“Amelia is probably the first lady of the land, or I should say, first lady of the air in the United States now, since her solo trans-Atlantic flight on May 20, 1932. It was fitting that she should make her flight on the fifth anniversary of Lindbergh’s flight to Europe, because she’s always been called the Lady Lindy. She looks like him, you know—long, lean, blonde, with a shock of unruly curly hair, and a shy, contagious smile. She has even his modest nature, and the ability to win the hearts of everybody with whom she comes in contact. “The solo flight wasn’t Amelia Earhart’s first trip across the ocean by plane. You remember her first flight, when she went as a passenger on the Stultz-Gordon flight in 1928. She’s the first person now who has ever crossed the ocean twice through the air. Amelia is a real pioneer—she must have adventure and excitement in life—that’s why she gave up social service work, and made flying her profession. It wasn’t easy for her to learn to fly—she just had evenings and Sundays to get in her practice flights, but she stuck to it, and finally had a sufficient number of hours in the air to get her pilot’s license. Of course, she is interested in the progress of aviation. Everybody who flies has this interest at heart—but the love of adventure is uppermost in her mind when she makes her record flights. “It was that that sent her across the Atlantic, through storms and sleet and fog, with no thought of turning back, in spite of decided defects in her motor that threatened to land her in the middle of the ocean and send her to certain death. “There wasn’t much publicity before her flight. Since it was going to be for her own satisfaction, she wanted to keep it to herself. She took off quietly from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland. The weather was fairly good, but when she got out a few hours, she met with the same terrifying flying conditions that her solo predecessor, Lindbergh, had. Fog enveloped her plane. She could not see in front of her, or to either side. Ice formed on the wings of her plane, and threatened to break them off. Gradually the temperature rose, and the ice melted. But new dangers threatened. A weld in the exhaust manifold broke, and the manifold vibrated badly; leaks sprang in the reserve gas tanks in the cockpit, and then—the altimeter broke. “Now the altimeter, as I suppose you all know, records the altitude at which the plane is flying. Amelia Earhart had never flown without one, and now she realized the hazards of not knowing how high she was flying through the fog. Sometimes she would drop so low that she came suddenly out of the fog, but so close to the water she could see the white caps on the surface.