Chasing Amelia Earhart

today on your president amelia earhart the mystery and the legacy i'm j mcintyre dozens of expert in aviation an heir heart's history will gather in acheson on saturday july twenty first to talk about what happened to amelia earhart and the impact of her life and her disappearance over eighty years ago joining us today is chris williams then he's the producer of chasing erhard a fourteen part documentary series on amelia earhart chris thanks for coming in today it's not of years they get revenue we know that earhart and her navigator fred noonan disappeared in july nineteen thirty seven on route from papua new guinea to helena island as they were attempting to circumnavigate the world chris what else do we know about the circumstances of their disappearance well the circumstances of the disappearance are sort of cloudy it really depends on who you sort of follow when it comes to the disappearance of what you believe happened the united states government the official explanation of the disappearance of that crashed and sank pretty close in the vicinity of how an eye on their leaving

from bob an agony and that was the last cut of one of the last sections of their world flight they were going to hear how one and from helen the retrofit how into whole y e an ad for a wide open so they were almost done with the war flight and that kind of adds to the tragedy affected that disappeared mysteriously over the ocean there is no wreckage is no trace of any kind disappearance these are two people ana plane he just sort of vanished into thin air and that is sort of one of the most intriguing parts of this whole story is the actual point of vanishing there were interrogation with the past year which was off the coast of how an island which was there specifically to guide the man and to get them safely to helen because they knew that how it was like a needle in a haystack they knew it was very difficult to find and we have some ways of color relating that to young kids were door talks but it's very very difficult to find even close even when you're free you're flying close to the island if the weather's not just write it in a very difficult to to find that island and what's interesting is the thing and we believe and one hypothesis you followed

there was a lot of cloud cover or they're maybe was a lot of cloud cover just depends and so we know very little about the actual disappearance we know that they just vanished after talking to leo belarus was last person speak with a million and they were never heard from again this is someone who was the most famous woman on the planet at the time that she disappeared and just boo for the motor city is that it's like trying to find howland island was like trying to find anyone that haystack white she's that i've won them it was a good point for emily had to go to make it was something she really wanted to to do that was very difficult she was advised that it was clearly the most difficult spot and in fact a million certain of is that we've uncovered had said if we're dead disappear ironically enough different disappear are some things that go wrong it's gonna go run in the stretch and ironically they disappeared in that stretch which was really kind of eerie this is something that we just written across not too long ago but as she did have reservations she was very cause a woman whose recall from a very fearless you know if she ever did theory things she was really an expert at masking it but she did have a really

sort of intimate reservations about making this island and then she knew that this was going to the most difficult spot so by how it was there because it was a good does a good midway point it worked with their fuel that would make sense for them to stop their refuel regroup maybe rest up a little bit and then make the extent of like a y so just kind of made sense for mathematical and geographical standpoint given the fact that she was a little apprehensive about that leg of the journey why weren't there more percussionist made or arrangements to make sure that they were able to find that island it's a good question a lot of our product yes hiv has said that if they were planning to fly first they were part of that that group that was working on the flight they were not only had the task of there which is a very qualified ship a very qualified person ali abbas was one of the best radio man in the world the time they would have they would have ships and coast guard cutters that we're closer in that could pass or died her almost like little pointer she could hit which serves seeing the trail should she would know there on the web right route however it

as a question as a scholar speculative i don't know if it's if we know exactly why there was a more precautions i think that they felt that they had in hand you know merely was more than inadequate pilot she knew what she was doing fred noonan was the best celestial navigator at the time if you're a have and a navigator the plane with you on a flight like this that was the man you wanted to have on the flight you and they had a task which was just a postcard for that was still a source possibility was to guide that lecture into how an island so i think they felt that maybe they had everything under control they were taking the the necessary precautions an ekg monitors and in the middle of the great depression when it happened so they probably didn't have as much to play with as far as the funding is concerned this was a worldwide flight they already spent a lot of money on repairing the electra which delayed the flight initially because she ground loop the flight the plane out why so when that happened they had a lot of unexpected repairs they had put into the plane that may have been some of the budget toward some of the rest of the flight you know we're not really sure you just used the term ground looped their plane and why what's that mean so a best way can

