The hunt for Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart fell out of the sky and into the history books on the morning of July 2, 1937. She had been expected to land on tiny Howland Island in the South Pacific as one of the last legs of her record-setting around-the-world flight.

But although people waiting on the island and on the nearby Coast Guard cutter Itasca had brief radio contact with her, the plane did not land on the island. In fact, neither it nor its famous passengers were ever seen again.

What happened to Earhart and her navigator, Fred J. Noonan, has become one of history's great mysteries, inspiring countless books, theories, speculations, renewed searches and more in the 70 years since her plane went down.

In July 1937, Richard G. Beckham was a radioman 3rd Class stationed on the USS Colorado. The ship was based out of Long Beach, Calif., but had taken aboard a group of ROTC cadets for a training experience and was in Honolulu.

Little did Beckham know that over the next couple of weeks he would take part in one of the greatest searches of all time.

Now 92, retired and living in the St. George area, Beckham talked about that adventure in a recent telephone interview. His story is also part of a new book, "The Hunt for Amelia Earhart," by Douglas Westfall, which contains eyewitness accounts, diary and memoir entries, background and other information about the search for the aviatrix.

Over the years a lot of attention has been given to Earhart and her ill-fated flight, but no one has really focused on the huge effort the U.S. government put forth to try to find her, said Westfall, in a telephone interview from his home in Orange, Calif. "These guys were going out and risking their lives to find her. Their story needs to be told."

Plus, he said, the $4 million effort is a testament to the "fact that Americans go after their own; they don't leave them out there. No one has ever done the story of what Americans did to find America's sweetheart."

Westfall didn't start out to be the one to tell it. He had a good friend, Richard K. Mater, whom he had known since high school, who wanted to write the book and had collected a lot of material. And then he died. "His mom gave all the stuff to me. I looked through it and found he had not written anything. So I had to write it for him, and I dedicated it to him."

The book contains dozens of pictures and accounts that have not been published before, said Westfall. He found Beckham through a newsletter published for sailors who had served on the USS Colorado.