Lindbergh

by A. Scott Berg

  Minutes later, the local radio station got word. Not three hours after Land had called Jon in Seattle to tell him their father had died, he heard it on the radio. A few women rushed to the church to sweep it clean and to strew ginger stalks and hibiscus onto the deep window ledges. John Hanchett and a dozen ranch hands pulled up to the Pechin guest cottage and unloaded the heavy eucalyptus casket. The Hudson Bay blanket arrived that morning.

  Tevi, flown into Hana by private plane, arrived at the house to perform the most personal duties of the day. Lindbergh had asked the sixty-three-year-old laborer to dress him. Anne handed him the outfit Charles had selected—a pair of old, gray cotton pants and a khaki shirt; he would wear neither a belt, because of the metal buckle, nor shoes. Tevi, John Hanchett, and two ranch hands then carried the dressed corpse to the blanket-lined coffin and set him down, tucking in the sheets exactly as prescribed. Just as one of the men prepared to hammer down the lid, Anne called out, “No, wait.” She approached for a final look and lost her composure. With tears in her eyes, she placed four white flowers inside the casket, which was finally nailed shut. Eight men carried the heavy box out to Hanchett’s blue pickup. Tevi hopped in back so that he could ride alongside the coffin, which was covered with canvas.

  It was early afternoon when the local police sergeant began his drive from the Pechin cottage down to the Kipahulu church, followed by Hanchett’s truck, and a small convoy of other vehicles. As they passed the Ohe’o Stream, none of the sightseers at the Seven Sacred Pools had any idea that the funeral cortege of Charles Lindbergh was passing by.

  The service was scheduled for three o’clock, and Milton Howell had said he would talk to the press at four. But by two o’clock, the coffin had been carried inside to the front of the church, and all the intended guests were present—no more than fifteen people, most of the men in their work clothes. Candles flickered in the sconces and the smell of ginger filled the small church. Knowing that the serenity of the moment could not last much longer, Anne and Land asked for the service to begin.

  In a moment of absolute tranquility just before the Reverend John Tincher spoke, a barefooted Hawaiian woman, who occasionally helped with the housekeeping at Argonauta, walked to the front of the church, her apron full of flowers. She knelt by the coffin; and, placing one blossom at a time, she covered it with a blanket of plumeria. Exactly as scripted, the service of silent prayer and Tincher’s reading of five selections took less than twenty minutes.

  Because the casket was so heavy, six or seven men carried it back to the truck, and John Hanchett drove it to the gravesite. It was difficult lowering the coffin into the deep stone-lined hole; and, as it was done, Tincher spoke the words of committal. People tossed flowers into the tomb, and Land actually climbed in to place one white plumeria blossom on the coffin for his mother. Henry Kahula led the singing of a Hawaiian hymn with three other voices; and the music, Land recalled, “just soared out and away with the wind and the crashing of the waves below us.”

  Only one local reporter was present for the service, respectfully in the background. By three o’clock, when the mourners were driving off, the first television crew was on its way to the church, not a half-mile away. The dozen members of the press who followed felt they had been tricked. But Milton Howell explained the situation and invited them to his house, where he answered all their questions.

  For the last time, Charles Lindbergh captured the attention of the world media. News of his death commanded the entire upper-left corner of the front page of The New York Times. The paper paid further homage with a two-page obituary by Alden Whitman, a column of tributes, including one from the President of three weeks, Gerald Ford. The Times editorial, titled “Passing of a Hero,” spoke of Lindbergh as “both the beneficiary and the victim of a celebrity experienced by no other American in this century.” It was fitting, it noted, that he chose to die and be buried “in the utmost simplicity, far from the crowds that had hailed and repelled him in his lifetime.” Beginning that afternoon, close to one thousand messages of condolence began to pour in, from around the world.

