Lindbergh, Charles (1902-1974)

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Lindbergh, Charles (1902-1974)

Charles Lindbergh's 1927 nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic, the first of its kind, instantly transformed the twenty-five-year-old aviator into an international celebrity. The "Lone Eagle," a shy and uncomfortable youth, found himself at the center of history's first "media blitz" as journalists from across the globe tried to profit from the public's insatiable demand for Lindbergh news and gossip. Although Lindbergh's popularity peaked in the fad frenzy of the 1920s, he continued to be the subject of tabloid headlines throughout his life. He gained public sympathy after the kidnapping and murder of his son in 1932, then fell victim to widespread condemnation for his German sympathies in the wake of World War II and finally rehabilitated himself as an early voice in the environmental conservation movement. Lindbergh's diverse accomplishments ranged from the invention of a prototypic artificial heart to the publication of a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir. Yet while "Lucky Lindy" contributed immensely to the field of aeronautics, his lasting significance is as one of the first—if not the first—popular celebrities whose private life in all its details became a matter of public interest and record.

The future aviation pioneer was born into a wealthy Minnesota family on February 4, 1902. His father, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Sr., represented Little Falls and the surrounding area in the United States Congress and the young Lindbergh divided his childhood between the family farm and the drawing rooms of Washington's inner circle. He showed exceptional promise as a teenager and enrolled in an engineering program at the University of Wisconsin at the age of eighteen. Two years later, having learned to fly, he ended his formal education without taking a degree to pursue the rugged, hand-to-mouth existence of an airmail pilot and barnstormer. He attended army flight school (1924-25), then became a regular on the Robinson Aircraft Corporation's Chicago-St. Louis postal flight route. Here he attracted the attention of a group of Missouri businessmen who agreed to sponsor Lindbergh in his bid for the Orteig Prize—a $25,000 bounty offered by New York hotel magnate Raymond Orteig to the first aviator to fly nonstop from New York to Paris.

The preparations for Lindbergh's flight drew limited media coverage as other aviators had previously attempted the solo transatlantic voyage without success. Those in the media who took notice of this new venture dubbed Lindbergh "the flying fool." Meanwhile, his backers purchased a specially designed aircraft from the Ryan Aircraft Company of San Diego, California. Lindbergh dubbed it The Spirit of St. Louis. The plane itself would later become a celebrated artifact of American lore—the subject of countless books and an immensely popular display at the Smithsonian Institute's National Air and Space Museum. Lindbergh captained the monoplane on a test run from San Diego to New York with an overnight stop in St. Louis; the 20-hour, 21-minute trip set a transcontinental record. Then, on May 20, 1927, at precisely 7:52 a.m., Lindbergh departed from New York's Roosevelt Field on the 3600 mile journey that would make him famous. Thirty-three and a half hours later he landed at Le Bourget Field on the outskirts of Paris. More than 100,000 Parisians came out to welcome him. Similar receptions followed in London and Ottawa as millions of fans struggled to catch a glimpse of the overnight hero. He also became the darling of the upper classes as King George of England presented him with the Air Force Cross and King Albert of Belgium honored him as a Knight of the Order of Leopold. After grand parades in New York City and Washington, President Calvin Coolidge personally pinned the Distinguished Flying Cross to Lindbergh's lapel. Myron Herrick, the United States Ambassador to France, expressed the sentiments of millions when he wrote to the president, "Had we searched all America we could not have found a better type than young Lindbergh to represent the spirit and high purpose of our people."

Promoters offered Lindbergh lucrative theatrical and movie contracts worth almost $2 million. He rejected them outright, to popular acclaim. The young pilot instead offered his services to the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics and toured all forty-eight states as part of a campaign to promote aviation. His travels also took him to Latin America where he fell in love with Anne Morrow, the daughter of American Ambassador Dwight Morrow. The couple wed in 1929. Lindbergh devoted the next five years of his life to various scientific causes. He promoted the research of rocket pioneer Robert Goddard, then a professor at Clark University, and convinced the Guggenheim family to bankroll the physicist's work; Goddard's discoveries later proved to be highly instrumental in the development of space travel and satellite technology. Lindbergh also invented a prototype of the "artificial heart" with French surgeon Alexis Carrel. Although the device could not yet be implanted in humans, it demonstrated that human tissue could be kept alive outside the body. Despite these accomplishments, Lindbergh quickly tired of incessant media attention and sought to avoid the limelight. He and his wife "retired" to a 390-acre compound in Hopewell, New Jersey.

