In 1969, when I heard, after so many years, from Robert Myers—now a grown man, working in a sugar factory in Salinas, California—it sent me hurtling back to his parents’ living room where we heard that exciting radio drama on the family Philco. Still peppy, he told me he was writing a book about his memories of Amelia and, on weekends and vacations, lecturing on the subject.
I was struck by odd resonances in what he’d said: the statue of sugar Baron Matsue Haruji somehow loomed over the career of Amelia Earhart’s kid pal, now working in a sugar factory, supplementing his income out on the lecture circuit. I wondered if he’d ever spoken at the Coliseum in Des Moines; I wondered if it was even still there.
“She’s alive,” he told me excitedly, and over the phone, the voice, even with the deep, older timber of an adult, still sounded like a kid’s. “She’s a woman named Irene Bolam, and she lives in New Jersey. Fred Noonan’s alive, too!”
“If he is, he’s got a splitting headache,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Look, Robert, it’s nice hearing from you—”
“Fred Noonan is this guy William Van Dusen. This former Air Force major and this author, they’ve researched both of ’em, and Van Dusen and Bolam, their backgrounds are phony. It looks like a witness protection plan kind of deal.”
“I don’t think they had a witness protection program in the forties.”
“How do you know? If Amelia got turned into Tokyo Rose, maybe the government would want to…sort of,
“Robert, it’s nice hearing from you again.”
“You don’t want to look into this for me?”
“Are you hiring me?”
“I can’t afford that. I work in a factory.”
“I work for a living, too, Robert. Thanks for the call. Good luck.”
And that had been that. I didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad for Robert Myers: his friendship with Amelia had given meaning to his life; yet it had obviously been painful for him, carrying around so many unanswered questions, going through his life a “kid” few took seriously.
I’d been there. I sat in the living room with him. I knew what he’d heard. He just didn’t know where I’d been.
The book that claimed Irene Bolam was Amelia Earhart got its authors sued and itself pulled from the shelves. This made me suspicious, and one day in 1970, when I was visiting the Manhattan office of A-1, I took a side trip to Bedford Hills, New York. I found Irene Bolam in the bar with three other women in the clubhouse of Forsgate Country Club; these were ladies in their late sixties and they seemed to appreciate the attention of a good-looking kid like me, in his early to mid-sixties.
I knew at once which one was Irene. She bore a resemblance to Amy, though her nose was different, wider, larger; noses change, though, not always for the better. And the eyes were a hauntingly familiar blue-gray.
Standing next to the ladies, who looked pretty foxy in their golf sweaters and shorts, I said to Irene, “My name’s Nate Heller. We had a mutual friend.”
“Oh?” She beamed up at me. “And who would that be?”
“Amelia Earhart. I understand you were an aviatrix yourself, and flew with her?”
“That’s right, I was in the Ninety Nines…. Oh, my goodness, I hope you don’t believe that baloney in that horrible book.”
The “oh my goodness” gave me a start: it was a favorite phrase of Amy’s.
But this wasn’t Amy. Amy couldn’t look at me and not betray the feelings we’d had. If by some bizarre circumstance, this was an Amelia Earhart who had survived those bullets and been carted off to Tokyo, brainwashed by Tojo, returned home, and brainwashed again by Uncle Sam…if that ridiculous scenario were even possible, I didn’t want to know.
Whether this was Irene Bolam, or Amelia Earhart, I knew one thing for sure: my Amy wasn’t in this old woman’s eyes.
I sat with the girls and they had tropical drinks with umbrellas while I had a rum and Coke. One of the girls was a widow with a nice body and a decent face lift and I think I could have got lucky. But I was an old married man now, and had changed my ways.
Irene Bolam died in July 1982. She left her body to science and her family honored her wishes that her fingerprints not be shared with those who had been hounding her about her identity.
The Continental DC-10 circled lazily on its approach, as the island of Saipan made itself known through the clouds. We had left Guam forty-five minutes before—Buddy Busch, his two-man camera crew, and me. At first glance the long narrow island appeared to be nothing more than a jungle with a mountain rising from its midst; but soon rolling hills, shell-pocked cliffs, and white sand beaches disclosed their presence, as did roads, buildings, and cultivated fields.
This was a slightly different view than I’d gotten from the
“Someday I’m gonna bring the wife along,” Buddy said. “She dudn’t believe me, ’bout how pretty them waters is. You been here before, Nate—ever see the like of it, anywheres else?”
“The folksier you get, Buddy,” I said, “the less you’re getting out of me.”
Buddy was frustrated that I had yet to open up about my own Saipan experiences.
