Eighty-one years after Amelia first came to the Cuba MO area, she will return via the movies.
Amelia Earhart first visited Cuba, Missouri 81 years ago. Soon she will return to the Cuba area–with a little help from Hollywood.
According to a Muskogee Times Democrat newspaper article, on September 4, 1928, Amelia Earhart came to Cuba. The article said that she left Scott Field in Belleville, Illinois in her 1927 Avro Avian plane on her way to Kansas City and eventually Los Angeles. She was forced down outside Cuba. No damage was reported, and she was able to continue her flight.
Local artists Shelly Smith Steiger and Julie Balogh Brand teamed to depict the event in mural number 5 in Viva Cuba‘s 12 mural project. The mural brightens the side of Ryle’s Car Wash on Rt. 66 (Washington St.).
Cuba’s and Earhart’s destinies crossed in 1928. Cuba’s 5th mural depicts the scene.
Earhart was an aviation pioneer as the first woman, and the second person after Charles Lindbergh, to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932. She was a writer, speaker, and a role model for women. She founded the “Ninety-Nines,” a women’s pilot organization in 1929. In 1937, she and her plane disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in her attempt to travel around the world.
On October 23, 2009 , Fox Searchlight releases a PG movie starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere that features the legendary American pilot. If you find this character, who dared to follow her dream and challenge society’s view of a woman’s role, of interest, you might want to schedule this movie about her life when it comes to area theaters. Only then will you know, if her brief visit to Cuba MO in included.
For more information on Earhart and on the movie, go to the official movie website.
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