 Hilary Swank and director Mira Nair signed the plane’s door with best wishes to Joe Shepherd. (Photo by Martha Barksdale) Joe Shepherd’s Lockheed 12A Electra Junior has been a star among aviation buffs for years, but now the gleaming 73-year-old beauty is gaining fame in the new movie “Amelia” as the doomed plane that vanished in 1937 with aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan in one of the 20th century’s most intriguing mysteries.
A Canadian pilot buddy recommended Fayetteville resident Shepherd and his Lockheed 12 for the movie gig. The plane Earhart attempted to fly around the world was a Lockheed 10, “but there aren’t any airworthy 10’s,” Shepherd said. “The 12’s are virtually identical. 95 percent of the people won’t know the difference.”
Shepherd and his Lockheed spent several weeks last summer filming the movie. Much of the time was spent in a hangar in Toronto. The flying scenes were done in St. Catharines, Ontario.
The plane itself got a little makeover for its film appearance. Earhart’s call sign was added, along with bands of removable paint in “international orange.”
“It was supposed to make the plane easy to spot if it went down...except in the ocean,” Shepherd said with a wry smile.
The pilot got into the act himself. The film makers put a blond wig on him for side shots to make it look as though Earhart was flying.
Shepherd said he thoroughly enjoyed his time with the film crew, and said he was impressed with how much work moviemaking actually is. “I operated the airplane about 50 hours,” he noted. “We would work eight hours to get about 30 or 45 seconds worth of usable film.”
He met all the stars of the film and worked with director Mira Nair. Hilary Swank, who portrays Earhart, was just as friendly as she seems like she would be, Shepherd said. “She was real nice.
Now Richard Gere...he was all business.”
Shepherd said Swank wanted to fly with him, but her agent wouldn’t let her. Swank learned to fly for the role, but, again, safety concerns trumped her wishes, and she is not allowed to solo, Shepherd said.
Shepherd’s persistence in getting his Lockheed Electra back into its 1936 condition is a tale perhaps worthy of a movie of its own.
He said he always loved airplanes. His dad was a fighter pilot in World War II and later operated a small airport. Shepherd is a retired captain who spent 35 years with Northwest Airlines.
Before that he worked in general aviation, flying corporate jets. Now, his son is a pilot for UPS.
“I always wanted one,” he said of the Lockheed 12A Electra Junior, “ and in 1988 I heard about a guy in Texas who had one he wanted to get rid of. I traded him an old Cessna I had and went out to Texas. We worked on it enough to make the flight home, but I knew it needed to be completely rebuilt,” he said. It took 18 years to get it back to brand new condition inside and out, but now it has logged 200 trouble-free hours and taken honors in several airplane shows. This plane was the eighth out of 130 of its kind built by Lockheed and fewer than a dozen are still flying, Shepherd said.
He described the Lockheed as challenging, but fun, to fly. You have to know what you’re doing. “I learned to fly on a taildragger, he said. “Now you could take a modern Delta captain and put him in this, and he couldn’t get it off the ground. Nothing against him, but you’ve got to know what you’re doing.”
Shepherd had the skill and the facilities at his disposal to get his Lockheed back in tip-top condition. In 1983 he and his family moved to a fly-in community just west of Fayetteville. “It was a dream come true,” he said. “I don’t have to pay hangar fees.” He built two hangars to house the Lockheed and an antique Cessna and also uses the space for his other passion--restoring vintage Harleys.
Shepherd said his wife, Michelle, an intensive care nurse at Southern Regional Hospital, is totally on board with his work with antique planes and loves to fly with him. He doesn’t plan anymore plane restorations, but said he enjoys helping “other Lockheed guys” with their projects.
The Shepherds attended a special screening of “Amelia” last weekend, flying the Lockheed to New Jersey and riding over to Manhattan in a limo provided by Fox Searchlight Pictures. He said for all the work, his plane appears very little, but is included.
And as for the movie? The pilot is non-committal. “I liked seeing all the flying and the planes, but I don’t think it will be a big blockbuster.”
Finally, what does he think happened to Earhart? She and Noonan were given up for lost after their plane disappeared over the Pacific. But rumors were rampant that she survived. Maybe she was on a remote island. Some people said she was a prisoner of the Japanese. Shepherd said he is sure they went down in the ocean. “They were trying to reach Howland Island, which is tiny. If they were off just one or two degrees, they would miss it and run out of fuel,” Shepherd opined.
“That wreckage is out there somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, and someone will find it one day.”
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