Star Tribune
Did Amelia Earhart play basketball at St. Paul Central High School?
Listen and subscribe to our podcast: Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Long before she became the first woman to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean, Amelia Earhart was Millie, a 16-year-old junior at St. Paul Central High School.
Minnesota’s capital city was a brief stop for the Earhart family, who spent the winter of 1913-1914 living in a house at 825 Fairmount Avenue.
After reading a biography that mentioned Earhart’s time in St. Paul, a reader contacted Curious Minnesota, the Star Tribune’s reader-powered reporting project, wanting to know whether it’s true that she played basketball at Central.
The answer? Probably.
Amelia Mary Earhart was born in Atchison, Kan., in 1897. She had a tumultuous childhood, shadowed by her father Edwin’s alcoholism, and the family moved frequently as he struggled to hold down jobs. This included stints in Des Moines, St. Paul and then Chicago, where Amelia graduated from high school in June 1915.
During her time at Central, Earhart earned high grades — 80s and 90s in English, physics, math and German — and was “busy and popular,” according to information the school supplied to writer Jack Pitman in the 1950s. The correspondence with Pitman, who was writing a book on Earhart, accounts for the bulk of the Minnesota Historical Society’s records on Earhart’s time at Central.
“I remember hearing Miss Dickson and others say that she was an attractive, friendly, red-haired teen-ager — not at all unlike her friends,” school librarian Laurie Johnson wrote of Earhart. Johnson added that Earhart may have been interested in theater since she had signed the school stage curtain.
The Pitman correspondence doesn’t mention basketball. But author Susan Butler wrote that Earhart made the basketball team at Central in her 1997 biography “East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart.”
“She played basketball, making the basketball team, which she enjoyed, writing her Atchison school chum Virginia Park, ‘You miss much by not having gym,'” wrote Butler, who had no further details to share when contacted by the Star Tribune.
The 1914 Central yearbook offered no additional clues — or even mention of the girls basketball team. The team won the city championship a year after Earhart departed, according to news accounts.
Local media claimed Earhart as a hometown darling after she achieved fame in the late 1920s. “Records at Central High reveal flier was above average as pupil” read a May 1932 headline.
The story described the young Earhart as “a slim, fair girl who was quietly studious back in 1913.”
“She was a good student, and did some good work in my classes,” her former physics instructor, W.M. McClintock, was quoted as saying.
As an adult and international celebrity, Earhart returned to St. Paul multiple times. She visited the St. Paul airport in 1933 and likely returned to her old Fairmount Avenue house in 1935, based on news reports.
In 1937, Earhart embarked from Miami on an attempted flight around the world. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the southwestern Pacific Ocean and were never found.
If you’d like to submit a Curious Minnesota question, fill out the form below:
Northern State 35, Concordia (St. Paul) 34: Wyatt Block’s 2-yard TD run and the PAT with 10 seconds remaining lifted the Wolves past the host Golden Bears. Block’s touchdown capped an 11-play, 72-yard drive by the Wolves, who trailed 24-7 in the second quarter. Jeff Isotalo-McGuire’s 34-yard field goal with three minutes, 32 seconds remaining gave the Golden Bears a 34-28 lead.
Winona State 31, Bemidji State 28: Cade Stenstrom rushed for two TDs and passed for 150 yards and a TD to help the host Warriors outlast the Beavers. Stenstrom’s 1-yard TD run and the PAT with two minutes, 10 seconds remaining gave the Warriors a 31-21 lead. The Beavers responded with an 11-play, 93-yard drive to pull within 31-28 with 18 seconds remaining but the Warriors recovered the ensuing kickoff.
Div. I-AA
North Dakota State 59, Murray State 6: The top-ranked Bison built a 42-3 lead in the first half and went on to defeat the host Racers in Murray, Ken. CharMar Brown ran for 97 yards and three TDs for the Bison.
South Dakota State 20, South Dakota 17 (OT): Amar Johnson’s 3-yard TD run in overtime lifted the host Jackrabbits to the victory. The Coyotes opened the OT with a 40-yard field goal.
Youngstown State 41, North Dakota 40 (OT): The host Penguins went first in OT and scored and then stopped North Dakota’s two-point conversion to hold on for the victory. The Penguins sent the game into OT on a 35-yard field goal with 12 seconds remaining.
