, I can make out the ferry ridding across light choppy waves toward New London. If I could suddenly

transport myself from this bedroom, with its cozy quilts and antique dresser to the deck of the ferry, I'd do so. I am about to do the craziest, riskiest, thing of my life. Flying the Atlantic, pushing my new Vega up to 197 MPH for a world record, those events don't even compare.

In something less than a half-hour I'll be married. To George Palmer Putnam. He's about to gather another title. Publisher, adventurer, author, manager, friend of the famous and the powerful. Now the husband of Amelia Earhart. Will I be just another feather in his cap? That's what really scares me. I fear I'll lose something of myself in our marriage. And, having so recently found myself I don't want to let any of me go. But, as GP has repeatedly pointed out during his yearlong pursuit of me, I stand to gain something also.

I've always had the reputation, even from my school days, as a loner. No one, no matter how strong, can stand alone all the time. It's part of being a human being that we need others. Most of my life I had no one to turn to. My father was an alcoholic, whose intentions, although good, generally dissolved in booze. Mater was a Victorian lady, more concerned with social appearances than silly concepts such as happiness and individual achievement. Pidge had married a ner-do-well type, and seemed determined to repeat the unhappiness of our childhood in her own home. Sam Chapman's support was always patronizing and grudging.

But with GP it's different. He really, I'm convinced, backs me 100%. And not just professionally, but personally as well. He makes it clear in every word and action that my triumph is his—and that my failures are felt as keenly by him as by me. Who could ask for more?

Still, it's taken me a month from my conversation with CB Allen and Deke Lyman to make my decision. In the end I felt I had to try for personal happiness, even if I risked further submerging my professional life in the deep pool of George Palmer Putnam's ego, with its inexhaustible supply of publicity schemes. I can't say my mind is as assured as Allen and Lyman told me it needed to be. I've made sure I left myself an out, in case I should need it.

I've just sent a letter downstairs to GP. I sit at the window watching the ferry ride the waves in Long Island Sound as I wait for a reply. I want

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