[4] In 1965, Joseph Gervais received an invitation to speak at a retired pilots' gathering, where one of Amelia Earhart's friends, Viola Gentry, introduced him to Mrs. Bolam.

Gervais felt he instantly recognized her as an older version of Amelia Earhart and commenced to research her past.

Using Gervais' research, author Joe Klaas documented his assertion in his book Amelia Earhart Lives (1970).

Although Irene Craigmile Bolam was briefly a pilot who claimed to have known Amelia Earhart, her main career from the mid-1940s on revolved around banking and finance in New York.

[6] In 2006, a criminal forensic expert was hired by National Geographic to study photographs of Earhart and Bolam and cited many measurable facial differences between them, concluding that the two people were not the same.