Amelia Earhart's Last Flight

DESCRIPTION: "Like a ship out on the ocean, just a speck against the sky, Amelia Earhart flying that sad day." Her plane goes down in shark-infested waters. We will never forget. "Happy landings to you, Amelia Earhart. Farewell, first lady of the air."
AUTHOR: "Red River Dave" (Dave McEnery) (1914-2002)
EARLIEST DATE: 1937
KEYWORDS: technology death | aircraft Amelia Earhart
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1897 - Birth of Amelia Earhart
July 2, 1937 - Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappear in the Pacific Ocean as they attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Based on her signals, she was probably somewhere near Howland Island in the Pacific, where she ran out of gas.
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
DT, AMEARHRT*
RECORDINGS:
Peter Homberg, "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight" (Piotr-Archive #1074, recorded 01/23/2025)
NOTES [207 words]: Several sites, including Red River Dave's biography on the Texas State Historical Association web site, say that this song, sung by author Dave McEnery himself, was the first song played on television, or at least was one of the songs on the first commercial country broadcast. I can't prove that it was the first, but it obviously was among the earliest. It seems to be considered his most successful song.
As you probably know, Earhart's fate is not known. She was on the hardest leg of her trip, across the Pacific, when she signalled that she was running out of fuel. She was apparently near Howland Island, which is one of the most isolated spots on the globe -- imagine a line from New Zealand to the Aleutian Islands, and pick the spot where that line crosses the equator. That's where Howland Island is. It's just a speck of reef, home to birds but not people; the closest place with some significant population seems to be in Kiribati -- itself not a place where it would be easy to repair a plane in 1937!
This song was "revived" during the late twentieth century by a group called Rosy's Bar and Grill, who played it at a frenetic pace. Most people I know seem to have learned it from them, so we probably all do it too fast.... - RBW
Last updated in version 7.2
File: DPio1074

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