Earhart’s spirit lives Teacher performs play to honor Bangor airfield

BANGOR – The crackle of the radio wasn’t enough to mask the urgency in the woman’s voice.

“KHAQQ calling Ataska. KHAAQ calling Ataska. Fuel running low.”

It’s 64 years now since those words rode the airwaves over the Pacific Ocean, yet they kindle thoughts of someone many of us know only from history books and old films.

Amelia Earhart. Lady Lindy. The First Lady of Aviation.

In slacks and boots, crisp white blouse, hair cropped short, Rockland teacher Alison Machaiek brought Earhart to life last week in a one-act play staged at Pilots Grill in Bangor.

The play was just the ticket to conclude an evening of tribute to one of the airfields where thousands once turned out to welcome the popular Earhart – what is now Bangor International Airport.

The Maine Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers – with city officials in attendance – organized the event and named the airport an ASCE historic landmark.

Machaiek, who received an award this year from the Maine Alliance for Arts Education for her work as a drama teacher, made a convincing and spirited Earhart.

Rockland math teacher David Johanson played Earhart’s husband, publisher George Putnam, with panache. The reporter was portrayed by Corey Honkonen, a recent graduate of Rockland District High School who was named to the All Festival Cast at the Maine Drama Festival.

Earhart first came to fame as a passenger in a plane that crossed the Atlantic. But the adulation she received even though someone else flew the plane spurred her on to set her own solo records as a pilot in the 1930s – across the Atlantic, across the United States and from Hawaii to California.

But Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 after completing more than two-thirds of their world tour. Only a faint signal was received by the U.S. Coast Guard warship, the Ataska.

“I never knew her, yet I hear her voice,” the reporter said of Earhart, adding that theories ranged from her still being alive to having been captured by the Japanese and killed.

“I need to know what happened, Amelia,” he said plaintively.

The actors darted about the stage, interspersing their characters’ thoughts and words with historical bits such as terms used in the Depression. Empty pockets were “Hoover flags” and newspapers were “Hoover blankets” – a reference to the economy under President Herbert Hoover.

With verve, Johanson enacted Putnam’s several proposals to the resistant Earhart, even kneeling during one plea. Eventually she accepted.

Playwright Kathryn Schultz Miller chose well the words that carried Earhart’s spirit, including feminist comments that “women should be in the trenches.”

Seated behind a propeller and control panel to simulate the airplane, Earhart conveyed her experience of flying with a description of “the engine rattling like a bony hand at a doorknob.”

Earhart had kept diaries, which she transmitted during the attempted world flight. Her love of flying was clear in remarks she made of dawn, as viewed from aloft, “It’s as if you had entered your own private star.”

When the aviatrix disappeared, it was just three years after she had come to Bangor to publicize Boston-Maine Airways.

Her visit was front-page news as she spent the day riding on short flights from the Bangor airfield, taking with her in small groups a total of 200 women from the area.

During World War II, the U.S. Government took over the airfield, originally acquired by Bangor businessman Edward Godfrey, and turned it into Dow Air Force Base.

The base closed in 1968, and since then the city has operated Bangor International Airport.

Machaiek, Johanson and Honkonen also have performed the play at Owls Head Transportation Museum.