I have waited twenty years to write this story.
My grandmother Dorothy Binney Putnam’s life had always seemed so ideal, without pain or hardship—I thought.
All of that changed, however, when—at the age of eighty-two—she entrusted me with her private diaries, ten 3 by 5 leather-bound books, spanning the years 1907–61. “These are for you, Sally,” she told me. “You have always wanted the family history, and my place in it. I believe you are ready for them, dear.” Fighting back a rush of tears, I lowered my head and felt her hand against my face. “Yes, dear, you may use these diaries in your book.” The yellowed pages revealed a strong, cursive script, even though the indigo ink was often smudged, bleeding through to the other side. Amid her words, I discovered four-leaf clovers, notes, and faded photographs. It was a treasure trove of intimate memories and observations, which has become the heartbeat of Whistled Like a Bird. Excerpts from the diaries appear in italics throughout the text.
Simply put, she was the most remarkable person I have ever known.
The journals—complete with her own secret codes, which I later deciphered—began while she was a college student and detailed her private reflections, including the time of her highly visible marriage to America’s most powerful publisher, George Palmer Putnam; her friendship with the world’s most celebrated heroine, Amelia Mary Earhart; and her passionate love affair with a younger man, which ultimately gave her the strength to end her troubled sixteen-year marriage. In questioning her marital commitment, she wrote: “Love—Why is it there are so many men who consider love outside the bonds of matrimony the privilege of the male only? There are so many.” However, while the world was aware of George and Amelia, my grandmother led a deeply private life.
Her thoughts remained within her heart and her diary. Few outsiders realized that in the midst of the record-breaking events achieved by Amelia Earhart, there had developed a poignant love story between Dorothy and George Wey-mouth, a student at Yale University who was nineteen years younger.
At the same time, Amelia Earhart and my grandfather George Putnam had fallen in love, and “Dofry”—the nickname we called our grandmother—chose not to fight for her husband.
Years before Dofry was willing to share the truth with the world, she wrote a brief note to me, saying: “I refused to be the workhorse in the background any longer, and besides, there was another woman in the background. A.E.”
Dofry was a sensuous woman, and I remember her eyes as blue and clear as a hot Florida sky. Her figure was statuesque, her stately stride bold. But it was her words that pulled you in like a warm embrace. She had the same seductive effect on men and women alike.
She married four times and was fearless in her pursuit of passion, yet surprisingly insecure.
Fortunately for Dofry, she was a woman of means. Her father had invented the Crayola crayon, so she was not dependent on any man for her own financial security or identity.
In releasing George Putnam to Amelia Earhart, my grandmother embarked on her own flight to freedom. And while the world was showering the boyish-looking aviatrix with fame, my grandmother was equally heroic for the times. What I had never known about Dofry growing up was her fierce struggle for independence. Her pursuit of fulfillment was a risky endeavor in its own way, and an uncelebrated flight from the home-and-garden security she had treasured.
As a child, I was fascinated by Amelia and her relationship with our family. She had given my father his first flying lessons and the image of Amelia the aviator was etched in my girlhood vision. I was a freckle-faced, towheaded tomboy who climbed trees rather than practiced the piano. Small wonder—it was the famous flyer who was my idol.
Toward the end of the war, I recall my dad buzzing our house in a B-25 bomber, waving his wings. When I reached sixteen and learned to fly, I did the same thing to him, in a small yellow Piper Cub. My flying career ended, however, when I left home for college. Before long, marriage and family replaced my wild lust for the sky. Yet still today the mystery of flight causes me to look up at the sound of a plane.
Although “Grandpa George” is portrayed by biographers as a dour, insensitive promoter, interested only in pursuing his career, I remember him as a magical storyteller, who fished with me on the Indian River and climbed to the top of my rickety treehouse. He died when I was thirteen, so I was too young to know of his feelings for my grandmother. But I know now, from reading her private diaries, how deeply he loved her and how wrenching their divorce was, despite the public perception that Amelia Earhart had stolen him away from her. This was simply not the truth. In fact, quite the opposite; Amelia gave Dofry the excuse she needed.
I decided to write this book when my grandmother was still alive. Many years before her death, we spoke openly about my intentions. We talked for hours on the open loggia, she in her hammock and I seated on a blue wooden stool. I marveled at her willingness to respond, the directness in her eyes when my questions strayed into painful territories. To Dofry, I had finally come of age and was a companion more than a granddaughter. To her, I was a woman who could empathize with her past.
It wasn’t until my husband, Jack, and I bought and renovated her historic Florida home, Immokolee, that Whistled Like a Bird began to unfold. I can feel her presence within these walls. By entrusting me with her diaries, there was an implicit understanding that her story would be told; and as the house came to life again, so did my grandparents and their dazzling array of friends and lovers.
Amelia may have inspired my dreams as a child, but it was my grandmother who led me back as an adult to Immokolee, “my home place.”
—Sally Putnam Chapman
“No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.”
—WILLIAM BLAKE