Monday, August 27, 2007&&
Romance and I
I was at first engaged to Samuel Chapman, a chemical engineer from Boston, breaking off the engagement on 23 November 1928. During the same period, George Putnam and I had spent a great deal of time together, leading to intimacy between us.
George Putnam, who was known as GP by all our friends, was divorced in 1929 and sought me out, proposing to me numerous times before I finally gave him my hand in marriage. After substantial hesitation on my part, we married on 7 February 1931 in George's mother's house in Noank, Connecticut. I referred to my marriage as a "partnership" with "dual control." In a letter written to George and hand delivered to him on the day of the wedding, I wrote to him, "I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. I just did not like the thought of being so clingly and so bound to marriage as if it were a contract of some sort.
My ideas on marriage were liberal for the time as I believed in equal responsibilities for both parties and pointedly kept my own name rather than being referred to as Mrs. Putnam. When The New York Times, per the rules of its stylebook, insisted on referring me to as Mrs. Putnam, I was so tickled by it that I laughed. GP also learned quite soon that he would be called "Mr. Earhart." There was no honeymoon for us, the newlyweds as I was involved in a nine-day cross-country tour promoting autogyros and the tour sponsor, "Beechnut Gum."
Although we had no children together, he had two sons by his previous marriage to Dorothy Binney (1888-1982), a chemical heiress whose father's company, Binney & Smith, invented Crayola crayons , the coolest kid thing on earth at that time! The two boys were rather fine children and were named David Binney Putnam(1913-1992) and George Palmer Putnam, Jr. (born 1921 ). I was especially fond of David who frequently visited George at our family home in Rye, New York. George had contracted polio shortly after his parents' separation and was unable to visit as often.
making history.
7:27 AM