ascribe reality is if you've ever been in a grocery store and you take an empty car and you push the car and the car starts to spin that's sort of what a ground lupus button on an aeronautical standpoint so what happens is she was denigrated take off in hawaii and one of the the wheels actually kind of broke off from underneath her and get the planes spawn in the course to crash on ford on for field on a white and when that happened then she'd be no there was there's a lot of the damage to the plane at that point they had to put a lot of money into the plants or the grouch was not part of the deal when it was something that was fairly fairly common if if something else that issue growl of the plan and purpose as lara rumored any window on do you know what she can of you know i'm doing this on purpose to reroute the flight was she a little nervous when she's scared of any given anyway some people to say look it she did everything right this has happened and it just is what it was what was in it is one of those things so the yeah the official story is that you know there was an accident you growl at the point of the plane's a lecture and had to repair and that's

also delayed the flight several months which also good proven to be a fatal error we might not be having this conversation at this point if i she was able to go the route she wanted to go into west isa said it east to west so that's how one listens as a speculative will never know krissy to see is the term a speculative and jackie used it twice now i'm curious eighty years later after her disappearance what is there left to learn about the circumstances of the disappearance beyond just speculation there's a lot of really and that's kind of one of the most fascinating aspects of chasing or what were doing because we're bringing so many people together because we're such a robust kind of project were able to learn a lot about the the amelia earhart disappearance i've well i've argued that the legacy in the disappearance are separate you know you can you can remove the disappearance and then you can leave a legacy that can stand on its own some people disagree with that and say that you can't really have a legacy without the disappearance a sort of a gray

area they go hand in hand i think there's a lot to learn based off of any kind of piece of tangible evidence that comes out to support anyone appearing hypotheses regarded disappearance are so many out there that are being worked and because of that there's always new pieces of information is new a crucial pieces of love crucial clues rather that come out they just kind of it's like a bread crumb thing ended last year or during the disappearance of the jolly would dock photo came out that was you know set the war on fire and the history channel documentary drop in july urban a while after that and the ages the nose is huge thing the japanese capture a caucasus has been something that's been around since the sixties and then you had a doctor jan support the came out much longer which was he's an advocate of the nickel more a hypothesis which was a castaway that they end up on an island which is you know one of those ones it's really popular out there and so every time a piece comes out there's just more speculation there's more pieces of information the kind of follow that and it becomes something that's really kind of exciting again it makes people there's a if there's one thing that i've learned about

every piece information that comes out it's that when something comes out the entire world sets up his attention went to at some point the documentary with the lost album's project almost five million people saw that it was not the high three cable shows of the year so truthful either the world still very much cares about the fate of amelia earhart and fred noonan i think because it's such a mystery as of as to what happened to them and they just disappear and there's no evidence and people are sort of piecing together enduring hypotheses it's exciting and people just kind of can't let go that it's one sings it when he gets you it has a stranglehold on the opening just cut doesn't let go it's one of those obsessive cases not unlike the abraham lincoln talks with assassination jfk oak island and you can comment on and on and on this one of those i'm glad you mentioned some of those because as you're speaking it occurs to me how do you avoid the pitfall of falling into conspiracy theories as a great question when we first started this project so first of all to get a little bit of explanation i did approximately nine years of pre research before we reached out to any one

person because they did that for two reasons one i want to make certain that it keep up with these people that would be interviewing because they're the smartest people in the war but they're feeling the respective areas so wanna make sure that i cast the role that question like a challenger hypothesis in a respectful way make sure that they can kind of challenge their own thinking in a brand new way and that too was because we knew that we wanted to put up a specific business plan the kind of in the play with this particular project and what's interesting about chasing era one of things i think that separates us from everybody else out there is that we don't have an iron in this fire we have no bias for anyone and hypotheses out there we are completely neutral and i think thats as one was exec and it's great for us but a dr certain people nuts because he was one away you think were using happen and that's not the point the point isn't for us to tell you what we think happened the point is for us to compartmentalize everything but the complete puzzle out there for everybody for the first time ever and then

