Finding Amelia Earhart

Lately I’ve been thinking about what Amelia Earhart’s second-to-last thought might have been. Her last thought was likely along the lines of “Well, I guess this is it.” But her second-to-last thought? Perhaps it was “I failed.” It’s the idea of Amelia Earhart’s second-to-last thought that bothers me in the middle of the night.

From what I understand about Amelia Earhart, she was not only preternaturally ambitious but she was also uncommon in that she used her celebrity status to help elevate other female pilots, would-be competitors of hers, through her work with the Ninety-Nines, an organization she co-founded to advance women in aviation. Despite her many accomplishments as an aviator — she was the first solo pilot to fly from Hawaii to California as well as the first to fly solo nonstop from Mexico City to Newark — feats that were impressive regardless of gender and access, in those final moments, I wonder if she was consumed with the heavy, heartsick burden of failure of a nature few of us will ever experience. The weight of it is hard to comprehend. When Amelia Earhart was last recorded trying to land on the very tiny Howland Island on a cloudy day in the mid-Pacific Ocean, she had 22,000 miles of her 29,000-mile flight around the world behind her. With a last report, “We are running north and south,” Amelia and her navigator weren’t heard from or seen again. They had just 7,000 miles to go.