Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 17, 1994 TAG: 9405170099
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Rick Lindquist
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Mother's girlhood enchantment with the aviator may explain why she wasn't like everybody else's mom back in the Father-Knows-Best days when my two brothers and I were growing up.
Mother never got to see how the folks at The Gap exploited Earhart's likeness to help them sell khakis, but I think she might have gotten a kick out of the ad. Only on rare occasions do I recall Mother wearing anything but jeans or slacks - if she wasn't wearing shorts. Those were the times she was in her nurse's uniform (they were always dresses back then), or when she and my dad went out for an evening on the town.
Suffice it to say that cosmetics and fashions were not high on Mother's list of priorities. Something tells me they probably weren't on Earhart's either.
Once I recall her giggling about the sight of the minister's wife in hat and white gloves pushing her grocery cart. In 1958, she was probably the only one in the store who viewed it as remarkable.
Mother admitted to being a bit of a tomboy (is that term PC anymore?) who embraced the outdoors and loved horses. An impressionable Massachusetts teen-ager around the time of Earhart's earliest aeronautical escapades, Mother got her student pilot's license. Her beau in those days, a seasoned flier named Joe Garside, took her under his wing, so to speak.
I don't think her mother approved, though. Eventually, that and the Depression grounded her. She never took up flying again, but she reveled in telling about her and Joe's adventures in his low-wing monoplane. The U.S. space program fascinated her.
Like Earhart, Mother always charted her own course. To my mind, at least, she was nothing like her brother or sister, or even her own mother. In an era when many newlyweds went to Niagra Falls, Mother and Dad went camping in Maine. Later, while most of my friends' moms were modeling themselves after June Cleaver, Mother maintained a career. She worked the 3-11 p.m. shift, so we were the original latchkey kids in our neighborhood. (Actually, the door was never locked back in those days, and we lived within view of the New York City skyline.)
In an offbeat way, Mother was a trendsetter. In addition to being an R.N., she collected pets, most of them fairly exotic. She was aided and abetted by my brothers and me. We had skunks (de-scented), ferrets (long before they became a fad), a crow, a sparrow hawk (with an injured wing), a mynah bird, various parakeets, a cat and two very large great danes who went everywhere with us.
While other women in the neighborhood gossiped over coffee, Mother worked toward certification as a Library of Congress registered braillist. Later, she transcribed children's books.
She taught herself the Morse code, just for fun. (Ironically, Earhart never did, and some historians say that lack was a factor in her disappearance.)
Later in life, after she and my dad had migrated to Maine, she took up spinning and weaving, which led to a small flock of sheep (or maybe it was the other way around). A small chicken flock began with a hen she rescued after it fell from a poultry truck. Her pet goose, Max, outlived her by several years.
Mother met Amelia Earhart just once. One Wednesday evening in June of 1932 - right after her high school graduation - the Boston chapter of the National Aeronautic Association feted Earhart, who'd just flown the Atlantic and was preparing to be the first woman to solo nonstop across the United States. (The chapter president at the time was a woman, Lorraine Defren Frankland.)
The guests dined on cantaloupe, broiled native chicken, au gratin potatoes and new spring beans. There was strawberry shortcake for dessert. Those dishes were among Mother's favorites.
A now dog-eared program from that night at the Hotel Lenox bears Earhart's autograph on its face in black ink, a simple, short underline its sole flourish. Although already married to George Putnam, she signed "Amelia Earhart," the names merging as one.
I don't know if they spoke, if Earhart encouraged Mother's airborne activities, or if they touched or shook hands.
Although no one knows for certain what became of Earhart, some of her spirit lived on in my mother - and in other women of her generation. Perhaps others will catch some of Earhart's essence now that the spotlight has begun to shift somewhat away from what became of her to what she represented as both a woman and as an individual who was modern beyond her time.
by CNB