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| Above: The Corvallis Klan parades in downtown Albany with its sister chapter |
Corvallis, Oregon's George Putnam: 'Mr. Amelia Earhart'
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Amelia Earhart says
goodbye to her husband George Palmer Putnam in Miami prior to her
departure on June 1, 1937. Reading George Putnam's accounts of Earhart, one might not
know he had a life apart from Amelia's. In reality, he edited several
Oregon newspapers and he had some harrowing years crusading against the Ku Klux Klan when it was strong in Oregon.
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...all around us were checkered with gold when AE stopped her car at a traffic light. The wheels were still rolling just a trifle when a man —an old man, ragged, weary, pale—stepped out from the curb. He had been old a longtime. It was evident be was used to being hungry, yet as evident that it was still difficult for him to ask people for money for food.
Before be could quite get the words out, and though my hand was already on the way to a pocket, the lights changed and our car was being impelled with the stream. Words which had been so bard in coming floated after us.
It’s hard to get old...so hard.“The man spoke simply, without bitterness.
At the next corner, saying nothing, AE swung her car out of the line of traffic, off Flatbush Avenue into the side Street, around the block and back into traffic just above where the old man had stepped out.
But the evening crowds were thickening, and though she looked all along the sidewalk where be had been, she couldn’t See him. We went home, and nothing more was said about the o1d man through dinner or the evening.
But later, when the world was closed down and still, Amelia said. “It is hard to be old – so hard. I’m afraid 1’ll hate it. Hate to grow old.”
She was quiet for some minutes.
And then, as one who may be imagining or simply comprehending a fact, she said slowly, “I think probably, GP, that I’ll not live to be old.”
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| "The tapering loveliness of her hands was almost unbelievable , found in one who did the things she did." - George Putnam in his biography of Amelia Earhart, Soaring Wings |
- from George Putnam, Soaring Wings