Amelia Earhart: 75 Years Later

seventy five years ago this week amelia earhart plane went down somewhere in the pacific ocean i'm kay mcentire and today and kbr present we mark this seventy fifth anniversary of a millionaire its disappearance we'll travel back in time to nineteen thirty seven and visit with amelia earhart just before her ill fated flight brought to life by historian and bernie will hear from candace fleming whose new young adult biography amelia loss was just named as two thousand twelve kansas notable book and we'll explore the possibility of a millions life after her disappearance with jane mendelsohn author of the bestselling novel i with amelia earhart but first a brief clip from the two thousand nine film amelia starring hilary swank my shining adventure flying will just say

you know more than a month ago i was on the official with the pacific looking west point this morning i look at sort of the pacific in these fast moving days that have intervened to hold whipped of the world has passed behind this except this broader notion as to be glad we have the hazards of his navigation thirties but again that was a clip from that two thousand nine film amelia starring hilary swank let's go back to nineteen thirty seven just before amelia earhart left on her ill fated trip around the world earhart is brought to life for us today by historian ian

bernie and admire kansas welcome amelia thank you for inviting me as most of us know you spent much of your childhood just up the road in pakistan tell the barrier acheson days i had a wonderful childhood i really did my younger sister and i we spent most of the school years in acheson with our grandparents and they had a lovely house right on the bank of the missouri river now for my bedroom and on the second story we could see that river as it flowed past and then we made up stories about where might take us when we grew up we had the caves in the bank of the river to explore and cousins to play with that i tell young people least a severe so fortunate three growing up now in the nineteen thirties because they have both feet planted firmly in the twentieth century why having been born in at ninety seven and raised in large part by grandparents or grandmother could not help but nearly eighteen hundreds that was her time and proper victorian lady and she knew exactly what a girl should do and

exactly what a boy should do and as you can imagine those two things are generally very different now you know people ask about my first flight i like to say that my first flight was here in kansas father gave page and me a sled for christmas a proper sled with metal runners now grandmother's idea of how a girl should ride a slide was that she should sit on it with her back very straight her legs straight out in front of her purse skirt tucked around her legs a blanket over her skirt and someone should pull her on a level surface now pet she might my younger sister really ms muriel but we've always called her pigeon pigeon i we liked to go fast and the faster the better so we went out to the kitchen and we got an old candle and we rubbed their candle wax on to those missile runners until they were good and slick and then we carry that's led to the top of the highest hill and edges and it if you know

acheson a tall it's that second street that's where we want the top second street and then now i get to go first because i am older man i put that's london under my arm and i ran and i ran and i ran into can any faster in the brain that's led on the ground and i throw myself on top of that square it's a i might know faster and faster and the wind was blowing through my hair and i was like i really was flying because it had snowed the day before an annual bonus a really good snow and then it melts at mid day and then freezes again overnight says a crust of ice on top of that snow and an end then i hit that ice and i flew through the hair her head all that was it was wonderful and i was thinking how much pages going to enjoy and when it's her turn and then they sell at the bottom of the hill going to be very sober i was going to be very soon was a wagon pulled by a horse and i couldn't stop how to yell but the horse had

blinders on and the driver had his hat pulled down over his ears and they were painted bit of attention to this flying object an well i did the only thing i could do i steer this law as best i could and i went right between the legs of that horse now there were also railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill that i had to worry about but nonetheless i i i finally came to a stop and i looked back up the hill my sister and pitchers out there waving to me so i stood up and a wet towel and i think that was much of my life in evin edges of my childhood i really did have a wonderful childhood and and the other the cousins now we had so we had a great deal of fun many adventures and it went to a school a good college preparatory school that

our grandparents could afford to send us to and our parents were not able to do that father was a lawyer for the railroad and he was gonna great deal which is why we spent so much time with her grandparents and so in that sense of looking out the window and looking over the river but not just looking over the river because we were up so high you know those were familiar with acheson a note it has been a part of their the river bluffs and and you look across the river you're not looking into another bluff you're looking into the sky and that feeling that anything is possible that that came from the right here in kansas i'm convinced of it how did that experience translate into flying for real well i actually didn't become interested in aviation until a good many years later and by that time my family had moved several times and i with the amount we didn't

