Thank you to Bruce Hirsh for contributing this image of a 1965 Miani News article about the bronze historical plaques at former Amelia Earhart field being stolen by metal thieves and that the City of Hialeah was considering reinstallation of historical plaques. Please click on "original" below to see this image at the largest size. You may also using your CTRL button and your mouse scroll wheel to zoom in even further. I am retyping the article below for the benefit of those who can not read the article on the following two pages (top portion and bottom portion):

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By Gordon Fletcher, Reporter of The Miami News

Buried behind hibiscus and crotons gone wild along LeJeune Road just north of Hialeah is a monument to America's greatest woman flier.

On that spot in the predawn cool of a July morning 28 years ago Amelia Earhart revved up the engines of her Lockheed Electra and took off into a northeast breeze for a flight around the world.

But Amelia Earhart never returned. She vanished on the last leg of the flight, somewhere near a tiny Pacific Island called Howland.

And today, you cannot tell that the rugged seven-foot chuck of Florida limestone behind the buses is a memorial to the first woman to solo non-stop across the nation, across the Atlantic and from Hawaii to California.

The three bronze plaques once fixed to the east face of the rough stone are gone. Vandals tore them off and sold them for what the metal would bring, say citizens who remember when the monument was new.

Ten years after Amelia Earhart disappeared, several hundred citizens and servicemen met on that spot on Navy Day to rename Miami Municipal Airport in memory of the aviatrix.

The Navy, the Dade County Federation of Women's Clubs and the Ninety-Nines -- a women pilot's group formed by Amelia Earhart -- all took part in the ceremony, as did Henry Milander, then in his second term as Hialeah's mayor, and Circuit Judge Fraces Knuck, then president of Hialeah's City Council.

They were commemorating the day when the aviatrix took off, flew over Opa-locka, North Miami, North Miami Beach, and then made a turn for South America.

Her $30,000 "Flying Laboratory," a gift from Purdue University where she had taught, carried her safely for 22,000 miles - south, then across over Africa, India and Australia.

Another 7,000 miles and she would have been home. Her last radio message on July 2, 1937 said:

"Circling. Cannot see the island. Gas is running low." Ships and planes searched the area for 16 days. No trace was found.

Today, the airport which was the scene of the excitement when her final adventure began is acres of cracking asphalt and concrete. Empty, broken buildings stand like silent sentinels guarding rusting machinery that is useless but for scrap.

The site was declared surplus by the federal government in 1959. It was sold to the Seaboard Airline Railroad and is scheduled for development as a switching yard.

A Hialeah citizen proposed yesterday that the huge stone honoring Amelia Earhart's memory be moved across LeJeune Road and put where people can see it again, and young people might be inspired, in the yard of Hialeah Elementary (sic, it was Amelia Earhart Elementary).

And despite the story of vandalism, said Jack Cissel, of 6231 E. 6th Ave., the community should launch a search for the missing bronze plaques. If they can't be found, Cissel said new ones should be struck and fixed to the monument.

Hialeah Councilman Jack Cherry said he will propose that the city and the Chamber of Commerce cooperate to restore the monument.

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