‘Aviatrix’ Earhart twice flew through B-N area

The internationally renowned aviatrix was in the Twin Cities not once but twice — the last time a little more than a year before her ill-fated flight that ended in one of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century.

For her first visit, May 31, 1931, Earhart made an unexpected stopover at the Bloomington Airport, then located several miles north of Normal. She had attended the Indianapolis 500 the day before and was headed to the Pacific coast. “Her coming was a double sensation for she piloted the first autogiro ship to visit the local field,” noted The Pantagraph at the time. “Cameras clicked” as the celebrity pilot ordered 30 gallons of gasoline for her “queer craft.”

Born in Atchison, Kan. in 1897, Earhart already held a fistful of aviation records. In June 1928, for instance, she became the first woman — albeit accompanied by a pilot and pilot/mechanic — to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. And on May 20, 1932, one year after her initial visit to this area, she made the same oceanic flight, but this time all alone.

Earhart’s second Bloomington-area visit, April 6-7, 1936, included an overnight stay at the Illinois Hotel (today known as the Illinois House) on the Courthouse Square, and a lecture titled “Aviation Adventures” at the old Coliseum.

Invited by the Business and Professional Women’s Club, Earhart arrived not by air but rather by automobile. Traveling alone, the 38-year-old aviator was seen pulling up to the hotel in a small blue coupe and honking for the bellboy to take her bags. “She wore no hat on her tousled blond head,” reported The Pantagraph. “Her brown gabardine suit was a three-piece affair, slim and tailored, worn with a brown-and-white polka dot blouse and white collar.”

The following day, after her Coliseum lecture the night before, she toured the east side Bloomington Municipal Airport. Opened in October 1934, its paved runways were a marked improvement over the soggy turf of the old north Normal airport. While there, she took a ride in “Scoop,” The Pantagraph’s airplane.

After this Bloomington visit, Earhart made public appearances in Princeton and Macomb before meeting her husband, George Palmer Putnam in Chicago. The two were then scheduled to travel to West Lafayette, Ind., where Earhart served as a visiting faculty member of Purdue University’s aviation department.

During her talk at the Bloomington Coliseum, Earhart explained how she coped with the inevitable jitters before her many acts of aviation adventurism,  such as becoming, in January 1935, the first person to fly solo from Hawaii (Honolulu) to the U.S. mainland (Oakland, Calif.). “I have my own philosophy of worry,” she said. “All worry must be finished two months before an expedition sets off. If the goal is not worth it, give up the plan, but never worry. Hamlet would have made a poor pilot, because he was such a worrier.”

There already was considerable talk about Earhart circumnavigating the globe. “The announcement that I am to make a flight around the world in June is erroneous,” she told The Pantagraph. “I am booked for lectures until May 1, and one doesn’t plan a world trip in 30 days.”

Plans, though, were eventually made, and on June 1, 1937, Earhart and crew member Fred Noonan embarked on a globe-spanning flight in a modified twin-engine Lockheed Electra 10E. On July 2, the two pilots and their plane were lost during an attempt to reach tiny Howland Island in the Central Pacific.

This summer, a privately financed expedition will undertake a 10-day search for the Lockheed Electra wreckage using underwater robotic equipment. This latest effort was spurred by analysis of a 1937 aerial photograph showing what might just be the landing gear of Earhart’s plane sticking out of the waters off remote Nikumaroro Island.

During her 1936 lecture in Bloomington, Earhart charmed the audience with her self-deprecating humor. The Pantagraph noted her talk began with a “lively account of mistaken identity, which makes the famous flyer feel that sometimes she does not know who she is, and who she is not.” Earhart recalled a recent incident in which a man struggled to recognize her. “Try the air,” she said, hoping the clue would jar his memory. “Oh yes,” he exclaimed. “I hear you every week. You’re Gracie Allen!”