move as a family but when i became interested in aviation it was during the war i was at a two year school for girls actually young women of course we were near philadelphia but pitch was in school in toronto ontario and my school let out for christmas break earlier than her so i went up to visit her unknown you know i know there was a war on i had been knitting hats and scarves and socks and sending them overseas with the red cross with my friends and i we've been rolling bandages and sending those to europe but the united states not been in the war as long as canada had and we hadn't seen wounded soldiers on the streets in toronto well one of the first days i was there my sister and i were walking on the sidewalk and you know you

do walk in and talking in and we saw coming toward us a rather awkward looking group of people in and as they got closer i saw that it was poor man and then that they were all in uniform and finally that each of them had only one leg they were walking on crutches that's why do they look so awkward and i were it's just those men large tortoise and i watched as they walked past us and i watched as they walked away and i will admit i was rude i steered but something is changing inside me i knew of course that there was a war on but i i had grown up my grandfather's home and anxious and where he was a church and president of the bank and they give them the gas and oil company and a he had a library at our full of books in and pitch and i we were allowed to read anything in his life are that we are allowed to do that we wanted

to read in and a good many of those books they were about what war but they were all about glory and honor and valor and and and not about people getting hurt and well it it changed everything i couldn't go back to the old school where they wanted us to to become proper wives for wealthy husband i had to do something to help so i stayed there in toronto for the rest of the war volunteered as an aide in a military hospital and when we were twelve hour days but in the middle of the afternoon we had a rather like the break of my favorite thing to do during that break was to listen to the soldiers tell their stories and the pilots the pilot had the best stories of all well for one thing they use the english language and where had never heard it used before words like did stick landing pancake as a verb

now i was asking so many questions that finally one of the fellas said that it would be we would be released soon he offered to take us out to an airfield and i still remember that sunday afternoon it was snowing lightly but there is a little trick plane up their flying loops and spins and when the pilot saw that there were some women down there well he proceeded to buzz the us everyone else jumps back just to hear that plain it spoke to me when it flew past it was so close that the propeller dropped the snow against my face but it didn't it was just invigorating i want to be in that plane i wanted to be that pilot i wanted it so badly that was couldn't stand it but it was during the war and peale was dear to dear to be wasted on civilian side or wait till after the war and but the sense i could i learned to fly but as inspiration of those stories that that that that started me on and and that sense of like him to go faster

than that it's with me still tell us about your early days flying my early days flying world ii feel like it's still early days every day is another adventure and there's nothing that a pilot likes more than just to be up there you know i'm convinced that the reason that pilots flies for the beauty of it a monetary that because they might not no it you know it in their brains but in our hearts that why they they fly and for me the first time i went up four for a flight my family moved to southern california father had had some difficulties was trying to start life over again hour we didn't have very much money i asked father to find out for me how much it would cost to learn to fly and he came back with a distressing news that it would be one thousand dollars which we did not have but he did a five dollars which it could loan to me and i promised to pay him back and went

up for my first flight and it was even more wonderful than i had imagined know when it's just you and the plane in all of the sky you're flying between bits of cloud in and maybe ride into an early moon and everything come to know if you think tall flattens out and it all gets soft even the problems that i have on the ground disappeared once i was up in the air because there's nothing i could do about them up there and they had a mane i tell my family i said i think i'd like to learn to fly knowing full well that i would just die if i didn't get to of course a pilot's proudest moment as is her first solo and the most difficult easy thing has been in the air the most difficult thing is when you move the plane and the ground

meat and my first landing my first the landing was a little rough but nonetheless i had done it and my first license we read deborah tenors airfield there just outside of los angeles byrd made arrangements with me where i could make payments and mother and pitch help to me by my first airplane it was yellow a little yellow biplane i called my kid or canary one of our agreement was that i would take it up and demonstrate it so that one that usually was a young couple in common and they'd be trying to decide if they want to buy an aeroplane and amber would be on the ground with them and i would be up in the air flying this and i found out that he was saying there are such things as seat so easy that even a woman can do it i know you do you see yourself as a pioneer among women but do i see myself as a pioneer among women i i see

