ATCHISON — The northeast Kansas town where famed aviator Amelia Earhart was born buzzed with excitement Thursday, a day after news of a photo that investigators claim may solve the mystery of her disappearance 80 years ago over the Pacific Ocean.
The newly revealed photograph shows several people on a dock, including one who seems to be a slim woman with short hair sitting with her back to the camera. Investigators believe the image shows Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan alive and well after crash-landing in the Pacific during Earhart’s attempt at a round-the-world flight, according to The Associated Press. The pair’s disappearance on July 2, 1937, remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th century.
A two-hour documentary that will be broadcast at 8 p.m. Sunday on the History channel uses the photograph to argue that after the pair crash-landed in the Japanese-held Marshall Islands, they were picked up by the Japanese military and held prisoner.
Travis Grossman, director of the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum, 223 N. Terrace in Atchison, said the theory that the Japanese took Earhart prisoner — possibly because they thought she was an American spy — has existed since the 1960s.
“What’s fascinating about this is that the photo has provenance,” he said. “It came from a reputable source. The story seems to have legs.”
Grossman and others in the town that was Earhart’s childhood home said they were eager to watch the documentary and see what comes of the story. In fact, the museum has contacted the National Archives to request a copy of the photo for a new exhibit.
“I know we’re all very excited to see what developments come from this,” said Katie Evans, the museum’s manager. “It’s interesting, and we’re all kind of waiting with bated breath to find out, OK, is this real, do we actually have an answer to this question, or is it just going to be another one of those, we thought we solved it, but just kidding, we didn’t really.”
Museum visitors also shared in the excitement.
“Talking with the guests that have come in, we’re getting a lot of questions like, ‘Is this legitimate?’ ” Evans said. “We don’t know yet. It does raise a lot of questions.”
The documentary’s release falls just days after the 80th anniversary of Earhart’s disappearance. It also coincides with Atchison’s annual celebration of Earhart’s July 24 birthday. This year’s Amelia Earhart Festival on July 14 to 15 marks Earhart’s 120th birthday, as well as the 85th anniversary of her record-setting transatlantic flight.
“We always love it when Amelia Earhart is in the news,” said Jacque Pregont, the festival’s coordinator and president of the Atchison Area Chamber of Commerce.
Any mention of Earhart tends to remind people of Atchison’s role in her life, Pregont said.
Between 20,000 and 40,000 people attend the Amelia Earhart Festival each year, she said, double or even triple the town’s population. Events include a fly-in at Amelia Earhart Airport, a symposium, a woman in aviation honored with the Pioneering Achievement Award, live music, vendors, kids’ activities and the largest fireworks display in the Midwest.
This year’s award recipient is Cassie De Pecol, 28, who completed an 18-month solo expedition this year to become the fastest person and first woman on record to travel to every country in the world.
The festival will also provide an opportunity for people to view Muriel, a 1935 Lockheed Electra L-10E plane that is the last exactly like the one Earhart flew in her ill-fated attempt to circumnavigate the globe. The plane, restored and cared for by Grace McGuire for 34 years, arrived in Atchison last summer and can be viewed from 9 a.m. to noon at the airport for a donation of $5 per adult. A full schedule of festival events is available at VisitAtchison.com.
News of the photograph had already given the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum a bit of a boost by Thursday afternoon. Grossman said a couple from Ireland visited the museum in the morning. They saw the news Wednesday night at their hotel and had to see the museum, they told him, saying, “We’re right in the middle of history.”
The museum attracts 5,000 to 6,000 visitors each year, Evans said, and talking to them is one of her favorite parts of the job.
“We get people from all over, and it’s fascinating to talk to them,” she said. “And it really shows the influence that Amelia had worldwide.”
Grossman agreed.
“I think Amelia was a rock star for the right reasons,” he said. “She really did promote self, and she really did promote empowerment, and going ahead. She was a bootstraps kind of a girl in a sense too. She just wasn’t going to be deterred by convention, and that stood true all the way until her disappearance.”
An article about Earhart’s achievements even appeared behind the Iron Curtain. Oleksandr Mandel, of Odessa, Ukraine, has been a fan of Earhart for 35 years.
He found an article about the aviator in an old Soviet magazine from 1967 on his father’s bookshelf. The magazine was one of the few allowed to write about Americans in a positive manner, he said.
“In Soviet Union, America was represented as a country without history, without heroes, like that, all of the political propaganda,” said Mandel, who was in the middle of a visit to Atchison. “And suddenly I saw a story about a prominent person, a woman, that was very unusually achieving some big things, being a great example to follow for others, and facing some strange and uncertain fate. It was all very interesting, and I say that I want to know more about this person.”
When the Soviet system collapsed and the internet appeared in Ukraine, Mandel discovered the existence of the Earhart museum. He wrote to the museum’s caretaker, who introduced him to other Earhart historians.
“So it became a hobby, a passion, an interest,” he said.
Mandel first traveled to Atchison in 2002 and has visited seven times since then. He said he tries to visit the town to see friends and the museum each time he travels to the U.S.
As for the photograph, he said, he knows former U.S. Treasury Agent Les Kinney, who told the AP he found it in a batch of documents collected by U.S. sources in anticipation of the 1944 invasion of the Marshall Islands, from an internet forum on Earhart.
Mandel called the theory that Earhart was taken prisoner by the Japanese a “pretty much respectable theory” but spoke cautiously of the photo’s significance.
“Maybe it’s additional piece of mosaic,” he said.
Whether or not the mystery is ever solved, Grossman said, the museum still has a place in history.
“It’s not like this museum was based on the mystery of her disappearance,” he said. “This museum celebrates the hope and courage of her legacy that had always been.
“If Amelia had died of ripe old age, I’m convinced she would have been breaking glass ceilings or finding new records, whether in aviation or on a front for women or humanity in general.”
Contact reporter Samantha Foster at (785) 295-1186 or @samfoster_ks on Twitter.