step out of the way and let people decide for themselves what they believe happened because without a smoking gun without polling a lockheed electra out of the water the depths of the ocean are fighting off like a moral or whatever the case is it's speculative it's one will sing for its most is cases circumstantial evidence and the irony here is most of these people they have a hypothesis have different types of information that they're basing the hypothesis off of sophie look at it like a jury trial case and you see that the group tiger international group restored aircraft recovery over thirty years they've built this little case brick by brick of circumstantial evidence and you know building a case like building a house or to do a brick by brick and that's what they've been doing you have on the opposite side the japanese kept her hypothesis which is built in the historical record when you talk about the ancestors in the marshall islands they just they know like they know like they know that a million fred were there are just part of their history a postage stamps are trying to read the stature right now for it it's just

they could tell you is easing as i could tell you look my car drought sidewalk your eye too it sits just wishes it is what it is we have a lot as eyewitnesses to have circumstantial evidence eyewitness testimony and then you've got something like the irene bore hypothesis which has a lot a forensic data and the full photographic overlay and some eye witness testimony as well it is not very different from the japanese capture other than the fact that one of those options she lives was awesome she dies so as a really interesting kind of hypothesis in and of itself and then you've got something like the book a hypothesis which we've helped serve introduce through chasing our product was so which is run by bill snavely who's done a lot of great work on that and he happens to be the only investigator at these people are actually has a plain he's found a plane that cannot be accounted for off this island of poker which happens to be right in route him writer rob back to papa new guinea and his theory is i bought this is a really intriguing another self as well as we have all these people i come again and have all these different options of what happened to her

and for us we have to sort of stand back so as far as avoiding pitfalls it's it's really quite easy for us economy just put it out there and just kind of be the group of people that say look at these are all your options this is what it is now you decide what happened i think it sort of kind of fitting because if we don't find her and fred noonan if we don't find the plane at the smoking gun never gets down if we assume that that's never going to happen then all you have is this evidence in these theories these hypotheses so you have to decide i think it's it's it's sort of bittersweet because amelia earhart for an unaffordable on history now philly blunt all of us so so many people on a re write that ending because a lot of people don't believe that she just have to try to gas not was at that very well could be what happened but there's just so much more to that story and i think it you know you'd have you got people be almost eighty one years now of this disappearance and the legacy of the disappearance now's own peace now that's going and ashes it's one of things it is people cannot let go of until they find absolute evidence which is going be difficult to find chris you're producing

this documentary chasing earhart on air its disappearance what are some of the topics that you cover over the fourteen episodes of that documentary so orders were sort of working there are analogies that the lakers are so much information it's funny you mention that because when you look at their hearts professional careers nine years long you would think that we're probably guesses why can say this that you could knock this out real easy like in our episode ago she flew for nine years no big deal if you get a stinker there's a lot of collectors out there that are working on their heart really that thought that the collective reason there was a norwegian that was when earhart and twenty five years later still collecting are still going so for us it's about the way she lived not the way she died the summit it will concentrate the last few hours of the flight and what happened after that nobody knows so what we're doing is we're focusing from really really gone from the cradle to the disappearance in everything beyond that so we're focusing on the little intimate stories in the way we're doing this logistically is finally getting light to some areas of heir heart's life that we're really publicize the fact that she is a really major collection cannon was

a nurse up there was a social worker was gonna be in the medical field before she became a pilot the fact that you know she has a really deep rooted history atchison kansas which is just about our four were sitting right now she was born it was born and raise there were grandparents you she loved being there she came back there and it very five last time before and they gave her big prager things really great to talk to some people that were actually at that parade and that made her wonder look at us to remember that which is pretty remarkable and even that you know we have pieces of the puzzle pieces of heir heart's life that lovable talk about like her relationship with george putnam it's it's disgust but were thwarted use really dedicated entire episode the documentary strictly george putnam because as ryan putnam right george putnam who was a husband was a business partner and of course a venture husband who asked or marry or married six times before she said yes finally this is a man who saw something he once saw saw somebody he wanted and wannabe on business one and for his life and he died penniless and he loved her very much as a mentor to care of her mother after she disappeared and have to do that and so it's safe to say without george

