WICHITA, Kansas – She vanished 72 years ago, attempting to fly around the world. With the passage of time, some have forgotten Amelia Earhart or know little about her. But with the opening of a movie on Friday, the Kansas native will be back where she lived much of her life – in the headlines.It was worldwide news. Earhart, as a passenger, became the first woman to fly the Atlantic. She would live the rest of her life in the spotlight.'If anybody belongs in the Kansas Aviation Hall of Fame, it would be Amelia Earhart,” said Richard Harris, an aviation historian.KSN’s John Snyder talked with Harris at the Kansas Aviation Museum where Earhart is the most prominent member. Her contribution to aviation, Harris says, can’t be overstated.“She completely changed in a lot of people's minds about the concept of what aviation was,” he said. “Up until then, it would be considered a thing for fools and daredevils and she pointed out that with conscious attention to skills, discipline, you could do a great job as an aviator, no matter who you were.”“I really had no objective when I started,” Earhart said back in 1932. “I struck rain like this on the way across so I’m not unaccustomed to this at all. It’s rather a pleasure in fact.”It was the crowning achievement in a life of many. She became the first woman to solo the Atlantic. She received a ticker tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway and she was, without much doubt, the most famous woman in the world.“To some extent it was fascination with the dangers and the wild and the extreme, but to a certain extent it broadened people's hopes that they could reach out beyond the boundaries of the simple world in which they lived and go farther,” Harris said.It was an age of records: faster, longer, higher, solo and she held many of them. One of the best at what she did will be played in the movie by one of the best at what she does.Hilary Swank, a two-time Oscar winner, is opposite Richard Gere, who plays her husband, George Putnam. Swank’s admiration for her character goes beyond flying to a time when things for women were much different.“During that day and age, no one even thought of having a career,” said Hilary Swank. “The quality I admire in Amelia was that drive to follow her heart, her dream, no matter what.”And that’s exactly what happened in 1937.Earhart and her navigator missed a small island in the Pacific, ran out of fuel and crashed in the ocean. The manner of her death, of course, was not nearly as important as the manner of her life.“People need to know there are a few salient people in this world who change the world simply by doing what they do naturally and best and doing it with all their heart,” Harris said. “Nobody gave it more than Amelia Earhart did.”The birthplace of Amelia Earhart is hoping the movie will renew interest in her hometown and in her childhood home.
Producers of the movie have donated costumes and props from the film to the Earhart Birthplace Museum in Atchison to help draw crowds. The home normally gets 20,000 to 30,000 visitors a year. Officials are hoping that will increase. The movie mementos will go on display Friday when the film opens.
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