Recalling Amelia Earhart’s 1936 lecture at Princeton High School

News stories published toward the end of January have told the world about the possible discovery of pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart’s long-lost airplane on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.

Whether it turns out to be true or not remains to be seen, but for local residents, the news brings to mind Princeton’s brush with the famed female pilot about 88 years ago.

Fifteen months before she disappeared during her attempted around-the-world flight, Earhart found herself on a lecture tour that brought her to the Princeton High School auditorium.

“The lure of flying is the lure of beauty,” the 38-year-old pilot told a Bureau Valley Civic League audience on Tuesday evening, April 7, 1936.

Earhart – 5-foot-8, slim, gray-eyed, with fair, wavy hair kept short – had racked up a series of impressive aviation firsts ahead of her Princeton appearance. Wearing a brown crepe dress with a satin jacket and egg shell trim, Earhart “impressed her listeners as much with her charm as with her intellect,” according to a story in the Bureau County Republican.

“Her voice was well modulated and her stage presence most pleasing,” the Bureau County Republican reported, adding an admiring nod to her “keen sense of humor.”

Earhart tickets were the hottest item in town that April evening. The Civic League, in a BCR story the previous week, sternly announced it had to refuse numerous requests for tickets from nonmembers eager to see the first woman to fly the Atlantic alone and the first person to solo over the Pacific from Honolulu to California.

In those days, about 1,000 people could fit in the PHS auditorium. Those fortunate enough to gain admittance heard Earhart tell of her flights “on starlit nights, through billowy clouds, as well as during rain storms, and in daylight over water and landscape.”

Ironically, Earhart drove, not flew, to Princeton for her 8:15 p.m. appearance, having arrived late in the afternoon. She was in the midst of a busy lecture tour. During the previous six months, according to the BCR, she had traveled to 30 states from Massachusetts to California, averaging 4,000 miles of driving a month. Biographer Susan Butler writes that Earhart was paid $300 a lecture.

Earhart, who was introduced by Dr. K.M. Nelson of Princeton, made two key points during her lecture: first, that aviation would and indeed must play an increasingly important role in America’s commercial and social life.

“She states that her flights as well as those of other air explorers all help to build more firmly the foundation on which future aeronautic development rests,” the BCR reported.

Second, Earhart called on women, through aviation and other non-traditional fields, to advance above and beyond society’s limited expectations in the 1930s.

“Women should strive for goals outside of what is ridiculously known as their sphere, if they are to become persons. Women must do for themselves what men have already done for themselves,” she said.

While it was not widely known, Earhart was making plans to fly around the world at the time of her Princeton lecture. On July 24, less than four months later, she took possession of a brand new twin-engine Lockheed Electra 10E airplane in California – the same plane which, the following year, carried her and navigator Fred Noonan more than 22,000 miles on their ill-fated journey. They disappeared over the Pacific en route from New Guinea to Howland Island on July 2, 1937. Separate searches organized by the U.S. Navy and George Putnam, Earhart’s husband, proved fruitless.

Wrapping up her lecture at PHS, Earhart described how she typically got ready for her epic air journeys.

“The speaker declared that two-thirds of the success of any expedition depends upon the preparation, and that in all of her major flights she confers with a technical adviser who is usually a pilot in whom she has confidence,” the BCR reported.

“Miss Earhart also maintains that since mental hazards are one of the greatest obstacles, all worrying should be done at least two months before the expedition gets underway, and in the line of worry, it has always been her endeavor to overcome, not overlook, risks.”

For Amelia Earhart, greatness as a pioneering aviator and advocate for women is her lasting legacy. For Princeton, the story of its brush with Earhart’s greatness is worth remembering.

Author’s note: Sources for this article are Bureau County Republican archives; “East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart,” by Susan Butler; “The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart” by Mary S. Lovell; the 1927 PHS Tiger yearbook; and Wikipedia.

• Jim Dunn, who retired as editor and general manager of the Bureau County Republican in 2020, is president of the Bureau County History Center Board.