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An Interesting Comparison...
Those who are aware of Greta Garbo's full motion picture career recall how in the
mid-1920s she disappeared from public view for quite a spell. She did so after a long, live in romance. Some felt Garbo left
to have a child no one would ever know about. And Greta Garbo would never marry, and suddenly she would leave her career while
still in her prime in exchange for the comfort of Manhattan's 'city of strangers' lifestyle, and some felt she had somehow
remained in touch with her progeny (a daughter) all along.
Amelia
Earhart? Before she became famous at the age of thirty in 1928, Amelia Earhart was already recognized as an aloof enigma by
some of her closer friends and family, at least dating back to 1923. Included in the mix was Earhart's own 'unwed pregancy'
rumor from her twenty-sixth year, four years before her world fame would suddenly strike in 1928.
To set the stage, after dropping out of Columbia's medical school in 1920 when she was twenty-two,
Amelia returned to southern California where her family was again living. There, at a Los Angeles airfield in 1921 Amelia
first took flying lessons from Neta Snook Southern. And as Amelia dove into aviation, one of the first persons she came to
know well at the Los Angeles airfields was an airplane mechanic named Lloyd Royer. Lloyd and Amelia became good friends to
include dating, and they would always remain in contact with each other. Lloyd even helped work on Amelia's Electra in 1936
and 1937 at the Lockheed plant in Burbank.
Lloyd Royer's family hailed from Calgary, Canada where
his decendents still live today. Lloyd was a good plane mechanic who would go on to design and patent his own aircraft. And
although he and Amelia were more informally familiar with each other, it has generally been conveyed in Amelia's biographies
how her Los Angeles beau was Sam Chapman, an Edison Electric employee who rented a room at the Earhart home. In fact, it strikes
the true Earhart scholar to note, Lloyd Royer is barely mentioned if at all in any of Amelia's biographies, while there is
always plenty to read about Sam Chapman.
In the early 1920s as Amelia started flying on her own
and even gaining some recognition for doing so, she and Lloyd Royer continued to date as part of Amelia's 'airfield life.'
Meanwhile on the homefront, Sam Chapman helped Amelia get a job at the phone company for the income she needed to support
her new flying habit. In a way, it was as if Amelia was leading two separate lives then; one rough and adveturous at the airfields
with Lloyd, and the other more demure and business like at home, with Sam. It is also true, few realize it was Lloyd who proposed
marriage to Amelia first, before Sam would. Then again, through their less reported on friendship few were aware Lloyd ever
proposed to Amelia at all. But he did, with Amelia declining his offer. Lloyd would later recall, "Amelia wasn't interested
in marriage."
1n 1922 Sam Chapman had a 'get rich quick' scheme he told
Amelia about. If she could convince her folks to invest their family nest egg--about twenty thousand dollars left over from
Amelia's mother's inheritance--into a Nevada gypsum mine operation, Sam felt the Earhart's could soon triple their money.
Soon Sam's friend Peter Barnes was introduced to Amelia's parents, Edwin and Amy Earhart. They took a liking to him and before
long they were the owners of a gypsum mine in Nevada, with Peter Barnes over seeing the operation. As the story went, in 1922
in front of Amelia and her father who had traveled to the mine to observe it in operation, as a surprise flash flood all but
destroyed the mine it also took the life of Peter Barnes after he failed trying to negotiate a truck through water, and was
overtaken.
The events preceding and following the Earhart family
mine disaster have been misconveyed over the years. Details can also contradict, and few are really known about it. Amelia
wrote to her sister Muriel who was attending Smith College back east how "all was lost" and "Peter Barnes is
drowned" not long after the event happened. Yet, concerning Peter Barnes, Lloyd Royer would recall things a bit differently
according to how his demise actually occurred. It is also understood the tragedy placed a great strain on Amelia's relationship
with Sam Chapman, and Sam would eventually leave after accepting a position with Edison Electric on the east coast.
As time carried on for Amelia back then, Peter Barnes had a brother in one Ralph Barnes
who was a Los Angeles photographer. Amelia had come to know and like Ralph Barnes as well, and soon she was learning all about
photography herself. By 1923 she had her own slew of cameras, including a small motion picture camera, and she soon found
herself trying, with Ralph Barnes help, to become a paid working photographer. She enrolled in a photography course at USC
and there learned principles of color photography, something hardly being done back then. Once with her film camera she happened
upon an oil well cap break in the fields surrounding Los Angeles. She captured some movie footage and was able to sell it
as newsreel stock.
Amelia loved taking pictures and took her main camera
with her everywhere. This habit carried on into her flying days. But towards the end of 1923, while continuing to fly as much
as she could and occasionally dating Lloyd, evidently things had not fallen into place with her photography career either.
