Amelia Earhart is the Lost Star of the Pleiades
Many Amelia Earhart curious souls are anticipating the 2009 release of Hilary Swank's biopic about Amelia Earhart.
No doubt great interest in the legendary pilot will be reborn at that time. Still, it's doubtful any clear answer about Amelia's true fate will be forthcoming by virtue of Ms. Swank's film effort.
No matter. There's so much great history gathered about Earhart's life since she served as a nurse in Canada during World War One. Yet the enigma she became shrouded it for her future posterity.
Among my favorite metaphor stories about Amelia Earhart is one I call "Amelia Earhart, The Lost Star."
There have been two well known books written about Amelia Earhart called "Lost Star." One was a best seller by Randall Brink, published by W.W. Norton in 1994.
And though it seems easy enough to figure it out on the surface, why is Amelia really viewed as correlative to a 'lost star?' It goes like this:
CHAPTER ONE
The Amelia Earhart 'lost star' correlation dates back to Greek mythology and astronomy. Atlas had seven daughters who were metamorphosed into stars. They became the constellation known as the Pleiades in the night sky; a bright star cluster situated within the larger constellation of Taurus.
All of the seven sister stars have names and six of them glow brightly. But the seventh one in the middle cannot be seen by the naked eye. Her name is 'Electra,' and she is referred to as 'the weeping sister;' weeping because she does not glow like her other sisters and cannot be seen... even though people know she's there. For this reason 'Electra' has oft been referred to as "the lost star of the Pleiades."
Comparatively, the last time Amelia Earhart was seen she was taking off from Lae, New Guinea in a silver twinkling airplane called 'Electra,' named for the same 'weeping sister' star of the Pleiades.
Although history recorded how she became 'lost without a trace' some twenty-odd hours later while still airborne, many claimed strong evidence conveyed how Amelia Earhart still existed on earth afterwards... but she could no longer be seen. This is why Amelia as well, is often referred to tongue-in-cheek wise as "the lost star of aviation." But few recall the old Greek astrological correlation.
Of course Amelia Earhart was among the most courageous women American history ever recorded. Stellar-wise... she was every bit of a mega-star who ended as a supernova.
It's true, during her fame years from 1928 to 1937 Amelia Earhart was nothing less than a world loved heroic superstar. Especially to her own gender, she was regaled as much as Charles Lindbergh had been. But just as Lindbergh's did, the pangs of Amelia's world fame never gave her a moment's rest, were often intrusive, and by 1934 she found herself still smiling for the cameras but constantly running away from them as well.
If one tracks the amount of traveling Amelia did, and the different far apart places she spent time in from mid-1934 until she was reported 'missing' in 1937, the list is staggeringly formidable if not somewhat disturbing. It appears almost too obvious how she was intentionally staying on the move for some reason, cavorting with her country's top political and even some military figureheads, and some of the wealthiest private American citizens during said time period. Yet her reason for doing so didn't appear as simple as the 'death wish' President Hoover was said to believe she had. But in mid 1934, from the time she visited a dude ranch in Wyoming and then relocated to Los Angeles from New York, she was hardly ever idle and she hardly ever rested. It's almost as if some kind of revelation occurred to her in 1934 that cause an incredible shift in the way Amelia started viewing things and more significantly, in the way she started viewing herself. And began living her life on the run. What happened to her, by Job?
In 1927 Charles Lindbergh became the first man on earth to solo a plane across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1932 Amelia Earhart became the first woman on earth to do the same thing. It became hard to argue against the notion, that the two of them as separately viewed in the light of their similar accomplishments, ended as (perhaps) the two most world-wide famous persons of their era.
Lindbergh and Earhart's heroic aviation status back then, was comparable to that of the 1960s NASA astronauts. Except Lindbergh and Earhart were mere private citizens who were not coddled and protected the way NASA cherished its astronauts. And such left their very beings as open targets for the enormous fame status they delivered to themselves. Look what became of Lindbergh's life from the early to late 1930s. It wasn't all that pretty.
But it can be said, where Lindbergh was akin to an Alan Shepherd astronaut figure who was the first American in space, Amelia Earhart ended more like a combination of Gus Grissom and John Glenn astronaut figures. For Gus Grissom's first space flight was deemed a success but it had faltered at the end... just as Amelia's solo Atlantic crossing was viewed. Then, while Amelia was attempting to become the first person ever to pilot a plane around the world at the Equator, (likened in her day to how John Glenn was later the first astronaut to orbit the earth in space) she failed to succeed... and her life was sadly determined to have ended tragically. Sadly Gus Grissom of course, was supposed to have been one of the first Apollo astronauts, but he tragically lost his life in a test capsule fire in 1967, thirty years after Amelia Earhart 'disappeared.'
But enough of the analogous homages. It's clear how starting in 1934, something had suddenly propelled Amelia Earhart's life erratically forward in too many different directions. Again, what happened to her? Why did she change so drastically after she soloed the Atlantic in 1932, then seemingly spent the year of 1933 so happily based in New York... while devoted to the new enterpreneurialism her Atlantic solo flight afforded her? Really, what happened to Amelia Earhart in 1934 that made her change so much?
The answer is more accessible than people think. For the change Amelia endured had to do with a prominent northeast family whose surname was "O'Crowley," and a friend of Amelia's from said family who was known as Irene O'Crowley Craigmile.
END CHAPTER ONE
STAY TUNED FOR CHAPTER TWO
