Pull of the Past

Pull of the Past

Robb Report, December 2001

A vintage aircraft collector recreates Amelia Earhart's original cross-country taildragger flight.

An airplane, especially an antique airplane, a 1927 biplane built of wood and fabric and luck, is an idea with wings. The idea lives in each spar and brace, in every particle of imagination and know-how and tinkering that brought it all together and keeps it alive. And like any idea, it has the power to make things happen.

Early this year, an Avro Avian biplane lured Greg Herrick, of Wyoming, halfway across the world to Australia, and planted an idea in his mind. Herrick collects vintage aircraft, and when this rare bird came on the market, he was eager to check it out. The seller mentioned that Amelia Earhart had flown an Avian on a pleasure trip across the United States in 1928. Although Earhart's Avian has "melted away into history," Herrick says, this one was nearly identical to it.

The Avian was the oldest flying airplane in Australia when Herrick bought it, and it was with mixed emotions that he shipped it to the States. But the idea had taken root. "I saw a chance to renew an interest in Amelia's life beyond just that last flight," said Herrick. The mystery of her disappearance over the Pacific -- along with her navigator, Fred Noonan, while on a round-the-world flight in 1937 -- has overshadowed the story of her pioneering career and her role as an advocate for women's rights.

Herrick decided to re-create Earhart's round-robin jaunt in the Avian. He'd find a female pilot to fly it, and she would stop at all the same airports, eat the same meals, even stay in the same hotels that Earhart did. He hoped that besides being a great adventure, the project would celebrate Earhart's true legacy, and maybe sell a few books for his publishing company, HistoricAviation.com. But along the way, unforeseeable events lent a deeper significance to the meaning of Earhart's spirit in today's world.

***

A vintage airplane is like a time machine, recreating the era in which it was born. In 1927, when the Avian was brand-new, flying was a dangerous adventure, known by few but the bold and brave. Earhart and the other female pilots of her day defied the odds, forging their way in a man's world in a time when most women had few opportunities in life. The Avian has no radio, no lights, no electrical system. It's tricky to fly, tossed like a kite when the air aloft gets bumpy, finicky to land if the wind is blowing across the runway. The tiny cockpit is open to the wind and sky. It's the embodiment of romance.

Romantic notions filled the head of Carlene Mendieta, when as a child in the 1960s, she watched Piper Cubs fly above the ranchlands of Nevada. She put aside those notions to follow a practical career as a periodontist in California, but when a colleague took her flying in his own Cub, she rediscovered her youthful fascination. Soon she had her pilot's license and five vintage aircraft of her own. And when Herrick called last March to ask if she would play the part of Amelia Earhart and fly the Avian on its 5,500-mile journey, he was heartened by her response. "I was ready to do a lot of convincing," he said. "But after about two minutes, she said she'd do it."

It turned out, serendipitously, that Mendieta had much in common with Earhart. Her total flying experience, about 300 hours, is about the same as Earhart had at the time of her flight. She's long and lanky, with a short-cropped hairstyle and a friendly smile. "Perfect," says Herrick. "Right out of Central Casting." And all of Mendieta's flight time is in vintage aircraft. She flies from a grass field, without a radio or modern navigation equipment. The trip would be her first long solo cross-country, just as it had been for Earhart. "It was like a pipe dream," Mendieta says of that first, unexpected phone call. "It didn't seem real." But soon it was clear that it was really happening, and Mendieta never backed out.

Amelia Earhart's 1928 flight was a vacation, a "vagabonding" trip with no fixed itinerary. Just a few months earlier, she'd been a social worker in Boston, trying to scrape together money to indulge her flying habit on the weekends. An unexpected phone call -- much like Herrick's to Mendieta -- invited her to consider an aeronautical adventure. Earhart signed on to join a project that would make her the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air. She went along as a "sack of potatoes," as she put it. Male pilots flew the airplane while she kept the log, but it was a dangerous flight and she landed to a hero's welcome. A few months later, after writing a quick-to-press book about the experience, she took off on the cross-country trip. Her only goal was to enjoy flying her new Avian.

***

Just after sunrise, on a clear, chilly September morning in Westchester County, New York, Carlene Mendieta folds her long, jodphured legs into the cramped cockpit of the little biplane. The top of her head barely pokes above the fuselage. Greg Herrick grabs an edge of the propeller, with the prudent stance of a pilot who knows props can bite. "Hot!" "Off!" "Contact!" they call to each other, as Herrick shoves the prop and jumps back, time after time after time. After ten tries, the propeller spins to life, and Mendieta's short red hair is whipped by the slipstream till she slides on her leather flying helmet.