  At two o’clock the following afternoon, two dozen people arrived at the Ho’omau Church for Lindbergh’s memorial service. Another dozen reporters had arrived early to cover the event; and Anne Lindbergh invited them to take seats in the rear pews. Jon and Sam Pryor sat up front with Anne and Land. John Tincher, in his final hours on Maui, conducted the multifaith service, again with Henry Kahula. Anne was especially moved by the singing of the last hymn, a sublime rendition of “Hawaii Aloha.” The entire program lasted less than thirty minutes, without any suggestion of Lindbergh’s accomplishments. When it was over, Anne thanked each person who attended, even the reporters. She would return to the mainland later that week, and settle into a progressively reclusive widowhood in Connecticut, reducing her life to visits with her children and seventeen grandchildren. In time, she stopped going to Switzerland and Hawaii at all.

  Lindbergh’s Autobiography of Values would be published in 1978, exposing a more philosophical, even poetic, man than most readers expected. It concludes on a transcendental note. “After my death,” he wrote, “the molecules of my being will return to the earth and the sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars.”

  And on certain days at that quiet graveyard overlooking Kipahulu Bay, the molecules collide in such a way that the water and sky blend into one seamless spectrum of blue—a deep sapphire far out to sea that brightens almost to the color of glacial ice as it ascends, that very same pale but radiant blue that the sky over Sweden sometimes casts in the late summer.

  Scandal drove Charles Lindbergh’s paternal grandfather—Ola Månsson—to America, where he and his second wife, Louisa, raised their family. They changed their surname to Lindbergh and called their firstborn (standing) Charles August. He became known as C.A.

  Charles H. Land—Lindbergh’s maternal grandfather—known as the “Father of Porcelain Dentistry”—taught young Charles that “Science is the key to all mystery.”

  C. A. Lindbergh in 1901—when he was known as “the brightest lawyer in Minnesota” and the handsomest man in Little Falls.

  Evangeline Lodge Land left Detroit to teach science in Little Falls, where she fell in love with C.A.

  Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh and her newborn son, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, in 1902.

  Charles had a lonely childhood, with few friends other than his pets. Posed here, in 1913, with Dingo.

  The Lindbergh marriage was unhappy, practically from the start. Charles spent most of his time with his doting mother.

  C.A. found new passion in politics. Although he and his wife kept separate residences in Washington during his five terms as a Congressman, Evangeline always encouraged Charles to spend time with his father.

  C.A. campaigning in northern Minnesota.

  Some of Charles’s happiest childhood moments were spent on the Upper Mississippi.

  In 1920, Charles Lindbergh entered the University of Wisconsin. His mother moved to Madison to be with him.

  After flunking out of college his sophomore year, Lindbergh rode his Excelsior motorcycle to Nebraska, where he learned to fly.

  Barnstorming in the 1920s with his friend Harlan “Bud” Gurney.

  Second Lieutenant Charles A. Lindbergh.

  In 1924, Lindbergh joined the Army Air Corps and was stationed at Brooks Field, Texas.

  November 1926. By the time airmail-pilot Lindbergh’s plane had gone down for the second time on the St. Louis–Chicago run, he had already been dreaming of the Orteig Prize—$25,000 for the first pilot to fly nonstop between New York and Paris.

  The following spring, his plane was built—for $10,580, which he had raised from several businessmen in St. Louis.

  May 1927. Lindbergh takes the Spirit of St. Louis on a test flight from a Long Island runway. The press was already making the most of the story.

  Evangeline L. L. Lindbergh visits her son just before his death-defying flight. “For th
e first time in my life,” she told him, “I realize that Columbus also had a mother.”

  May 22, 1927. Paris. The “day after.” With Ambassador Myron T. Herrick.

  June 13, 1927. Lower Broadway. The hero returns.

  Triumph. New York City.

  The spirit of St. Louis. Local boy comes home.

  Dwight W. Morrow in 1926, just before he ended his career as a partner at J. P. Morgan to become Ambassador to Mexico. Seated with (clockwise) wife, Elizabeth, and children, Elisabeth, Anne, Constance, and Dwight Jr.