At least, not as she'd hoped for. But Amelia still had another idea.
Amelia
Earhart convinced Lloyd Royer to go into business with her driving a hauling truck. Amelia managed to buy a new Moreland hauling
truck, partly with the insurance settlement from the mine disaster and the rest from the sale of a plane. (The stipend also
enabled her to buy her own car.) So by then the former Columbia medical student; current pilot; one time gypsum mine owner;
fledgling photographer; and dater of Lloyd and Sam... Amelia Earhart had also become a truck driver. She'd take turns with
Lloyd delivering sand and gravel loads to work sites of the ongoing Los Angeles construction boom. And it was about that time,
in late 1923 when Amelia and Lloyd were at times working together while engaged as business partners, it has been ascertained
Amelia became pregnant with Lloyd's child, and realized no choice but to keep it a secret.
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| Lloyd Royer in Los Angeles in 1923, in front of Amelia's Moreland hauling truck. |
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| Amelia with Peter Barnes, Santa Monica, 1922. |
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About the above photos: One will not find them in any books about Amelia. Curiously, Lloyd Royer's own description of this picture
of himself with Amelia's truck reads: "1923, while I was breaking in the Moreland truck for her [Amelia] that summer,
after Pete Barnes wrecked the Mack truck and was laid up." Royer, who also knew Amelia as the Gervais-Irene in later
life, mentioned how Peter Barnes did not die in the 1922 Earhart Gypsum mine flood, rather, after he was finally able to work
again he was killed in Los Angeles in a truck at a railroad crossing. Lloyd Royer was a good plane mechanic who Amelia knew
from her earliest Los Angeles flying days. The two became good friends and dated off and on from 1921 through 1923. When Amelia
suddenly moved away in January of 1924 she basically left Lloyd the truck and hauling business to be responsible for. Lloyd
finally sold the truck for Amelia in 1926, The two always remained good friends, they'd see each other sometimes when she
was passing through L. A., and after Amelia moved back to L. A. in the mid-1930s they'd occaisionally get together as well.
Amelia was also instrumental in securing an assignment for Lloyd at the Lockheed plant in Burbank in 1936 to help build the
Lockheed Electra airplane she would fly around the world in 1937. Curiously, Lloyd Royer described to 1994 Lost Star author Randall Brink how 'more than one plane' was being made ready at Lockheed for Earhart's
last flight. Mr. Royer also acknowledged however, only Amelia's personal Lockheed Electra 10E was ever noticed among all photographs
and film records of Earhart's last flight, and he never knew what became of the other plane.
More from Beyond 37' (continued)
In January of 1924 Amelia left home by herself and took an apartment on the east side of Los Angeles, away from
the west side where her family home was. Considered a sudden move by those who knew her, soon Amelia's mother would move in
with her after announcing her intention to divorce Edwin. Amelia's sister Muriel, who was teaching elementary school in Huntington
Beach was directed by her mother to relocate back east to Boston and find an apartment for all three ladies, as she and Amelia
would be relocating there to join her. According to the recording of events after that, by late April Amelia and her mother,
Amy had embarked on a road trip across the country to Boston in Amelia's Kissel Kar. There they would live anew, with Amelia's
announced intention to re-enroll at Columbia in New York that fall, picking up where she left off in 1920. She would be twenty-seven
years old.
Odd as it seemed, (although it may have been where much of the journey was made
by rail with the Kissel Kar loaded aboard) the mother and daughter car journey began to the north. They first journeyed to
Calgary, Canada where they described 'taking in' Banff National Park before proceding on to Yellowstone, and then Atchison,
Kansas where Amelia was born in 1897 and still had much family on her mother's side. Curious too, by the time they arrived
in Boston that summer they had reportedly covered seven thousand miles in two months. (To date no photos of the trip have
been published.) And according to Amelia's sister Muriel in later years, when the two finally arrived in Boston Amelia was
admitted into a hospital to have a "small bone" removed from her nasal passage. Muriel wrote how the operation was
a success and Amelia never had any sinus trouble again. But for some reason Amelia did not reenroll at Columbia that fall.
Instead she moved by herself to Great Neck on Long Island, New York to live with the Stabler family.
The
Stablers were well-to-do acquaintances of the Earhart's whose daughter Marion was Amelia's age and had been a 'summer vacation'
friend. Amelia lived with the Stablers the next several months while recuperating from her sinus operation (as commonly described)
and otherwise keeping to herself. As Marion Stabler would later recall, "Amelia's habit of concealment extended even
to her closest of friends."
By February of 1925 Amelia had finally re-enrolled at Columbia,
but she only lasted a short while before dropping out and retreating back to Boston where she moved in with Amy and Muriel.