putnam there would not been amelia earhart at least not in the way that we know her now and that were also dedicating upsets to fred noonan who does lost in all this there was a second person on that plane and that a lot of people don't really come to give their third you know his he was ready do or is do that studies armed and this is a man who was the greatest navigator in the war the time who a lot of people just knew this was the manager and i have a flight like this he was we want to have is a man who has ruled out newly re married at the time of the disappearance so he was starting to kind of build a snow a second life so to speak he was going to open up a navigation school want to return he was cunning utilizing the flight is so a way of surging and some momentum toward the navigation school he had a really interesting malaysia with emily respected her very much to both respect each other and he did have a drinking problem on but that is something that's been again are you documented on various parts of both ways to rig an episode from fred noonan were also doing an episode dedicated to just her work at purdue specifically because

the people know that she was a pretty well i don't know really can't extend so all the episodes at any kind of broken up into those different types of hearts every hypothesis is going to have a dedicated episode sony can get all that you sort of thoughtless fourteen fifteen episodes really quick and i were toying with the idea the fifteenth episode but right now says we're fourteen will see color were going ok that fourteen relate for timber and david teddy eleanor and franklin roosevelt in just ten episodes now we might be a little crazy i i think it warrants it when you look at also for people all the puzzle pieces on there he put a rhythmic ana comes in the play it's really sort of two fold for us because we wanted we want this to be a larger scale is the largest scale documentary project ever done hands down but we feel that there's just so much so much of their work comes their a life anyhow this woman who disappeared thirty nine we have going on at one years of a legacy of this disappearance set has just spotted it has ever been and it just keeps going and it's one of the biggest mysteries of all time and you have all these players in all these people that are involved in

this all these characters are there and so we feel that it's absolutely worthy in and really quite easy to you know to fill up fourteen episodes as its not really that of a cause for its content concern and the thing with cris williamson he's the producer of chasing earhart a fourteen part documentary on the life and disappearance of amelia earhart and fred noonan again she disappeared over eighty years ago chris what you think more than eighty years later amelia earhart still holds such a place in our hearts and imagination that's a question i ask at the end of every one of our podcast every gas because it's a it's a concrete question and i think it's literally important if i could put it in a one word i would say the word probably be hope and that's probably why she resonates so much authority don't really hear rather than what i when i say it but the reason why say hope is because she we're we found this out on our project this isn't this isn't something i'm speculating on this is actually accurate hero me we see these kids had these various earhart

statues around atchison and others one town square and there's this photo that this one of our product members who covers she's col likes a product falls we do silva says photo of her daughter who was i think nine or ten an entity she took a shot of her daughter looking up at this at the statue of her arms around a shattered goggles on and her hair fly goggles on issues be mean and you see this photo and she's connecting to amelia earhart somebody who'd be used no odyssey no longer here but here in spirit soul and spirit really hard thing still resonates in a still kind of flows through the young women that we have on this project like abigail here's an astronaut abbey like shasta ways like just the cops like amelia rose earhart but all these people that we have involved massive recalls another one and it just goes on and on and on and i think you know she really kind of inspired hope and in kids at the time when she was doing this are growing they didn't have a lot of hope that maybe didn't think they could do the things that they can do i remember talking to susan butler who

rode east to the bomb which is one of the the defining biographies of amelia earhart is not the defining one and she told me that when she was doing research for the book says a while back that she would receive letters from women who were at who were attending perdue at the time that amelia earhart was there and it'll remember emily earhart being in a class is discussing various aspects of being a women in aviation engineering and all that stuff and it though the letters would say look i was planning on being just getting a greater degree being a homemaker i was going to you know just to get a degree to have a degree here i was gonna do something totally different and then i heard amelia earhart speak or i she attended some my classes should to some lecturing and i decided to become an engineer instead and i decided to fly instead i decided to do all you know mathematics instead and what's really interesting about that is you have this explosion of something called stem never buy better but he probably knows right now amelia earhart was a pioneer in stand when i read really knowing it before stem ever existed she was and she was encouraging women to get into science technology