myself as an advocate for women but there are other women certainly who flew before i did and i said my first instructor was a woman it the leaves that if i ever something that i am not successful for instance if i were not to make it around the world then that's just the reason for other women to try i meant to keep trying whatever it is that they want to do so i think i would see myself as more than an advocate for for all people yes i'm visiting with amelia earhart in the year nineteen thirty seven amelia is there a particular flight its experience you've had flying the eve like to share with us well of course my solo flight across the atlantic on the one hand they i was very proud of that because so many people said i

could not do that that that no woman could fly across a levee or should try and slow should should not something that i tend to rebel against like to share the triumph of that on the other hand i want everyone to think about aviation a savings it means of transportation and so if i tell you about the fly will you promise not to think it typical of life from her and find the north atlantic and you can count on their being bad weather and i had been out for it just bet and i will say that though i had a wonderful airplane i have a lockheed vega of beautiful red plane gold stripes but about a single engine plane and i will never again fly a single engine plane over such a large body of water and and in the lecture that i'm fine now is a twin engine plane but that i had been out for a few hours when i

encountered a bank of clouds now have been preparing for this and work in my instrument flying and i checked my instruments and just as i entered that cloud i saw that my altimeter had failed now on a clear day would make any difference right i mean you can look out you can see the ocean you know that you're above the ocean but i was going to be an image of a powder all i could see with bb the oyster just just gray i might think i was fine level and instead i might be going gradually down toward the ocean and with altimeter i would know that if i hit the ocean that would be it so i couldn't turn around and go back i had too much fuel it would be dangerous to land you know it might be an explosion an ira i decided that that was the ocean those worry me what i needed to do was to go up and that's what i did i just are going up and up and up and up and it if you've ever flown on a cloudy day you know how when you get up above the clouds

italy different sort of day and the sun is shining in the sky is blue and that's what i was hoping to do get up there and then just just stare top of the cloud as long as there was a cloud an end our happen up and i absolutely i felt the plane shake and stopped and started going down we're going down in my first reaction was to try to get a plane to go back up again i realize that that wouldn't do any good my only hope was it a low enough altitude that the temperature will be warmer in the ice would melt but that meant going toward the ocean with them all to return to the high was above the ocean but i didn't have any choice ahead to go down down and down and dancing it don't the icebreaker have such a close call because just as that happened we broke through the cloud and there is the ocean ice caps right under leaf chris hurt constant to cause i couldn't fly under it i had to go back up again up and up and up and up and this time i watched and as soon as i saw those beads of moisture start to pull together and form isis

uses of that happening i took the plane down again and and again and again the ice melted just as i broke through the cotton still cause too close to the ocean up and down and up now i began to worry has i said hey i don't believe in worrying but i began to worry because i knew i had enough fuel to go from newfoundland to paris which meant was my goal this time to go from newfoundland to paris on a laugh a line going up and down that's taking much more fuel it wasn't sure how long i could do that so you can imagine my relief when finally the cloud stand out and i was able to keep an eye on that ocean and know that i was above the ocean and i thought the worst was behind me and iowa's turbulence and i was being tossed around but nonetheless it it thought the worst was behind me and then then i flew into a cloud just to

whisper the cloud the cloud was a bright orange eat pink and i knew that that color had come from my plain and i raised up in my seat and i looked under the howling over the engine and sure enough there were flames coming out of the engine was not on fire and it was on fire but in a head shaking and that but what you know is the turbulence you know that kind of mass that and then you know sometimes at other something that you don't want to know who to have to know it and there was shaking badly enough that a welder over a seam of exhaust manifold broken so the so i again i wasn't at the end there was a virus that media exhaust the flavor make such as coming out up right there in front of stove going through the exiles to the back end and i knew that that is shaking if i if i flew long enough eventually the engine would fall apart and i had to think

that i had think about turning around and going back well what i thought about going back have thought about all those people who said it couldn't be done that a woman could not do it and then there were the people who thought i had already done it that thought that i'd flown the folk or across the atlantic and they lose and i started explaining the no i was just a passenger in and i know that if any engine was going to get to europe there was this engine because it was made out of the heaviest metal and so i just are at risk of flying bird flu and i flew in the shaking a worse and worse but finally i saw the sky in the east start to get light and that should mean that i should see lance in which was a good thing because i was down to my last take my reserve tank of fuel and ice which the house has switched they either switch right over my head an end breathe a sigh of relief

