Have you heard the latest about Amelia Earhart? That new evidence suggests she managed to land the plane and survived? That she radioed for help, and her messages were written off as hoaxes?
If you haven’t heard, go read this. (I refer you to the article. The video above it is…eh. It’s the article that made me cry.)
I read that article last week and wept. I was surprised by how deeply I felt it, really. She’s been gone such a very long time, and does it matter that much whether the plane crashed into the ocean or she died a castaway, as the new evidence suggests?
Well, yes. It matters a great deal to me. Much more than I would have thought. I read that article and thought about what that must have been like for her…
Your plane runs into trouble and you radio your coordinates. You manage to land on an atoll and continue to radio for help. The whole world is watching your flight, so of course you’ll be rescued. It’s unthinkable that you won’t.
And no one comes.
That crushes me. It absolutely destroys me.
I feel a story forming around it. A longish story, possibly a novella. I don’t know if Amelia is in the story or not, but she’s the seed.
I felt exactly the same way when I read that. Okay, I didn’t cry, but I don’t really cry much. But I couldn’t help but imagine what it must’ve been like for her. Hero. Left there to die because her (heroic) messages were simply ignored. There’s something…true there.
Oh it is so heartbreaking, isn’t it? I would love to read a story by you with this as the seed.
I heard about this a couple days ago, probably on NPR. For some reason, the part about the freckle cream jar is what set me over the edge. It just seemed so “real.”
Also, have you heard about the teenage girl who heard Amelia on her shortwave, and transcribed it for several hours? I think I originally heard that on NPR, too! Info here: http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Documents/Notebook/notebook.html
Or a two person team-written novella? A voice for Earhart, and a voice for Noonan?
Hopefully we can do a real test of the radio messages. MOst likely, we lost our hero due to all around communications failures between her, the Navy, the Coast Guard and the world. Even when everything works, we just didn’t realize it…