A few seconds of old home movie film dating to the late 1920s delivers a mystery that needs solving: did Amelia Earhart attend the opening of an airport in LeRoy, Genesee County, almost 90 years ago?
The footage was shot, apparently in 1928, by Harold Trott. He was a Livingston County doctor and air enthusiast who owned his own biplane and apparently invested in Earhart’s record-setting airplanes in the 1920s and 30s. He was also an amatuer movie fan, and along with footage of his family and other events is a brief clip of Amelia Earhart, dressed 1920s style and speaking into a microphone with the call letters of an early Syracuse radio station. The notes with the recently discovered reel of film say only that it’s Earhart.
The Livingston County Historical Society says Earhart attended the opening of the Woodward Airport in LeRoy in 1928, but there are no visual clues in the footage anyone has been able to make out except for the radio microphone.
The ROC Archive has put the footage on YouTube and is asking if anyone recognizes anyone or anything in any of it that might give the historical context they’re looking for. Maybe you can help solve the mystery of whether Earhart came to LeRoy all those years ago.