and i have a leak and that fuel gauge over my head i had fuel dripping down on me i will never lose a lot of fuel but i've always had a rather queasy stomach and i thought oh no what if i get sick or lose control in a nasty those fumes smell an indictment is the fumes started skipping the cockpit i thought what have those fears analysts blame should need to you know it fall into the atlantic ocean in a woman ever know what happened to us in and it started flying has close to the oceans i could have looking for land in and finally has to selye hemisphere and i had told myself already that i would worry about finding the paris airport and land at that the first airstrip i found but the train was much more rugged that i had anticipated and i didn't find a place to set the plane down for quite a time i fall of the railroad track and

and i'm somewhere in there i began to realize that i had you know i had reached my goal i had crossed the ocean and no matter what happened i was successful but of course i did want to be alive to celebrate they had an endowment you may have heard that i landed in a cow pasture which i do and you may also have heard that i killed a cow when i landed but i did not to fifteen i circled in and a catalan to an end and i landed at the other if you went to the movie house a low as five years ago now that was thirty two you saw me getting out of the plane and you saw crowds of people all around and you heard the movie announcers say no and here's amelia earhart having just landed near londonderry ireland yes i was in ireland not in france which is why i had trouble finding those nice levels spaces to land but i

am i was just fortunate to find one that even that was not level it to have relatively few rocks and there is no people there when i landed this and that was a little bit of a failed to have took a day for them all to find me but nonetheless i yeah i you know i felt this time i really had done something worth caring about even though the crowds were not there initially they're just cows and i hope that this upcoming flight is it isn't another success but as i said if it's not then it's just something for somebody else to do in and i will have experienced just fly in and fly incline in visiting her own other countries and i'll hopefully having now i'm having a good time on the way i have an excellent navigator and fred noonan i couldn't have a better navigator for the difficult part will be the pacific can finding a little tiny speck of an island howland island where we will have to land to get fuel rods

too far to go for a new guinea to a y e and we're saying of course close to the equator is we can the long route around the globe rather than a shorter route that has been done before we've been listening to amelia earhart brought to life to date by historian and earhart scholar and bernie of admire kansas and i'm going to ask you to take off your amelia hat so we can talk to you out of character here in the year two thousand twelve what would surprise us the most about amelia earhart people tend to look at her as a very up privileged in it when she was when she was a poet the other thing is that she had she grew up her first thirteen fourteen year itch or spent mostly with her grandparents and then her father got a job a desk job and part of the culture of the office went over to the family live together you know she was going to school on the same

town with her and her parents and i'm a part of riyadh the office culture he was a railroad again and then to morning was at the end of the day they would open the juror known as open or other day at desks an empty a bottle and they'd shared around and so her father cooked i did that he was an alcoholic and our and after that he couldn't hold down a job he'd had so those girls who had the best of everything and i had the private college preparatory school at a time when yes more and more women were deftly going to college they have more choices i end at the end of the eighteen hundred beginning of the nineteen hundreds women were taken more control of it over their lives nonetheless that college preparatory school is very unusual and armed but here they were picking up rags and bottles up the street to sell them to put food in the family table so that her experience as

a youngster i think she had a very solid day her self esteem are her grandmother taught her how to get along in that the highest of company though over the social elite while her parents and i think partially because she did not have a brother so that these two girls their parents said ok grandma you they can live with you but even if they want to play football they play football they want to sled days they slept armed and there we will recall them if i have if you do if you don't let them in follow they'll do anything literally anything that a boy would do and that it was important that was part of their family culture but so she had that she had that for parental support she had grim parallel love and support and then for this

delightful father of theirs to suddenly not be able not only to support them did not follow through on promises he made to you know i'll go out with you you soon as i get off work or come home and will forego this and this and this with the neighborhood kids and he never shows up until at the end of his family's new created and can even stand up and so she'd have that trust and herself that she could make it through whatever life threw at her end i think that's really important in understanding her she wanted to control her own finances her mother was not able to she had been schooled to toot to do anything that you know about earning money she tried having a boarding house for awhile but that wasn't successful armed militias was raised in that class and emily was not going to be dependent on someone else for her income and she was not going to