engineering mathematics that's what she was doing so her or her impact her legacy in the ripples of that are just in just stunningly an embarrassingly i was at a certain point obvious in two thousand eighteen and you see all these things that are just out there like this always women doing these great things and i think that that they all draw inspiration from a woman who disappeared at one years ago and i think because she disappeared and i missed you a quote from the show i'll be on who was just re say our show she put a really great because she disappeared a thirty nine she never turning like a curmudgeon she never got really old i never saw her like a herd you know i don't know whether you get older so she disappeared in this perfect state at the height of her popular at the height of her importance of the height of her arms of her legacy she disappeared just like as you say so much as walk off a severe offenders upset and i remember when i was a kid i used to think that she just flew off to the sunset there's nothing left for accomplished so she does flow often took off and i was in so i

think people sort of get what they get from her but i believe that people come to her for different reasons and it's if you look at our property listen to guess we're on our show it'll become abundantly clear to you why she still relevant chris how did you become interested in the story of a millionaire hurt so amelia earhart survey comes everybody what i was topical third grade seems obese are like a magic time for no air are to be introduced to her second and third grade that time and for me it was again another question ask it last question every podcast every guest we open with this it's a two part question and what it is is do you have any early recollections of amelia earhart and when is she come in your life professionally isn't so was a great icebreaker as we can get into it that way for me it was a history a project what some people probably have some of your share the story but it says so it's really pretty common but i remember specifically that we had a teacher in third grade that the way she introduced us to icons of history she used a bite in photographs and she put him up all around this

brilliant our classroom and we would be asked to do it off the history project on one of those people you had your harriet tubman smart luther king abraham lincoln john f kennedy let all the greats all the people are really important washed him and you had amelia earhart and nobody had the dress for a couple days and has no be really knew she was and so i picked her it's a famous bomber jacket for literally spicy if you google image search near their hands or hips the bomber jackets take a milder present and it just sort of all of what hurt her story in the inspiration and how what she had to go through and then the glass ceiling that she had a shot forcefully shatter she was certainly not the first pilot she's a sixteenth woman your pilot's license for fifteen women that came before there were icons and pioneers in their own right and will be dedicating this podcast in the stockyard to those women of course along with million but amelia was the one that came through and shattered the glass ceiling so everybody can fall behind her and that ripples to this day people still follow a billion at this point so for me i'm just wasn't as powerful love with was in third grade i remember doing a project after

project every year history a product from around a day just to do another aspect of her life has kept following this woman which is really kind of strange for someone that young but i got the idea is eventually got more complex than the thoughts became a more intimate and ice are writing papers honor and a dissertation on are all sorts of readers have gone and gone and gone and oddly enough it sort of one away for a little while may she never let my consciousness or my horizon to become a win away from a long and around two thousand eighty thousand nine maybe something like that i started doing pre research for what would become chasing hour with no name no business structure know anything also she's always sort of been since i was a kid sort of part of that that consciousness of either haven't they just haven't ever left so you're saying as your parents probably had a deep sigh and said oh gosh chris did an outgrowth that childhood crush after off your ass of your college all the crushing of the following and i would say that is just i'm sort of relief you know it's weird how you get a

project like this sort of evolves because you start out with a business plan to start doing in a certain way and i started to get more aggressive as we got into this was your last year because i thought no you know what has asserted gathering these examples in talkies these women that were just inspired by her they were doing he sings it were doing great things for themselves and making a difference and in her something that she would sort of we always have this hash tag associate media that emily would be proud that we use at all our team does because there's some women doing these great things as a search collecting the stories are circled talking and shooting with these women as a team i start getting more aggressive as to why i wanted to tell the story as a nose for unused to be told and that bodies be told from a standpoint in the way that we're telling it most of the time these documentaries in these these these products and their hardest to go one of two ways so they either are extremely glossy so bob dole say something like the top five theories on the disappearance amelia earhart be like a thirty minute program was like seventy years of research and isaac is no way to fit that in

thirty minutes or it'll focus on one aspect of the disappearance of the beast ring the bias and leaning towards aspect the disappearance of this is what happened to her unequivocal ii but they don't mention anybody else and so he had these big you know or his issues like like national geographic annoys places that do those kinds of documentaries and we thought if we're going to do this we're going to do it i'm like anybody else and we're going to do it with an unbiased platform or to do with this rare treat the disappearance as if everybody has equal playing field as if everybody has equal information because they do allow people will challenge us on that how could you give such and such the same attention or keep that in the same you know playing fields says other hypothesis because it's wednesday strictly on science of anomalous and when i totally get that i respect that but we also respect the work that everybody is done over the last fifty plus years sixty plus years gibler and went to their graves knowing what they

