The Deans' Bible. Angie Klink
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