Eight pieces of memorabilia from the storied life of Kansas-born aviator Amelia Earhart — including a glowing fan letter from her friend, President Franklin D. Roosevelt — go up for auction June 22.
A set of her fingerprints taken in a Mexico City police station is one of the more curious offerings.
Earhart was the first female to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and set numerous aviation records before mysteriously disappearing over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 while trying to fly around the world. She was officially declared lost at sea. She was 41.
She is the most famous person to hail from Atchison in northeast Kansas, where a new Earhart museum opened in April, the town’s second. The Amelia Earhart Hangar Museum features a plane named “Muriel” identical to the one she flew on her last flight.
“What working with them has driven home is, although she was so young when she passed away, the profound impact she had on American culture, and many aspects of it, from women to the sciences during the 1930s at the height of her popularity before she disappeared,” said Darren Sutherland, senior specialist for fine books and manuscripts for Bonhams auction house.
“I think a lot of people get hung up on that disappearance and that becomes the conversation, when the real conversation is her, both her popularity and her achievements, her impact on the culture.”
Most of the items were once part of the collection of Earhart biographer and veteran pilot Elgen M. Long, who wrote “Amelia Earhart, The Mystery Solved,” with his wife, Marie K. Long. He died last year.
A photo of Earhart with explorers R.E. Byrd and Bernt Balchen, who redesigned the aircraft she flew across the Atlantic Ocean, and signed by all three, will be auctioned along with other photos.
Earhart pictures come up frequently for auction, Sutherland said. As one of the most famous women in the world in her day she spent quite a bit of time in front of cameras.
Two of the more rare items up for sale are books she owned, both heavily annotated in her handwriting.
“She was so famous and so approachable that there are lots of photographs,” he said. “But these things which are so personal and relate so closely to her life, or were owned by her, I think that those are largely making their way into institutions.
“It goes back to the kind of rarity of the personal items versus the kind of memorabilia. You see a lot of Earhart material at auction, but not a lot of these kinds of personal, really knockout ... items that tell her story, that shed light on the individual.”
One is a chemistry book she used while studying at Columbia University, where she attended the School of General Studies from 1919 to 1920. She intended to go on to medical school. But the call of the skies was louder.
The book is estimated to be worth $5,000 to $8,000, Sutherland said.
Some of her notes in the book about evolution — “survival of the fittest” — read like free association, Sutherland said. “I just love that because I feel like that’s her tenacity that we’re seeing into,” he said.
Her copy of “The American Practical Navigator” by Nathaniel Bowditch, an encyclopedia of navigation, will also be auctioned. It too has extensive annotations, calculations and drawings Earhart made about a year before her historic transatlantic flight, Sutherland said.
Earhart lived in Boston at the time, where she got a job in 1925 as a social worker at the Denison House, the second-oldest settlement house in the nation. She still found time to teach herself navigation. Her transatlantic flight began at East Boston Airport, now known as Logan International Airport.
“This one is more heavily annotated, copious notes and equations on navigation and positioning and location, and she is learning, teaching herself, in 1927,” Sutherland said.
It’s estimated value: $10,000 to $15,000.
Fingerprinted in Mexico
In 1935 Earhart flew from Los Angeles to Mexico City, drawing an international spotlight to the country, then flew solo nonstop from there to Newark, New Jersey — the first person to do it.
“She was actually down there in Mexico City for a while and this I think is part of her legacy,” Sutherland said.
“So much of what she did caught people’s attention. Her feats were incredible, and then she used that popularity to promote issues and causes that were important to her and important to others.”
Possibly, she had herself fingerprinted while in Mexico as proof that she was there. And maybe, it was “a good opportunity to get some publicity for the flight,” said Sutherland, who assured that Earhart was not fingerprinted after committing a crime.
“I think it was all a bit of fun. It documents that it indeed was her in Mexico City,” he said. “So that’s a really fun one and a one of a kind thing.”
Estimated value of the fingerprint set: $8,000 to $12,000.
The star of the auction is a typed letter to Earhart signed by Roosevelt congratulating her on her transpacific solo flight, an 18-hour journey from Hawaii to the continental United States in 1935.
“He wrote to her with this glowing language about her advancement of both commercial aviation but also women’s rights, empowering women, and it’s just a lovely letter congratulating (her) on the flight,” Sutherland said.
Roosevelt wrote: “You have scored again. By successfully spanning the ocean stretches between Hawaii and California, following your triumphant trans-atlantic flight of 1928, you have shown even the ‘doubting Thomases’ that aviation is science that cannot be limited to men only.”
The letter’s value is between at $60,000 and $80,000.
The people who will be drawn to bid, to “spend their hard-earned money on these things is somebody I think who understands the importance and impact of Amelia Earhart, the adventurer, the woman, the activist, in all her guises,” Sutherland said.
Anyone can bid online. Bidders can register now on the Bonhams sale page. Thursday, the day of the sale, that page will link to a site where registered bidders can watch the sale live and bid directly on each item.
A guide to bidding is on the Bonhams website: bonhams.com/how-to-buy.