  In 1930, Anne gave birth to their first child, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.

  After only a few secret dates, the “Prince of the Air” married the Ambassador’s daughter in 1929. Even Anne’s old friends congratulated her.

  Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh became international celebrities—the “First Couple of the Skies.”

  Exploring cliff dwellings in New Mexico in 1929, during one of their whirlwind expeditions.

  Anne (photographed in Nanking) became Charles’s copilot, navigator, and radio operator.

  Japan, 1931—just before learning of the sudden death of Anne’s father, then a United States Senator from New Jersey.

  Anne in the early 1930s was anxious to develop her own identity.

  Her first book, North to the Orient, became the first of many bestsellers.

  A pioneer in commercial aviation, Charles Lindbergh surveys South American routes in 1929 with Juan Trippe, founder of Pan American.

  The beginnings of America’s rocket program—physicist Robert H. Goddard, flanked by his two strongest supporters, Harry Guggenheim and Charles Lindbergh.

  Dr. Alexis Carrel, Nobel laureate. Lindbergh’s mentor and hero.

  Dr. Carrel and Lindbergh lunching at the Rockefeller Institute, where they developed a perfusion pump, soon known worldwide as an artificial heart.

  “The Lindbergh Baby” on his first birthday, June 22, 1931.

  March 1932. Outside the baby’s room of the Lindbergh house near Hopewell, New Jersey. For two and a half years, the authorities had no idea as to who climbed the ladder. (New Jersey State Police Museum)

  The Lindberghs escaped the hysteria that followed their son’s fatal kidnapping by traveling to remote regions. Greenland, summer 1933.

  Cape Verde Islands, repairing sun damage.

  Anne at Porto Praia.

  Leaving the Shetland Islands.

  Bruno Richard Hauptrnann. Arrested for committing “The Crime of the Century.” (New Jersey State Police Museum)

  In January 1935, the entire world was plugged into the courthouse in Flemington, New Jersey. (UPI/Corbis-Bettmann)

  Lindbergh with the chief of the New Jersey State Police, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, whose son would distinguish himself a half-century later in the Persian Gulf War. (UPI/Corbis- Bettmann)

  The “Baby’s Mother” comes to testify.

  For the prosecution: New Jersey Attorney General David T. Wilentz and “Jafsie,” John F. Condon, the go-between who paid the Lindbergh ransom money in a Bronx cemetery. (UPI/Corbis-Bettmann)

  Hauptmann and his attorney, Edward “Death House” Reilly. (New Jersey State Police Museum)

  Lindbergh on the stand. Once he testified, his attorney said afterward, the trial was over. (UPI/Corbis-Bettmann)

  “The Trial of the Century.” While both teams of attorneys shared a light moment, Hauptmann (far right) warily looked on and Lindbergh (six seats to his right) studiously looked away. (UPI/Corbis-Bettmann)

  Anne, coping with tragedy.

  Charles, Anne, and their second son, Jon, could never appear in public without being photographed. Threats were already being made on Jon’s life.

  Flight. The Lindberghs became exiles—arriving in Liverpool, December 31, 1935.

  The Lindberghs found security at Long Barn in England. Jon and Anne with their dogs Skean and Thor.

  The Lindberghs take to the skies again. In Ireland, he took Irish Prime Minister Eamon De Valera for his first flight.

  Refueling at Raipur, 1937.

  Illiec. The private island the Lindberghs bought off the Brittany coast, 1938.

  Lindbergh visited Germany six times between 1936 and 1938, a fascination that plagued him for the rest of his life. Below, he and Anne meet Hermann Goering. (Goering photo Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München)

  After three years abroad, Lindbergh returned to speak against U.S. intervention in World War II. He became the leading spokesman for America First—a big political tent that also included such diverse personalities as Burton K. Wheeler, Democratic Senator from Montana, Mrs. Kathleen Norris, popular novelist, and American socialist leader Norman Thomas. New York City, 1941. (Brown Brothers)

  Lindbergh at the podium. Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1941. (AP/Wide World Photos)

  Charles with sons Land and Jon. Lloyd Neck, Long Island, 1940.

