A man came running out from the cottage. When he reached the plane, breathless, Amelia said to him, “I’m from America.”
It took awhile for the farmer to understand: a woman, from America, flying the Atlantic, all alone? He shook his head in disbelief.
As they walked to his cottage, Amelia learned that she had landed in Culmore, Ulster, near Londonderry, the city she had circled. There was no mistaking that she was in Ireland: the accent of the farmer, and his name, Patrick Gallagher, were sufficient proof. Amelia asked to be taken to the nearest telephone.
Gallagher commandeered a neighbor’s car and drove her to The Elms, the home of Mrs. Francis McClure, five miles down the road. Amelia put through her call.
“I did it!” she said to GP in New York; then she told him about the altimeter, and the tachometer, and the gas leak, and the broken manifold.
George Putnam thanked God that she had made it safely.
Amelia then returned with Gallagher to his home. He asked her if she were tired, if she wanted to sleep.
“I haven’t slept since Friday morning,” she told him. “But I don’t feel the least bit fatigued.”
She slept until the next day.
Amelia Earhart had become what she was in the eyes of her public—the great American woman flier. She had regained her self-respect; she was no longer what she considered a “phony heroine.” The eighteen tons of ticker tape and torn telephone books that had greeted Lindbergh five years before in New York could now scatter down on her. She had paid her debt. She was now ready to play the part of a true heroine. A smooth lyrical grace, the romantic quest of old, and the chivalric spirit of adventure had now combined in the boyishly slender figure of—this time—a woman. Like the lone eagle who preceded her, Amelia acted with ease, modest self-effacement, and exemplary good manners, becoming a good-will ambassador for America.