First of all scientists better be pretty damn sure that they actually found a piece of her plane or getting something that big wrong is grounds for immediate exile. The piece of aluminum was discovered back in 1991 on an uninhabited atoll. The next question that is sure to follow is, "What about the body?" Not just one body but two. Ameila also had a navigator with her. More than likely they had gotten lost and ran out of gas but what are the chances that maybe they survived the crash? In 1937 the pair had taken off from Puerto Rico in search of immortality of which they achieved. Over the years there have been many different ideas and theories as to what might have become of her. For a time the claim was that she had been shot down over or near a Pacific Island and held prisoner by the Japanese eventually being either executed or freed and living out the rest of her years at the base of Mount Fuji. Another rumor was that the plane was forced out of the sky by a colony of giant pterodactyls. Believe what you want. She bought her first plane for $2,000 and thought she had been ripped off. You can't even buy a good lawn mower for that kind of money anymore. Gas prices are lowering as they always do right before an election. And then right afterwards filling up your Beamer gas tank feels like your filling up a G5.
Amelia Earhart learned to fly at an airfield near Long Beach, CA, the city where I used to live. Her instructor charged her $1 an hour or so it's said. Not a bad deal. For that kind of bargain I'd take flying lessons though I'm so uncoordinated and absent minded I would most definitely crash. One thing I think about with Earhart is the "what if" factor. What if she survived the crash and was able to make it to the small island. At first you'd be grateful that you survived but then the thirst, hunger, sickness, loneliness, depression, sunburn come into play and you start wishing you'd been killed outright in the crash. The death would have been a slow and painful one, even if she'd sustained injuries and died of infection or fever.
Sometimes mysteries are better left as mysteries. The headline read "Finally Found!" Or something to that effect, but in the back of my mind I was thinking, maybe that wasn't such a wonderful thing. If I was her i'd be turning over in my grave because that will be the end of the legend. More than likely if she was discovered her story will quietly slide off into history and become just another statistic of a plane crash. The shows about her used to keep me glued to the T.V. Death is such a mysterious thing and dying in a mysterious way such as Amelia Earhart, Mozart, Vincent Van Gogh and others just adds to the immortality even though in life they may have suffered. Now of course people will take that comment out of context but it is what it is.
Earhart was an interesting person in life and of course the legend that most people are familiar with, but what you might not know is that she was a good student. Good students make good airplane pilots or at least that is supposed to be the idea. The fact of Ameila's disappearance isn't due to her academic prowess but the lack of technology of the times. Anyone interested in flight knows that the chances of a smaller plane going down is far, far higher than a jumbo jet that rarely ever crash. Amelia was an explorer, a product of her time and she perished as so many before her like Faucett searching for The Lost City of Z, Ambrose Bierce and others.
I hope her legend continues to live on even if her plane is discovered. Should her remains be found on the island than that will open up a whole new collection of theories and tales, though only time will tell.
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