be in a situation where the law said that her husband controlled what she learnt which was the case but again she and their arrangement was with putnam that they weren't right you'd go their own way and then fidelity to i mean there was a real open marriage or she wasn't going to have it so again that that independence came partially out of the negative experiences too she was afraid and bernie admire kansas is and amelia earhart scholar for more information on her portrayal of amelia earhart and other characters visit her website ride into history dot com thanks liane thank you thank you so much for inviting me yours is

me it's

nice it's both any

this week or is your listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio i'm j mcintyre my next guest is candace fleming her new young adult biography of amelia earhart emilio last was just named a kansas notable book for two thousand twelve candace fleming joins us by telephone from her home outside chicago welcome candace

seventy five years after her disappearance what drew you to amelia earhart story amelia earhart is that for the book one time in the coming and a really long time coming i have always an affidavit that amelia earhart and i you know the root of that when i was a child my mother told me a story about her own childhood that she lived what thirteen years old on july third nineteen thirty thousand and she was listening to the radio and he heard that amelia earhart had been on life on that trip around the world and they believed that he'd gone down in the ocean and my mother who had to reveal your heart and could not possibly believe that if it happened to amelia earhart he looked at her as a role model you know this woman that that one third of the living embodiment of the possibility for young women at the kind of my mother and they could believe it into the wonderful town in indiana on the

shores of lake michigan and when cheek and she might be harm to the beach and i actually looked up into the cloudless blue to life right and floor then shifted their lineup on the family that she would surely be amelia winning highway home at the end and my mother fed chief that they're in chief that guarantee that their of growth in amelia earhart never came in he never came home and you're she was telling me this story probably forty years after the attack and you can actually still hear that feather from mining in mind my own mother's voice which to me you know i think i'm a fashion from waste millions of my mother's heart because she didn't come back on and through my own mom my mother the memory he sort of broke my own arm and fellow with one of the stories that have always felt billy crystal me that my mother had this crystal action

without a figure that for me like mary bennett christian from history family made her very personal kenneth what about amelia did you find the most interesting earlier in the research i was collecting a lot of wonderful stories a lot of really wonderful anecdotes that i felt were really howling and billy enlightening about and she was really thought my young readers will appreciate it in my favorite story that i felt that i had found my favorite anecdote in about one that either the all the time and it's about amelia earhart how when she was a lighting cue the country code church in iowa state fair of nineteen oh eight and she fed arm that she had actually to actually obtain a first airplane when she was there at the age of i think she was like cement crypt my thousandth issue of eleven and she wrote her own memoir he wrote that the plane she thought the state

fair with a thing of wire and wet but she's more interested in the fertile had made from him for a key to that kid that you purchased for fifteen friends met an absolutely charming i don't when you think about it because fear is amelia earhart the whole future of right there and she didn't know if it could she was interested in something felker await and i love that bob won a good for their research they discovered that that anecdote entirely natural and when you compare it to aviation history there is no way that there would have been an airplane and iowa state fair and thank you know i mean you know it is not quite five years earlier the plaintive an advantage on it made you know it only went straight line for a very short carried have enough white time arm just made so try to think of the iowa state fair then they fed now know there was that one of the state fair that year

fell in one of the anecdotes that had to mark up my life when i was a little discouraged but i figured my research all the things that i thought i had known about her that i found another third has slowly i had to chip away at it the trick with them off my left for example that wonderful mark of hanky that she had that you know the mill cut out of it with this wonderful mark of harry gaylor live event that way then he was careless and she didn't care how she looked and she was just a compilation he with that here and i'm like him to discover if that she actually took a growing and that every morning though it lets them definitely an appearance she was thinking about in the public and rationed from think i'm their method and how to cover the story at richland loved that make it that love really got choked me who she was and turned out that none of them are true and at one point i get really

