Find Amelia

March 2010–Women’s History Month–flew by as is its habit. Again I am aware of my ignorance about the women who have shaped our country and our world. And again I find I know only a little about the women I did learn about as a kid. Amelia Earhart for instance…

The other night I watched the movie, “Amelia.” Before I watched it, I really had no idea of her marriage, her writing or her fight to achieve her dreams of flying. Her first flight across the Atlantic was as a passenger.

Mrs. Frederick E. Guest, the woman who financed the Friendship Flight, hired two men to do the actual flying. Amelia didn’t even get paid. The real accomplishment for a woman then was just making it across the pond by air. If they could see us now! Earhart did, however, fly solo across the Atlantic a few years later.

We take flying so for granted now, it’s really an awakening to see the movie’s depiction of the genuine risk and fear people had. Never knowing if they would return. And finally, Amelia Earhart did not return.

People are still looking for traces of her and her plane, lost on July 2, 1937. TIGHAR has some fascinating video and scientific information about the organization’s 20-year search for a trace of what happened to Earhart, her navigator Fred Noonan and their plane, the Electra.

The movie “Amelia” is described as a biography, and I understand it is fairly accurate. But I’m always a little skeptical, so in addition to the links on this post, check out Earhart’s official Web site as well as the books on which the movie is based–

• East to the Dawn by Susan Butler
• The Sound of Wings by Mary S. Lovell

• Category: Social Justice