Michael Kammerer; media mogul who spent millions looking for Amelia Earhart
Hyfler/Rosner
May 23, 2007 Wednesday 8:02 AM GMT
Media mogul Michael Kammerer dies at 67
ALBUQUERQUE N.M.
R. Michael Kammerer Jr., who put some of the millions he
made in the cable television industry behind an effort to
find the last resting place of famed pilot Amelia Earhart,
has died. He was 67.
Kammerer, founder of ITN Networks, was surrounded by family
when he died here May 12, according to an obituary published
in the Albuquerque Journal. The family provided no details
about the cause of death, but said a private memorial was
planned.
Kammerer spent two decades in the advertising business
before he founded ITN in 1983 from a basement office in his
family's home in Chappaqua, N.Y. The company expanded to
become one of the largest suppliers of non-network,
prime-time advertising in the United States.
By 1991, Kammerer turned ITN's operations over to a
management team and headed to New Mexico, where he bought an
adobe ranch in Santa Fe and took up roping.
"Kammerer was one of those rare men dynamic enough to leave
a lasting and matchless mark on two distinctive worlds the
high-powered executive offices of Madison Avenue and the
dusty roping rings of the Southwest," the obituary read.
In 2001, Kammerer got involved in the search for Earhart's
Lockheed Electra 10E on the ocean floor near Howland Island,
a refueling stop just a few miles north of the equator.
Earhart's flight in 1937 captured the imagination of people
all over the world, and her disappearance resulted in
decades of debate over where the plane went down.
Kammerer paid $1 million for a 1935 Electra 10E, the only
flying sister ship of the plane Earhart had used. He also
paid $300,000 for a 1943 PBY Catalina, a plane similar to
those used to search for Earhart.
"There's all kind of mystery surrounding this thing!" he
told Outside Magazine for a January 2002 article on the
search for Earhart. "... There are incredibly mysterious
characters involved, and mysterious events. All this kind of
stuff is more dramatic and interesting to me than just a
piece of metal. Whether they find the plane or not is really
incidental."
Kammerer grew up in Long Island, N.Y., and graduated from
St. Bonaventure University. He served in the Army National
Guard.
After coming to New Mexico, he started the Code of the West
Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to promoting the
values of taking care of your family, helping your
neighbors, working for what you get and sticking to your
word.
Kammerer and his wife, Susan Bodelson Kammerer, also
contributed to Santo Domingo Pueblo, the New Mexico Suicide
Intervention Project, Wings of Hope and other charities.
Kammerer's family said he will be remembered as a visionary,
a man who tackled worthy pursuits and a forthright citizen
who encouraged others to envision life as it could be.
He's survived by his wife; his daughter, Kristen Wolf; son,
Rudolph Michael Kammerer III; stepchildren David, Corinne,
Perry and Eric Fishback; brothers, Daniel Kammerer, Kevin
Kammerer and Keith Kammerer; and sister, Margaret Cruise.