frustrated i remember coming out of my office awaiting me and for my family and faith and accomplished both army of fire fire camp on phys ed i'm so frustrated and one of the things that i think that i thought the most fascinating about her life the fact that he called a lot of things for one on trail he apologized herself an american rower reason for that of course you were trying to make herself eligible for the public in the nineteen twenties nineteen thirties and women were not expected to be independent and have you know go to the streets and phil she lives trying to remain feminine monthly for that they continue to pay money to come in for her lecture and for that she could continue to fly today with the really fun for that item and then i cut their lives especially fascinated when and if you think about the self loading amelia earhart us think about its growth fire i never really

think about as far from over can't just take us back to july second nineteen thirty seven and that last leg of her journey what do we know about the last day there are a lot of you know my only day the last day she left from new guinea arm and she defined how an island and we know that they care about and then they carry their enraged that was on the coast guard held their path howard vidal island a small and it would be there you help guide her we know that there are actually pretty bad moms there that she had weather an update on her life should have a bad weather earlier but we also know that the island it's really difficult thing to feed it's actually wonderful video of life you can see how difficult it

is to find a colony known funny day it's just a really difficult time according to the report just perfectly fine that it sounded like a full full like a full throated with farmers pumping like that but that the plane found a group that didn't like there's a whole lot of problems there was one problem without the airplane no problem now there's been speculation that she was having a problem with threatening and he had in the past had problems with drinking but that really can't be proven on the speculative and we know that all that well and then she'd in turnout we had from phil now and then pickle fbi have had it have been showing it be had from home now that it will look like as she took off for how and that the

wire to wire and any airplane that might have been found how connected to the radio for that she wasn't getting transmission she wasn't hearing bob fisher defending them but sheila for getting anything back because of that again the speculative are not sure we do know that she did know morse code and so there is a lot of confusion between patient between herself and i have it appears that nobody quite understood what frequently these youth opposed to be on the attack the bottom of one thing she thought if another thing i had to do a lot with the fact that amelia earhart for a woman going around the world he gave birth off thirty minute to learn a new radio for fun actually that drives me crazy said he did it didn't prepare a little bit more closed and he you know i may very well have a foolish and write their fingertips differently than it is the youth

youth that i am that radiant and that new radio that they'd they put into the plane before she left on a fly and we know that she didn't have her keep her morse code he on she didn't have it because she left it behind and the revenge he left it was behind that she did know morse code another thing that frustrated me how can come and be in you know a pop a flyer that they're flying wanted and had never learned more is howard halm so what happened that they're you know no one really knows but what happened there but she didn't turn up obviously and so here we are twenty five years later going where did he go with the offending people out hunting for her like maybe maybe on particular feel fine during the funeral will be really great and as fleming is the other

of amelia last just named a two thousand twelve kansas notable book by the state library of kansas what if amelia earhart and fred noonan survived their nineteen thirty seven crashed that's the promise of i was amelia earhart a bestselling novel by dean mendelson published in nineteen ninety six day mendelson joins us by phone from her home in your city eyed jane seventy five years after her disappearance was think we still hear what happened to a millionaire hard well it's a great question and i think the mystery is very compelling really fascinating and you think i don't believe that the fact that we know what happened to her gave her this kind of eerie quality to get a live at the same time we could hang out and he found her arm over your head if i did but there's even more to it that if you have a remarkable person i mean i always knew that the future really an astounding person with an incredible life

i think the combination of the two keep love and truth seif did for fun thing that continue to read any he went very bulky and fire dream and she took responsibility for her actions in a way that made her really an american heroine she was aware of her hands and he kept a damn and he wanted to do you thinking that you wanted to do with heat he took them on with a lot of home her brilliant american palate jane let's talk about your nineteen ninety six novel i was amelia earhart no i don't want to give away a lot of plot but the premise is that she survives the crash as does fred noonan and take it from there for us well you can leave a book about what happened when amelia

earhart disappeared i had heard inspired to write it when i thought article in the newspaper that mentions someone who this third party felt they've found a piece of her plane the image of her surviving on again in a really fascinating to me that spoke to me and thank me and then the idea that even with a navigator that should have a navigator on the trip i had known though they are now there were two people on the stage and i think that you know a fire in my imagination to take it i think i identified with her because if anything the blank died at empty sky with a little bit to me at that time like beating the empty page unidentified writing i'm flying and then i get let myself kind of dollar and imagine who she might've been i never intended it to be realistic of all a quite an uncanny that now they're discovering even more evidence that may prove she did her i want that around i really didn't intend a book to be taken literally it's very much a work of fiction