know like they know that this is what happened and so we want to honor those people's research and honor millions of ezra that research and just let people decide i think people the more you talk to be able to the more you come to find out that these kids that continuously right to amelia earhart still the birthplace museum still gets letters from little girls from writing in arabic and she still lives there they are writing her story for they believe that she flew off into the sunset and they believe that she retired or they believe that she went and got married or that whatever they believe it's that's not the point of the point is that they still won a write that story i think you know there's a reader is a really good story behind that and there's a reason that we should be doing this and so that's how why it drives us and i think that's that's really important for for us to tell and i think it for the team the talent in the us as workmen to christen all the research you've done on emily earhart what's the one thing about her that you find really interesting here that really sticks with you she was arm sort of like joe she's she could

she could walk a really interesting fine line and as this goes kurt takes a i turned to this piece of footage that we just recently out we're very blessed to be able to donate to the moyer heart airport museum and actress and there there was a little boy when she was when he was four years old he still lives at five now who met amelia earhart has ended in disgrace and that he contacted years ago we contacted one of our project as did was fall from the carolinas he's a nationalist already published nine or her books news necessarily does and i said look i did you know i'd met amelia earhart when i was a kid mike and i can prove it into the kind of peak denis dubs interesting he's a while can you prove that he was all my dad shot at my dad filmed end they were actually at an airport and they went out there to see this light and their father had this this new you know this new video camera they heard there was a lie at the burbank airport and back in those days or porter do little stunts like that the people come out the

airport and stuff and so that can assist her as his little sister's family got their shirt off lobel holders ally and annotated the airport and this is all our film we have it's on our web site you can see it and so they're looking and they're of your father just kind of filming b roll footage discolored shouldn't the airport different things and after a while they walk over his hanger a new ceo this this big plane and sure enough at the lockheed itself locking electric tiny plane and a shooting in their loading luggage and stuff and the plane so that is like this is you know right before they take off the whole why in the world fly so this is a march to march three some like that so he didn't just meet her he met her he met her right before they were did relieve yeah which is really kind of crucial so this little film clip ties together so many different little threads which is which we get into the second what was really interesting is he meets her he's in the foreground and sure enough who walks out amelia earhart as cover for bomber jacket on earth and ashes generated go like a rural most times less time to take off and she walks over to me she shakes his hand any entities is low for a boy has got his hand in his eyes to the

sun's write his eyes shaking hands of the millionaire heart and layers that this big smile or face or lng and she kind of shakes album for a few seconds and in chicago little drips off and it gets back to what she was doing but according to dennis huge she'd drop what she was doing i walked over to him to talk to him and so what's amazing about that or what did a better question about what what i find most interesting about her is she was able to hang with the man she does my daddy says they cost like a marine corps t i go around and she was really like she was one of the boys who she needed to be she was very fascinated about you know wave their plans were she was very involved in her flight she was a rough and tumble tomboy she was a little girl but she can also be very gentle and she got a lot she was very good with kids you love kids she taught her stepson how to drive in the nineteen thirty two esoteric plan that is now becoming acheson in just a couple weeks and so she loved kids she was really great with them she was a great speaker she had always different lines if she could walk and i've asked people that are offers that are much more intelligent to

siam to ask to want to get their opinion was she was it like a light switch wasn't like marilyn monroe or she does turn on marilyn monroe when she wanted to be just be like her or she wants you or was it just something that was just part of different aspects of her personality and the resolve the answer that as it was just who she was it was a dish it was different aspects are personalities she was so it's a curator a lot of people don't really have their usually one way unilaterally with everybody for the most part but she could sort of played was different parts and she could pull those different roles and so because of that i think is very special for interesting to see kind of how those roles play out in clips like the dennis great clip india christening of the essex terror plane you know and the speeches that she gives whether she's in front of thousands of people or whether she's on a radio show like this one or something its release and secure the different facets of her of her purse or like it kind of when she was a poet and she was you know she her own luggage line should always are things she was a noble would be considered a modern day hustler now here she was new to push herself into her brand out there so if there's any secret