For Mendieta, this is when the good part starts. Already this morning she's run the media gauntlet, patiently answering questions during a brief press conference, quietly ignoring the photographers who shadowed her as she diligently checked the airplane and her navigation charts. "My two biggest fears going into this were, first, talking on the aircraft radio, because I never use a radio," she said, the day before the launch. "And then the media, because I'm a very private non-media kind of person." Both turned out to be more manageable than she expected. "Everyone in the press has just been genuinely interested and very kind to me," she said. "I haven't been dogged, or challenged. It's been like talking to friends." Now, alone in her "sauntering, go-for-a-nice-little-ride kind of airplane," she takes off and heads west, exactly as Earhart did so many years ago.

"We flight-planned for 82 miles an hour," says Herrick. They've allowed three weeks for the trip, with some down time in California so Mendieta can see patients. "The issue really is headwinds. Unlike Amelia, we do have a schedule that we're trying to keep, though that will probably go right out the window." The aim, after all, is to educate the public about Earhart's life and career. That means showing up at air shows along the way, meeting with flying clubs and school kids and the media, passing out thousands of little blue pamphlets that tell the story of "Amelia Earhart and her Avro Avian," autographs, interviews, photo shoots.

Keeping the schedule depends on two things: weather and equipment. The Avian's wooden propeller can delaminate if it gets wet. Hail or even a heavy downpour can damage the delicate fabric skin that covers the fuselage. So if weather looms, the Avian needs to land quickly and find a safe place to wait it out. In case of mechanical glitches, Herrick carries spare engine parts in the single-engine Cessna 182 that he'll fly along the route. If the fuselage needs repair, he knows plenty of experts to call in various parts of the country, and in a pinch, "there's always duct tape." One setback they couldn't have imagined: that all private airplanes would be grounded for days on end by the federal government, and for the first time in nearly 100 years, Americans would look up into an empty sky.

***

"The plane was running beautifully, we'd had no real problems mechanically, we were on schedule, we had a little bit of weather in Muskogee... We couldn't have asked for it to go any better than it had been going. Plus we were all having a really good time," Mendieta said from her office in California. "It was so clear and beautiful in New Mexico, I wasn't flying more than 300 feet above the ground. The tractors were out plowing and the drivers would wave. It's the best flying there is, there's nothing better. I was feeling so lucky to live in such a beautiful country."

Mendieta, Herrick, and their crew spent the night in Hobbs, New Mexico, the middle of nowhere. On Tuesday morning -- September 11 -- they were pulling the airplanes out of the hangar when someone from the control tower came down to tell them, roll them back in. No airplanes would take off that day, or the day after. Nobody could say when they would be allowed to fly again. Stuck in limbo, Mendieta and Herrick decided to shift their schedule, go home till the ban was lifted, and try to catch up later.

Mendieta's thoughts, as she worked in California and waited for the okay to fly again, kept returning to the kids. All along her route, the flight had been greeted by schoolchildren, just learning about history, just opening up to the idea that important things had happened before they were born. Now they were living through a moment in their own history, of awful events they would never forget. "I think the best tribute we could give to all the people who lost their lives," Mendieta said, "is to make the world continue on, in a sane way. I hope someday these kids will think, well, it was very scary, but then these people just flew off in their tiny old airplane, and it made me realize that, yeah, we can just keep going. I just hope it generates that kind of a feeling."

***

After ten days on the ground, the flight resumed from Hobbs, with a renewed sense of purpose. In Pecos, three people who had been there 73 years earlier to see Amelia Earhart arrived to greet Mendieta. They were invited to sign their names on the Avian's wing, a tradition begun early in the trip. The local second graders brought Mendieta a bouquet of red, white, and blue carnations. The itinerary was tweaked to avoid the airspace restrictions still in place, but the flight continued on to California, then back across Wyoming and Nebraska, to Chicago and Cleveland, and finally back to Westchester County, New York, on a glowing fall afternoon.

"It was beautiful, we couldn't have had it better," said Mendieta, back in California two days later, getting back to work, back to her life. "I can hardly believe that it happened, it's almost like it was a wonderful dream."

Amelia Earhart once said, "Pilots are always dreaming dreams." Her obsession was to bring those dreams into reality -- an idea with wings strong enough to fly for a long time yet.