New Earhart movie stirs memories of connection to Purdue
>>Print ViewPublication Date: 10/23/2009
Alissa Berger | Staff Photographer
Librarian Sammie Morris spent six months archiving and digitizing memorabilia and papers about Amelia Earhart. Morris was consulted during the filming of the soon to be released motion picture “Amelia” for historical accuracy and insight.
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This year marks the 72nd anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance en route to becoming the first person to fly around the world.
The movie “Amelia,” which hits theaters today, is a film about Earhart’s life. Filmmakers consulted Sammie Morris, Purdue head of archives and special collections, to obtain information about Earhart’s time as an aviation adviser at Purdue. She said she heard filming for the Purdue campus was done in Canada.
Earhart is famously known for being the first woman, and second person, to fly solo across the Atlantic, in 1935. Morris said Purdue holds the world’s largest archive of Earhart’s belongings and there is no price tag on the items.
“We have Amelia’s flight suit, flight jacket, helmet, goggles, pilot’s license, passport, compact, smelling salts, hundreds of medals and awards she received, in addition to her personal letters, poems she wrote, a flight log and scrapbooks she kept,” Morris said.
Because Purdue provided the plane, they also have the strongest ties to the memorabilia, if ever discovered.
“She was a role model for women,” Morris said. “Instead of getting married right after college, she taught them they could have careers.”
When Earhart began at Purdue in 1935, she was a internationally famous celebrity.
“Michelle Obama might as well come to campus today, as Amelia Earhart came in 1935,” Purdue historian John Norberg said.
She was a radical influence on Purdue’s women, who formed about 17 percent of the student body.
Norberg said she arrived in style, driving a tan convertible with red leather seats and donning slacks, which women were forbidden to wear on campus.
Eventually, women wanting to wear pants complained to their dean. Norberg said the dean personally told him she leaned over her desk and responded to the women with, “When you can fly an airplane across the Atlantic like Amelia Earhart, you can wear slacks on campus.”
Thirty-five years later women were allowed to wear slacks on campus.
Norberg said he thinks the 1935 flight was Earhart’s last big adventure, and if she had accomplished her goal, she would have settled down at Purdue to influence students.
“Her real passion was encouraging women to pursue careers they were interested in,” he said. “It’s an important message we continue to encourage today.
“This movie will inspire people, not just to become airline pilots, but to pursue your dreams,” Norberg said. “Before you can teach you have to inspire – that’s what she was doing.