By Sharon Oliver
Contributing Writer
MEDFORD – America’s aviation sweetheart, Amelia Earhart, is internationally known for her tragic trans-Atlantic flight disappearance. but the Kansas-born adventurer’s connection to the Bay State is also historically noteworthy. In 1922 on her 25th birthday, Earhart bought her own plane for $2,000, a bright yellow Kinner Airster biplane, and named it “The Canary.” Sadly, she was forced to sell it due to the family’s financial woes.
Move to Medford
Following her parents’ divorce in 1924, Earhart drove her mother, Amy, in her 1922 bright yellow Kissel Speedster Gold Bug automobile across the country, ending up in Boston but eventually living in a house at 76 Brooks Street in Medford. Her sister Muriel went ahead of them, traveling by train and found lodging for the three of them. Because her mother could no longer afford the tuition fees and associated costs, Earhart was forced to give up her dream of enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Photo/Wikimedia Commons
The celebrated aviator got a job as a social worker at Boston’s Denison House, the nation’s second oldest settlement house. There, she taught English to Chinese, Italian and Syrian children and she and Muriel taught the girls how to play basketball. In June of 1928, Earhart took off in a trimotor seaplane called the Friendship from East Boston Airport (now Logan) with Wilmer Stutz and Louis Gordon. The passengers left Boston Airport bound for Newfoundland. Twenty hours and 40 minutes later they landed in Wales and then flew on to Southampton, England.
Practice at Quincy airport
Earhart drove down to the new airfield in Quincy to practice her flying skills on weekends. She became a member of the American Aeronautical Society chapter in Boston in which she was eventually elected as vice president and helped finance the construction of Dennison Airport in Quincy where she flew on the first official flight from there in 1927.
The aviation icon was also the first elected president of the Ninety-Nines, an international group of female pilots and was appointed Vice President of National Airways, which operated Boston-Maine Airways. At one point, Earhart had been engaged to Samuel Chapman, a chemical engineer from Boston, but she broke off the engagement in 1928. She married her public relations manager George “GP” Putnam in 1931.
Photo/Wikimedia Commons
Muriel Earhardt Morrisey was active in Medford organizations, having served two terms on the Medford School Committee, dedicated several hours to the League of Women Voters, was a charter member of the Medford Zonta Club, served on the local Conservation Commission and was appointed to the Council on Aging in the 1980s. She also spoke out against the speculations and rumors that arose in the wake of her sister’s death. For example, she denied her sister died while on a spy mission, as some had suggested. Amy Otis Earhart and Muriel Earhart Morrissey, are both interred in Oak Grove Cemetery in Medford.
Mysterious disappearance still unsolved
Attempts to locate Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E airplane have failed for nearly nine decades. However, the Purdue Research Foundation and the Archaeological Legacy Institute announced a joint effort to locate the wreckage in a lagoon off a Pacific island between Australia and Hawaii, where many believe Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, may have landed in 1937. Their bodies were never found.
The team had initially planned for the expedition to take place in late 2025 but had to postpone it until 2026. The new investigation was ignited as a result of a satellite photo that seems to depict remnants of a plane in the sand of a small island lagoon called Nikumaroro. The inhospitable island is 350 nautical miles away from Howland where the two were enroute. Amelia Earhart was declared legally dead in 1939.
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