Div. III
Augsburg 35, St. Olaf 34 (OT): The host Auggies stopped a two-point conversion in overtime to outlast the Oles. The Auggies went first in the overtime and scored on a 25-yard pass from Ryan Harvey to Tyrone Wilson. It was Harvey’s fifth TD pass — the fourth to Wilson. After the Auggies’ PAT, the Oles scored on a 25-yard TD pass from Theo Doran to Braden Menz. But the Oles’ pass attempt for the conversion failed.
After splitting their two-game West Coast trip to begin the season, the Wolves improved to 2-1 with a 112-101 win over Toronto in their home opener. It was a wire-to-wire win that featured some strong bursts of play from the Wolves and other times when their decision-making was suspect. But those moments when they were on, specifically the start of the game and most of the third quarter, were enough to carry them against a shorthanded Raptors team that was without RJ Barrett, Bruce Brown and Immanuel Quickley.
Julius Randle had 24 points while Anthony Edwards had 24 on 21 shot attempts. Donte DiVincenzo had 16 off the bench. Nickeil Alexander-Walker left the game in the fourth quarter and did not return, though he was in the bench area for the final minutes after going to the locker room briefly.
The Wolves’ starting lineup had its best stretch of basketball on the season after that unit started off sluggish in the first two games. Mike Conley, who was 3-for-16 to open the year, hit two early threes to set the tone, though Conley would finish 2-for-8.
Donte DiVincenzo replaced him at point guard halfway through the quarter and continued the hot shooting from the point guard slot with three threes of his own. The Wolves forced five Toronto turnovers and had a 32-18 lead after one.
Coach Chris Finch toyed with some different lineup combinations in the first half as he had Conley and DiVincenzo begin the quarter together while having Joe Ingles run the point later in the quarter. It led to an uneven second, and the Wolves led 56-44 at halftime.
But the Wolves played inspired coming out of the break. Jaden McDaniels, who didn’t take a shot in the first half, had nine points in the opening minutes of the third. Edwards hit a pair of threes as they pushed their lead to 22. The Wolves weren’t sharp closing the night, and the Raptors had the game within right inside of two minutes, but the Wolves had built enough of a cushion.
Rudy Gobert. Gobert had 15 points and 13 rebounds and was the beneficiary of some lobs from his teammates like Edwards, Conley, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Joe Ingles. Gobert also finished with four blocks.
Gobert had two blocks on one possession in the fourth quarter that got the crowd off its feet and Gobert pounding his chest. Gobert blocked D.J. Carton and Jamison Battle.
Star Tribune
Trump denigrates Detroit while appealing for votes in a suburb of Michigan’s largest city
NOVI, Mich. — Donald Trump further denigrated Detroit while appealing for votes Saturday in a suburb of the largest city in swing state Michigan.
”I think Detroit and some of our areas makes us a developing nation,” the former president told supporters in Novi. He said people want him to say Detroit is ”great,” but he thinks it ”needs help.”
The Republican nominee for the White House had told an economic group in Detroit earlier this month that the ”whole country will end up being like Detroit” if Democrat Kamala Harris wins the presidency. That comment drew harsh criticism from Democrats who praised the city for its recent drop in crime and growing population.
Trump’s stop in Novi, after an event Friday night in Traverse City, is a sign of Michigan’s importance in the tight race. Harris is scheduled for a rally in Kalamazoo later Saturday with former first lady Michelle Obama on the first day that early in-person voting becomes available across Michigan. More than 1.4 million ballots have already been submitted, representing 20% of registered voters. Trump won the state in 2016, but Democrat Joe Biden carried it four years later.
Michigan is home to major car companies and the nation’s largest concentration of members of the United Auto Workers. It also has a significant Arab American population, and many have been frustrated by the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza after the attack by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
During his rally, Trump spotlighted local Muslim and Arab American leaders who joined him on stage. These voters ”could turn the election one way or the other,” Trump said, adding that he was banking on ”overwhelming support” from those voters in Michigan.
“When President Trump was president, it was peace,” said one of those leaders, Mayor Bill Bazzi of Dearborn Heights. ”We didn’t have any issues. There was no wars.”
While Trump is trying to capitalize on the community’s frustration with the Democratic administration, he has a history of policies hostile to this group, including a travel ban targeting Muslim countries while in office and a pledge to expand it to include refugees from Gaza if he wins on Nov. 5.