  On holiday. Florida, 1941.

  Because of Lindbergh’s prewar speeches, FDR would not allow him into the armed forces; but after Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh found other ways to serve. He became a human guinea pig, testing the effects of altitude at the Mayo Clinic, September 1942.

  He also served as a “technical representative” in the South Pacific—where he unofficially flew on fifty bombing missions. Emirau Island, May 1944.

  Anne and Charles in Bavaria. Their marriage was not the storybook romance the world imagined.

  The two Anne Lindberghs. Westport.

  Never able to stay long in a single place, Lindbergh continued to tour the world, fighting for environmental issues. Luzon, 1969.

  Indonesia, 1967.

  Saigon, 1967.

  President Lyndon B. Johnson and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey look on as Lindbergh signs autographs for the Apollo astronauts at the White House, 1968.

  Brazil, 1969.

  Lindbergh and President Richard M. Nixon, with whom he was willing to pose for pictures to help the cause of conservation, 1972.

  Tree-hugger.

  October 1969. Anne Morrow Lindbergh in her “Little House,” where she wrote her perennial bestseller Gift from the Sea and several volumes of bestselling diaries.

  Jon Lindbergh’s career has been mostly around or under water. (New Jersey State Police Museum)

  Land Lindbergh became a rancher; his sister Ansy (Anne S. Lindbergh) wrote children’s books.

  Scott Lindbergh, outside the family chalet in Switzerland, pursued the study of animal behavior.

  Lindbergh giving away in marriage his youngest child, Reeve, also a writer, 1968.

  Grandfather Charles with Reeve’s daughter Elizabeth.

  Tonga, 1972. (copyright Tom Nebbia)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES AND SOURCES

  PERMISSIONS

  INDEX

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In 1989, Phyllis E. Grann, Chairman and CEO of Putnam Berkley, asked if I would be interested in writing a book she had been wanting to read for fifteen years—a biography of Charles Lindbergh. “Yes and no,” I told her. Lindbergh had long been on my short list of potential subjects, I explained; but, alas, I had already ascertained that his papers were under lock and key and that his family had no interest in opening them to researchers. Mrs. Grann did not care; she simply wanted to read about Lindbergh. I explained that the only circumstances under which I would attempt such a book would be with the complete cooperation of the Lindbergh family, which would allow me to see and quote from what was rumored to be hundreds of boxes of material.

  After almost a year of correspondence, Charles Lindbergh’s widow, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, asked if we could meet. And after a week of meals and conversations together—usually in the company of her youngest daughter, her sister, and two of her closest friends—she handed me a light-blue envelope containing the legal permissions—handwritten in ballpoint pen—to undertake this biography. She offered complete access, imposed no restrictions, and made no demands, expressing only her hope that I would not rush through the material. A few weeks later
, I received another letter from Mrs. Lindbergh—what I feared, at first, was a withdrawal of the permission. “You can’t write about Charles without writing about me,” she explained, as she granted access to all her papers as well, including some sixty years of diaries.

  I am profoundly grateful to Anne Morrow Lindbergh not only for the access to what proved to be some two thousand boxes—counting the personal papers of her parents and siblings as well as her inlaws—but also for the time she contributed to this project and for her trust. I am equally beholden to the five remarkable Lindbergh children, all of whom made themselves (and their papers and diaries) available to me. Jon, Land, Anne, Scott, and Reeve Lindbergh also provided hours of unusually thoughtful, articulate, and candid reflections of their father. I have seldom encountered such generosity of spirit. I hope this book offers some compensation for their investment. I am especially indebted to Reeve Lindbergh, the family shepherd, who never failed to put her own work aside in order to answer just one more question or to help me locate just one more source. Quite simply, this book would not exist were it not for her.