of all that and that all ties into its last probably some of the most interesting stuff the intimate stories like the dentist for a story that we can discover and help bring them before frances england on this project one of the things that i was found most interesting about amelia earhart is really small thing that in every single photograph you see of her she has become almost a wry closed lip smile yeah i mean she didn't really associate she was a little self conscious about our teeth from somebody we talked to some extended family that we talked to she measured the gap in her teeth and she was a little bit i mean she was afraid of showing it but she was a little self conscious of it i think it you know it goes back to sort of her though she was a master kind of hiding her emotion and kind of a master like hiding any kind of fear or even for that for that matter happiness for anything like that really for the same reason that a lot of people believe that her indie peas religion was not real loving relationship even though a lot of the family say they were very loving behind closed doors very thing that they just knew how to

compartmentalize a new business and you know business out front and behind closed doors or more husband wife but i think with a smile it was one of those things that she does kind of it was a wave tank giving a little bit of promotion without giving a full blown i think she was very i am i you know i said that she was very control her emotions and i think even when she was you know flying even people speculated that you know when she what you want to is a woman who was there from eleven crashes you know her career which is ridiculous at that time thirty nine years old the unfortunate wasn't wasn't a lot would be cores of were surprises you live the longest piles of have a long life expectancy so i think she was really didn't show ed koch master your emotions discuss showing off just a little bit of what you wanted to see just kind of maybe it was a way of me playing byford they're the reporters the city with the time maybe she had a little bit of that and her baby covered performance act in a way but i think that as well as sings it just kind of was part of masking her motions all that kicked me about her relationship with charles lindbergh his entire of the comparison

between what she was doing again lucky lindbergh i think she recently she deftly respected member i don't think she liked the comparison to be when when the call really windy i don't think she liked that comparison because she wanted to make an ad for self she wanted she was a woman she was very calm you know she was very happy that she got to go on the friendship flight but she was not happy with how what her role the friendship flight and she was technically the first woman across the atlantic on the friendship flight of course he brought that record lyric and the first woman to fly or the atlantic trans atlantic solo and the vigor but i think what's interesting is that she didn't you know she wanted a name for socially you anything i think she can just tolerate it it was a marketing tool but it was it was something made by you know korea by gp who was you know so he looked at limburg did this flight five years before you did and he's a unit wrote a bestseller which which was published by gp ironically and so i think george

putnam wanted to find kind of his of his lady when the us we wanted to finance a week he kind of kris and her lady wendy i think she was like you know come to be taken aback by by shifting she was smart enough to understand that while it as a marketing tool and she was smart enough to sort of play the game even back then like okay if the wait you wendy is going to get me to that level i need to be yet been so be about lady when the runaway i think it's i think after the transatlantic flight and she brought that record and she started breaking all these records after records i think that the limburg comparisons can just dissipate at that point and it became about you know the first woman to do this in the first you know as opposed to the first pilot and so i think she served becoming more independent at that point in a certain making her own serve her own career or her own kind of legacy at that point chris williams is the producer of eight upcoming fourteen part documentary on emily earhart her life and her disappearance chris where are you in terms of a timeline for that documentary as far as production and release yeah so the doctor we finished forty thousand

nineteen we have about two hundred ish hours of footage right now are sifting through and that we are going through the process of getting acquiring footage that we can utilize fortunately for us we are proud to consider whether giving us very generously giving us and letting us use of footage that they own of amelia earhart still some images that they own one ad that the blessings and benefits of having such a huge project list of gas because we cannot pull from those folks and they can kind of offer things to us when we need it so while we have the interviews were shooting or initiative another year approximately ash i and that we want it done by the fall two thousand nineteen handouts don't play by ear the point many of the project guess in your documentary will be in at a senate at the emily earhart festival on july twenty first tell me a little bit about the panel that you're conducting their yeah so it's it's ambitious it's one of those things

