Married Life

Here is some more great info I gathered off of links I found on the national aviation website. The first two paragraphs detail the business woman side of Amelia:



"The year 1929 became an even busier one for Earhart. The flier sold her Avian and bought a used Lockheed Vega airplane. According to Susan Butler’s biography, East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart, the used plane performed so poorly that Lockheed replaced it with a new one. Earhart used the newer plane to finish third in the first Women’s Air Derby race (from Santa Monica to Cleveland). She also became General Traffic Manager for Transcontinental Air Transport (which later became Trans World Airlines).
In 1930, Earhart took on even more business responsibilities. She took a public relations post with the Pennsylvania Railroad; helped to found the New York, Philadelphia, and Washington Airway Corporation; and became vice president of Ludington Airlines. In July, she set the world speed record for women by flying over 181 miles per hour, but could not enjoy this success for long because in September she lost her father to stomach cancer. However, in December, she became the first woman in America to fly an autogiro. (This type of aircraft is supported in flight by rotating, non-powered horizontal wings while a conventional propeller provides forward movement.)"

I have wondered about the relationship between George Putnam and Amelia and this excerpt gave me an insight into what their relationship might have been like:


"When George Putnam first met Earhart, he was married to Dorothy Binney, part of a wealthy family that owned Binney & Smith, a chemical company in Peekskill, New York. (This company later moved to Easton, Pennsylvania and has long been famous not for creating chemicals, but Crayola crayons!) However, the Putnams divorced in 1929, and in February 1931 Putnam and Earhart married. Students of Earhart continue to debate how intimate the marriage was. After all, on her wedding day, the flier told Putnam in writing, among other things, “In our life together I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly . . . . Please let us not interfere with each other’s work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements.” After marrying, she also had a romantic relationship with Eugene Vidal—military officer, public servant under Franklin Roosevelt, and the father of the contemporary writer Gore Vidal. Whatever the marriage was like, Putnam avidly promoted his wife’s career (while keeping himself in the public eye too)."