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If a woman you barely know called to ask if you would like to go with her to a distant city, how should a gentleman respond?

By saying: “Heck, yes.”

Soon after such a phone call in 1929, Robert D. (Dick) Douglas Jr., of Greensboro, strapped himself into a strange aircraft, an Autogyro, with Amelia Earhart at the controls.

The aviator (or aviatrix, as she was called) remains one of America’s most iconic, mysterious figures seven decades after she disappeared in 1937 while attempting to circle the globe.

She’s portrayed in a new movie, “Amelia.”

To this day, the debate, conjecture and rumors continue about how she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, vanished in the central Pacific.

Douglas, a 97-year-old lawyer who still practices in Greensboro, plans to see “Amelia.” He hopes Hollywood does her right.

He remembers a polite, modest, generous, ever-curious woman who was about 29 or 30 when they met. He devoted a chapter to her in his 1994 autobiography, “The Best 90 Years of My Life.”

Earhart was tall and lean with short blond hair. Douglas and others have noted that when Earhart dressed in her khaki flying pants, leather jacket, helmet and goggles, “she looked exactly like Lindbergh.”

The public often called her “Lady Lindy” after Charles Lindbergh, who in 1927, was the first to fly the Atlantic solo. Earhart was the first woman to do so in 1932, after a 1928 flight across the ocean with two men, another pilot and a mechanic.

Earhart wrote about the adventure in her book, “20 Hours 40 Minutes,” published in the fall of 1928. Douglas had co-written a book about his 1927 adventures as a Boy Scout in Africa, with follow-up books on about his trips to Alaska and to explore volcanos.

His books and her book were published by George Putnam, who married Earhart in 1931. Earhart first met the 19-year-old Douglas in Pittsburgh at a joint book signing.

“She and I sat at each end of a table signing,” he says. “ We went to lunch together, talking about this or that.”

At the end of the day, she autographed a book for him, writing, “To Dick, in memory of our book signing in Pittsburgh. You read mine and I’ll read yours.”

A few years later, Earhart called Douglas, then a senior at Georgetown University. She was in Washington and knew Douglas planned to visit her husband at the couple’s home in Rye, N.Y., that weekend to discuss a book project. Would he like to fly with her rather than take the train?

Douglas didn’t hesitate. He was an adventurer, too.

He met her at the Washington airport in her Autogyro, decorated with Beech-Nut Chewing Gum ads.

The plane was a forerunner of the helicopter. A propeller lifted it off the ground; an engine in the nose then kicked in and powered the plane. It needed only about 100 yards of runway to land.

This was one of about four trips, the only one by air, Douglas made to the Putnam home. Between business talks with Putnam, he had plenty of time to chat with Miss Earhart, (who didn’t like being called Mrs. Putnam).

She was curious about his life in the South, especially because he is a Catholic.

“I told her that North Carolina (at the time) had the fewest Catholics of any state in the Union,” he says. “She asked me did Southerners leap up when the band played Dixie. I told her I was raised to believe that those who engaged in all that hooray for Dixie were screwballs.”

On Saturday night, Douglas asked Putnam if he could borrow a car in the morning to attend Mass. Putnam said no, explaining he and his wife slept late Sundays and he didn’t want a car motor disturbing them.

Later, Earhart secretly gave Douglas her car keys. She had moved the car to the street in front of the house so Douglas could make a quiet departure. In 1937, after Earhart’s disappearance somewhere near Howland Island in the Pacific, Putnam practically commandeered the U.S. Navy for the search, Douglas recalls.

Theories arose: Did they run out of fuel and crash in the ocean? Did they land on a remote island and assimilate with the natives? Did Earhart make it back to America and live out her life as an anonymous housewife?

Douglas believes the ocean theory, but wonders about possible Japanese involvement. The Navy may have asked Earhart to fly over Japanese-held islands and observe.

How many living Americans can boast they knew Earhart - and flew with her?

“She was very nice, very simple, nothing pretentious about her,” Douglas says. “I got the impression she loved everything about life.”

Like all great adventurers, Douglas says, she was willing to die for a goal.

“Some people just have to find out what is over the next hill,” Douglas says. “She was one of them.”

Contact Jim Schlosser at 601-9879 or beale1@clearwire.net