that if you would do any air our research even badly if you look into the forms and things you'll see that there's a lot of back and forth the law are doing a lot of it just gets downright nasty a certain points and that's not indicative what we represent what we wanna be so i wanted to do something a little bit different and the idea was to bring a representation of that chasing your heart project to action cams we were there last year filming a lot of our schuller interviews and we thought it a good idea to come back this year i had this idea to this discussion panel and so what i wanted to do was i wanted to make it like a pro like the project itself a like a documentary like the podcast that we do i want to make this the largest scale dockyard and discussion panel ever on amelia earhart and the way we're going to do that is is sort of discuss kind of her impact her legacy the disappearance cut everything old ana reinert one i thought how can we do that and the best way for us to do that were to basically cherry pick certain guess from or less and say ok this person represents this hypothesis this person represents her connection in

children angle all the way down the line so now we have representation from purdue with the precious anymore surrounds the archives are pretty new friends here our collection are we have always caught them who's your actual senators were nine ninth who's gonna be there which nine as if you know anything about earhart was one of the the club that she helped found and she was the first president of we have representations and iodine spread you we have representations in every major hypothesis we have representation from children's education we have aerospace we have eric aviation we have all these different aspects coming together on this citing credible panel or somebody in the panels as far as representing the project is concerned but the idea was to have all these people come together and have a discussion so july twenty first it takes place at a benedictine colleges graciously hosting it and the amount of house ran toward him and we're going to put this thing on and right now we have the at the reservation's a railway can go to our website which i can give are chasing earhart the rsvp a five dot com to get you seats are reserved that reserve seats for the event is as it's going quickly it's really an interesting the website

again so it's chasing earhart dot rsvp i f y dot com you can find out more about the chasing earhart project at chasing earhart dot com and more about this year's earhart festival that visit acheson dot com i'm kay mcintyre we'll have more about amelia earhart coming up right after this you're listening to kbr prisons and kansas public radio from the university of kansas we are ninety one point five lawrence and eighty nine nine acheson which we called amelia earhart they're around you can find it on the web a kansas public radio dot org every day you hear the difference and k pr in depth news and thoughtful civil conversations now more than ever is the time to invest in k pr and local programs the matter now is the time to discover how you can make a difference contribute now at kansas public radio dot org slash support and pain

support for kbr conscience i was an added locally owned lawrence and kansas city making a variety of unique ice cream flavors and waffle cone freshman a list of flavors and more information is that silence and that is ice cream today on k pr presents we're remembering amelia earhart just in time for the twenty second annual earhart festival in acheson including a panel discussion of amelia earhart experts for the rest of this hour we'll travel back in time to nineteen thirty seven right before their hearts disappearance as she was attempting to fly around the world she's brought to life by historian and bernie and admire kansas who visited the k pr studios back in two thousand eleven but first a short clip from a two thousand nine motion picture amelia starring hilary swank my shining adventure flying

just you know more than a month ago i was on the other shore the pacific looking west toward this morning and a key supporter of the pacific in the sky aston days that have intervened to hold whipped of the world has passed behind this except this broader notion 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 oh 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 from 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 our 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 when grandmother could not help it 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 or 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 page might my younger sister really ms muriel but we've always called her pitch and pitch and 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 straight 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 iran until can any veteran and i threw that sled on the ground and i throw myself on top of that slight its alley light no 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 go and enjoyment one was her turn and then i saw 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 an mls ii i finally came to a stop and i looked back up the hill my sister and pigeons out there waving to me so i stood up and i wear ta and i think that was much of my life in in edges of my childhood i really did have a wonderful childhood and end of the cousins who we are how we had spent a great deal of fun many adventures

then down though 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 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 a 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 them out 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 would enroll in 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 for a 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 shy and i watched as those men walked toward us and i watched as they walked past us and 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 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 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's a little brick lane 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 and everyone else jumps back just to hear that plain it spoke to me when it flew past it was so close that the propeller drug 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 so badly 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 his 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 and 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 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 i'm between pets of clout 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 go course pilots 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 i got 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 aeroplane 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 blood on the ground with them and i would be up in the air flying this and i found out that he was saying that our such things as seat so you see that even a woman can do it yours

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