In Boston she would find work teaching a night school course on 'Improved English' as part of a Harvard extension program.
(Amelia was multilingual and could communicate well with foreign college students wishing to 'improve' their English.)
By 1926, Amelia had taken a job as a Social Worker at Boston's Denison House. There she all but served as a
nanny figure for children ranging from toddlers to teens. Some feel Amelia's own young child (a daughter) was feathered into
the mix of kids there, and had been the reason for Amelia's inspiration to care for settlement work children. It was also
while there in early 1928, Amelia received a surprise phone call from George Palmer Putnam asking if she'd consider replacing
Amy Phipps Guest to become the first woman to fly in an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean. Putnam had specified she would
only fly as a passenger, but Amelia was game from the start and wanted to do it. George Putnam as well mentioned the formality
of an interview, one Amelia would have immediately realized knowledge of her own hidden progeny would nullify herself as a
candidate.
As course had it, in the year leading up to Putnam's phone call, while living in
Boston Amelia had managed to get back into flying planes some, and she had once again drawn a bit of attention to herself
while doing so. She was probably, or was at least somewhat viewed as a socialite curiosity by a few high-end Bostonian ladies
then. All the while as well, Amelia remained in touch with Lloyd Royer by mail, who still had Amelia's truck and had continued
to do some hauling with it on occasion, never to make enough money at it full time. Amelia was also chased down by Sam Chapman
who proposed to her, and Sam would henceforth openly describe he and Amelia as 'betrothed' to each other. Amelia was always
less sure.
During her interview with Putnam, Amelia demonstrated excellent character qualities
making her a good candidate for the Atlantic assignment, and after she was chosen and the flight was a success, that's basically
how she suddenly became famous. This would subsequently lead to Amelia meeting Attorney Irene Rutherford O'Crowley, a ZONTA
official and the aunt of the original Irene Craigmile. True, in 1928 right after Amelia's success at becoming the first woman
ever to fly in a plane across the Atlantic, Attorney Irene Rutherford O'Crowley emceed a ZONTA dinner in the honor of new
ZONTA member, Amelia Earhart. The two fast became friends, and Amelia came to know Attorney Irene's niece then as well, who
was the newly married original Irene Craigmile.
After instant world fame struck Amelia in 1928, it is believed
the situation of Amelia's daughter, who Amelia had left L. A. to privately have and keep fairly sequestered, was explained
to Attorney Irene O'Crowley who, understanding the gravity of the situation, somehow if not magnanimously so agreed to take
in Amelia's little girl to be further raised in an upstanding private home, all with Amelia's omniscience, approval, and thankfulness.
In essence, the public would always remain unaware 'the famous Amelia Earhart' had ever given birth to a child out of wedlock
in 1924, and equally less aware, for obvious reasons, that Amelia Earhart and the O'Crowleys were good friends.
Attorney Irene Rutherford O'Crowley, Amelia's close friend all but co-raised Irene Jr. with her brother Dr.
Clarence O'Crowley, and Amelia as well... and Irene Jr., while she was a child growing up surely had known the original Irene
Craigmile as well.
Below, when one compares the 1978 formal portrait sitting of the
Gervais-Irene to the 1982 'age fifty-eight' photo of the Non Gervais-Irene, (AKA 'Irene Jr.') there truly are 'physical trait
sharing' qualities exhibited between them. Do note however: These two 'different' Irene Craigmile Bolams were separated age
wise by a full generation.
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| 1945-1982 Gervais-Irene, 1978 |
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| All of eighty years. |
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| The 'Non Gervais-Irene,' 1982. |
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| Age 58. |
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The Gervais-Irene
| 1945-1982 ID'd 'Gervais-Irene' shown in 1965. |
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| AKA "Irene Craigmile" AKA "Irene Bolam" after her 1958 marriage. |
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The Gervais-Irene
| 'Gervais-Irene' (Craigmile Bolam) 1963. |
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| News photo, taken in Japan. The Irenes to the right were different women... |
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The Non Gervais-Irene
| Different Irene (Craigmile Bolam) c. 1947 |
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| Young 'Non Gervais-Irene' identified by the original Irene Craigmile's son in 2006. |
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The Non Gervais-Irene
| 1982 New Jersey News Tribune photo. |
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| Older version of the 'Non Gervais-Irene' also ID'd as 'Irene Craigmile Bolam.' |
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The Original Irene
| The orginal Irene Craigmile, 1930... |
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| ...no longer seen after the 1930s, she and Amelia were past friends. |
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| 1985, Amelia's sister Muriel & Grace McGuire. |
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| Grace is advanced as intricately linked to Amelia's hidden true story. |
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