Personal tragedy returned Lindbergh to the public eye in 1932 when his twenty-month-old son, Charles Augustus, Jr., was kidnapped from the family's New Jersey estate. Ten weeks later, after Lindbergh paid a $50,000 ransom, the boy's body was found in the nearby woods. Suspicion quickly fell upon Richard Bruno Hautpmann, a German-born carpenter with a record of petty criminal offenses. The subsequent trial developed into a media circus. Critic H.L. Mencken echoed popular sentiment when he termed the event "the biggest story since the Resurrection." More than 60,000 curiosity seekers and 750 reporters converged on Flemington, New Jersey, in the hope of seeing the kidnapper. Vendors sold models of the ladder used to climb into the child's bedroom and specious "locks of the child's hair." In the courtroom, Attorney General David Wilenz capitalized on prevailing anti-German sentiments and depicted the accused as "the filthiest and vilest snake that ever crawled through the grass." The prosecution also pioneered the use of scientific experts, calling on specialists in handwriting and even a wood technologist to demonstrate that Hauptmann had written the ransom notes and constructed the ladder discovered near the crime scene. The jury convicted Hauptmann of kidnapping and felony murder. He was executed in 1936. In response to the case, Congress passed the "Lindbergh Law" making kidnapping a federal offense. The Lindberghs, now the recipients both of widespread public sympathy and renewed media attention, retreated to Europe to escape from the scrutiny of the press.

While in Europe, Lindbergh toured the aircraft industries of France and Germany. Hitler's Nazi regime feted the aviator and impressed him with the technological superiority of its Luftwaffe. Lindbergh was reported to claim that "the German air fleet could whip the Russian, French, and British air fleets combined." In 1938, Luftwaffe Commander Hermann Goering presented Lindbergh with the Service Cross of the German Eagle. Three weeks later, Hitler's S.S. perpetrated the Kristallnacht massacre of Germany's Jews. Lindbergh's refusal to return the medal and his subsequent anti-Semitic remarks tarnished his previously untouchable reputation. He attracted additional notoriety when, after his return to the United States in 1939, he advocated American neutrality in World War II. He became a prominent spokesman for the America First Committee, an isolationist lobby, and publicly attacked President Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy. Although Lindbergh halted his antiwar activities following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and attempted to serve his country, his efforts to enlist in the Army Air Corps were rebuffed. He did fly fifty combat missions as a civilian advisor to the United Aircraft Corporation. However, this service did little to repair his tarnished reputation. The aviator retired to Connecticut and Hawaii where he served as a part-time advisor to several private airlines and the Department of Defense. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him a brigadier general in the Air Force Reserves in 1954.

The final decades of Lindbergh's life were devoted to travel and environmental causes. He lobbied for the protection of the blue whale and opposed supersonic air travel on the grounds that it might harm the earth's atmosphere. He also devoted himself to the study of the indigenous cultures of Southeast Asia and Africa. His memoir, The Spirit of St. Louis, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. Charles Lindbergh died of cancer on August 26, 1974 at his family retreat on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

The Lindbergh craze of the 1920s continued to influence American culture long after its subject had faded from the public view. Prior to the 1920s, the press generally honored the privacy rights of public figures. Yet Lindbergh's combination of personal reserve and public celebrity made him the victim of one of the darkest episode's in the history of the American free press. For years after his flight, reporters pestered his family and stalked his home to provide the public with such coveted details as Lindbergh's tastes in food and cinema. The media frenzy surrounding the "Lindbergh Baby" kidnapping paved the way for the sensational trials of such figures as Sam Sheppard, Candace Mossler, Melvin Powers. While the publicity-shy Lindbergh turned down efforts to exploit his fame financially, other popular figures capitalize on the celebrity craze that Lindbergh started. For Charles Lindbergh unwittingly did as much as any other figure to open the private lives of public figures to mass scrutiny. After 1927, "The Lone Eagle" discovered to his chagrin that America would no longer leave its heroes alone.

—Jacob M. Appel