Amelia Earhart: Communication and Family Dynamics

Landing Fields and Lost Signals: Finding Peace in Life’s Uncertain Seasons

Pastor Larry Enriquez

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September traditionally marks a unique time in our calendar year here in Southern California. Of course, like all things, traditions, routines, and habits are subjected to an inevitable but in conspicuous force of change. Growing up encompassed shopping at J.C. Penny for school clothes in early August where my mom could put my new school wardrobe on lay-away, paying a little off each week until mid-September when school would start. The timing was commensurate with the Los Angeles County Fair. My mother at the time had been working for a shoe store that manufactured their own brand of shoes, so she cut out soles in the day and worked a booth at the county fair representing the company she worked for at night. My father worked full time at Sunkist Orange Products Division in the day, and trained horses as a second job into the dark of evening

The end of summer and the beginning of autumn was this way as I can remember from the Third Grade, 8 years old, to the age of 13. I would wait out in the schoolyard until late at night until one of my parents might pick me up… if not, I would sleep there until early morning. Okay! Just kidding with the waiting and sleeping part, we lived very close to the school, across a field. But from 8 years old until the age of 13, my job was to look after my brother, three grades the younger. Do my homework, help my brother with his, do chores, an occasional crack at cooking, and getting ready for the next day, this was our daily routine this time of year, and waiting for mom to get home. This said, I realize now that that time of year brought with it a unique kind of anticipated low-grade anxiety. A new teacher, old and new friends, cute girls, competitive sports and activities came with an added angst on top of that family stuff in the month of starting school, September.

Things have changed, but that’s the way it was. This time of year came with its own kind of aloneness too. My parents didn’t have a good marriage most of the time, and this time of year brought out those particular dysfunctions related to jealousy, trust, resentments, miscommunication, or no communication, and general but profound separation. These dynamics were real and thick… I felt a sense of aloneness and insecurity. I have no desire to psycho-babel but my world was unstable, and I didn’t know where I would land. I had dreams at that time that my parents were dying, and I would

wake up crying… I suppose looking back at that, they were, and as a family there was no landing

field, we were hovering in air and my parents couldn’t find a landing field…. Remember the Amelia

Earhart story Amelia Earhart was a legendary aviator, she was world renowned and still, the mystery of her disappearance commands attention and investigation. In 1937, during an attempt to become the first woman to complete a circumnavigational flight of the globe in a Lockheed Model 10-E Electra airplane, Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared.

It was near their intended destination. Howland Island is in the central Pacific Ocean. Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, with a map showing the route they had planned to follow, would begin their global flight across the Pacific Ocean. They had planned to land at the target, which in itself itself was impossibly small—the size, approximately, of three golf courses. From the air it would’ve looked microscopic. The distance was immense, for that time, 2,556 miles. Both Earhart and Noonan knew that the task ahead of them was difficult.

So much emphasis is put on the celebrity like personality, Amelia, and little is said of her vital navigator Fred Noonan, whose reputation as an expert navigator, had a vital role in the

The communication issues are one of the most puzzling elements of her final flight. The Itasca repeatedly tries to explain that it cannot take bearings on 3105 kilocycles, but Earhart is not receiving its messages.They never establish two-way communication, and Earhart and Noonan never find the island. At 7:42 a.m., Earhart transmits over the radio: “KHAQQ [her plane’s call letters] calling Itasca we must be on you but cannot see you but gas is running low been unable to read you by radio we are flying at 1,000 feet.”

You know the story… two-way radio contact was never established, and the aviators and their aircraft disappeared somewhere over the Central Pacific Ocean. Despite an unprecedented, extensive search by the U.S. Navy—including the use of search aircraft from an aircraft carrier—and the U.S. Coast Guard, no traces of them or their Electra were ever found.

These are two different stories that leave us with principals to ponder and masticate. How are you doing this time of year? You anxious, are you experiencing a lingering uneasiness, insecurity? Does life seem like you would like to land but you don’t know where to land? Do you know your destination, and can you navigate your way? Land?! Sometimes it is difficult to even see the landing field.

I know that spouses, children, friends believe that they are communicating because they are talking, complaining, yelling perhaps, but the other doesn’t pick up what’s really being said. In my case, against my heart pained pleading, our family crashed. By the grace of God we did not disappear, we were found, but there were pieces here and there. Eventually my parents came to walk with Jesus, so did I, so has my brother.

May you land in the hands of Jesus, with a forever place to soar, and a forever place to land.

God made the stars from which we navigate, he made the mind and heart that we might surrender and trust, to reason and calculate under His care and guidance.

From the Message Paraphrase…Psalm 91:14-16

“If you’ll hold on to me for dear life,” says God,

“I’ll get you out of any trouble.

I’ll give you the best of care

if you’ll only get to know and trust me.

Call me and I’ll answer, be at your side in bad times;

I’ll rescue you, then throw you a party.

I’ll give you a long life,

give you a long drink of salvation!”

Christ Centered. Come as you are. Friendly & Family oriented