but there is the non fiction read through it is jean the very first sentence of your book the sky is flash that sentences repeated three times within the first several pages of i was amelia earhart what does that sounds mean to you when i heard that i hope layered and layered meaning i'm i mean they go back to the word of flesh and then you know the beginnings of literature but all fighting violent and i had been diving right into the idea of taking the guy taking the blank page and then putting one non human i know i'm even our taking a mix and making a human that i am flashing thought of the carrying out of the spiritual and the underground and they're very earthy and the book of a lot about what the real what fiction how we have

to live on that in between line really in our own mind all the time how confronting the unknown well you're living in the day to day and from what one that tim do you have an excerpt from i was amelia earhart that you'd like to share with us oh sure i could read write from beginning of the book starting with the pathogen that you mentioned and fenton the first sentence that i have less the great blueberry arctic up above the water and then down behind the line right when the fight got to the magnificent for me over the years and now i think the key for a first time more and more now i remember thinking in a good my life ii and hand i remember the life i used to live in a field impossibly far away i feel a part of me whether like it more real than death i don't know what i know is that the life i live inside i feel real to me than one of four the story of what happened to me when

i die they thought of the story of my life in the alchemy of the iraq i think about it sometimes under greedy and fun the cadillac light when i watched with gilligan shadows of the palm leaves and the clowns make sure today when i think of my former life i think of it is doing in the dreamliner another preferred imagery my name of a payment at a trick that might get a heroin and in the air that's dan mendelson reading from her nineteen ninety six novel i was amelia earhart no funeral or a memorial service was held after their hearts disappearance seventy five years ago but on july eight nineteen thirty seven amelia earhart was remembered in this eulogy written by syndicated columnist walter lippmann and reprinted throughout the country i cannot quite remember whether mr undertook a flight with some practical purpose in mind say it to demonstrate something

other about aviation which will make it a little easier for commercial passengers to move more quickly around the world there are those who seem to think that an enterprise like hers must have some such justification that without it there was no good reason for taking such grave risks but in truth ms earhart needs no such justification the world is a better place to live in because it contains human beings who will give up ease insecurity and stake their own lives in order to do what they themselves think worth doing they help to offset the much larger number who are ready to sacrifice to ease insecurity and the very lives of others in order to do what they want done no end of synthetic euro strut the stage great bald man and bulletproof vests surrounded by squads of armed guards demonstrating their courage by terrorizing the weekend the defenseless it is somehow reassuring to think that there are also men and women who take the risks themselves who put themselves not against their fellow beings but into the main

city and the violence of the natural world who are brave without cruelty to others and impassioned with an idea the dignified all who contemplate it the best things of mankind or as useless as amelia earhart adventure they are the things that are undertaken not for some definite measurable results but because someone not counting the costs or conflict and the consequences is moved by curiosity the love of excellence a point of honor the compulsion to invent or to make or to understand in such persons mankind overcomes the inertia which would keep earthbound forever and it's for the jewel ways they have in them the free and useless and you know with which alone men surpassed themselves such energy cannot be planned and managed in a purposeful or wait while the state utility or judged by its social consequences it as wilde and it is free but all the heroes the saints in the series explores in the creators partake of it they do not know what they discover they do not know where their impulses taking they can give milk out in advance of where they are going or explain completely

where they have been they've been possessed for time with an extraordinary passion which is unintelligible in ordinary terms no preconceived theory fix them no material purpose actually to them they do the useless a brave noble the divinely foolish and a very wisest things that are done by man and what they prove to themselves and others is that man is no mere creature of his habits no mere automaton in his routine are no mirror caught in the collective machine but that in the dust of which is made there's also fire why did now and then this is i

said yeah it is this week it is and he says

this is the set this way he says for instance

inside it is and these stairs says it's

been special thanks to you and bernie sanders climbing to a mendelssohn and matthew proposal for this remembrance of amelia earhart i'm kate mcintyre he dr brzezinski is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas