Alumni News

Searching for Amelia Earhart

In a column in The New York Times, Amelia Earhart biographer Susan Butler ’53 weighed in on a recently discovered photograph that some say shows Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, alive in the Marshall Islands.

Amelia Earhart photograph

If true, the photograph would support the theory that Earhart and Noonan, who vanished while attempting to circumnavigate the globe in 1937, were rescued and jailed by the Japanese after their plane ran out of fuel.

The theory (and the photograph) has been discredited by many, including Butler, who believes that Earhart and Noonan crashed into the Pacific.

“Of course, mysteries are alluring and perhaps none more so than those of explorers who seem to simply vanish, without explanation,” Butler wrote. “But whatever happened 80 years ago will do nothing to diminish Earhart’s legacy as a pioneering aviator and woman unafraid to breach the constraints of her time.”

Butler is the author of East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart.