Amelia's Voice Poem by Patti Masterman

Now Amelia's voice talks only to space,
But Betty still remembers it,
Tantalizing, from an unknown place,
Now somewhere out in the next galactic neighborhood,
The words circling some nameless, self-consumptive star.
Betty still lives, but when she's gone
The memory of that voice dies forever.

In another place and time, she begged for help,
In an era when fifteen year old girls were thought
Too imaginative, and radio waves
Were much less understood.

Now let the distant star wave at us,
With Amelia's hand, at the unseeing past.
Planes will still go down, as do suns,
With depressing regularity.
Betty is no longer haunted by the voice of Amelia;
Amelia is no longer taunted by visions of vanishing life.

Your grave is in our hearts, do not fear
Your shadow lies over the sun,
We will never forget your name.


A 15 year old girl was living in St. Petersburg, Florida in the summer of 1937. One afternoon in July – the exact date is not known – at about 3 p.m. Betty was sitting on the floor in front of her family’s radio console. This particular afternoon she was “cruising” across the dial in search of anything interesting when she came upon a woman’s voice, speaking in English and obviously quite upset. Betty listened for a while and was startled to hear the woman say, “This is Amelia Earhart. This is Amelia Earhart.” She wrote down every word she could distinguish, into a notebook. Later that evening Betty’s father reported the event to the local Coast Guard station but he was told that the government had ships in the area and everything was under control. Betty kept her notebook and, over the years, occasionally tried to get someone to pay attention to her claims of having heard Amelia Earhart.