Will Rogers, the midwestern humorist, wrote, “There is a hundred and twenty million people in America all ready to tell Lindbergh what to do. The first thing we want to get into our heads is that this boy is not our usual type of hero that we are used to dealing with. He is our prince and our president combined, and I will personally pay benefits to him for the rest of my life to keep him from having to make exhibitions out of himself. We only get one of these in a lifetime.”11 Will Rogers notwithstanding, however, and as the New Republic put it, Lindbergh was “ours. He is no longer permitted to be himself. He is the U.S. personified.”12 In other words, for better or worse—and to his eternal regret—Lindbergh had become public property.
People soon began to argue as to what Lindbergh’s accomplishment “meant,” and two schools of thought emerged. One claimed the feat was the heroic achievement of man over nature; the other asserted it was the ultimate triumph of “the machine,” or science. In either case Lindbergh was the hero, but of exactly what was not clear.
Those who hailed him as a pioneer were on firmer ground. He was compared with Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, two loners who struggled across the Alleghenies and opened up the western lands beyond. There were also more lofty claims. Heywood Broun in his newspaper column enthused that this “tall young man raised up and let us see the potentialities of the human spirit,” while a Harvard professor gave an address in which he described Lindbergh thusly: “He has come like a shining vision to revive the hope of mankind.” Another speaker put it a bit more succinctly: “He stands out in a grubby world as an inspiration.”
Lindbergh had, in fact, opened up a new frontier, which, in hindsight, was certainly no small feat. A New York Times reporter wrote that “what [Lindbergh] means by the Spirit of St. Louis is really the Spirit of America.” That might or might not have been so. What stands out is that Lindbergh himself at that time had little or no idea of the meaning of the flight of the Spirit other than to land in Paris in one piece, and he was utterly unprepared for the reception and attention that followed.13
On the afternoon of June 10, 1927, the cruiser Memphis entered the Chesapeake Bay with Lindbergh standing on the bridge, escorted by four destroyers, with two army blimps and several squadrons of army aircraft overhead. Crated below was the Spirit of St. Louis, which had just as much well-earned rest as her pilot on the six-day voyage. At sunrise next morning, the battle cruiser entered the Potomac River and steamed toward Washington. As it neared the dock at the Navy Yard all the bells and whistles began to sound as they had in New York, and additionally a battery of field guns roared out a welcoming salute.
Lindbergh stood in the ship’s bow, wearing his blue serge suit, waving to the crowed on the dock with his hat. When the boarding ramp was let down, Admiral Guy Burrage, commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, escorted aboard a little brown-clad lady wearing a large straw hat. He took her arm up the ramp and the crowd, including the ship’s crew, collectively gasped as they realized who she was, and when the thoroughly surprised Lindbergh ran down the ramp to embrace his mother, Evangeline, pandemonium reigned supreme. A brass band began to play, prompting some men to weep while others threw their hats into the air, women clutched their breasts, and everyone was overwhelmed with feeling.14
Lindbergh and Evangeline were paraded up Pennsylvania Avenue in the backseat of President Coolidge’s limousine—escorted by a squadron of U.S. cavalry in full regalia—to the Washington Monument, where a quarter million cheering people awaited them. The mid-June heat bore down as Coolidge bestowed on Lindbergh the Distinguished Flying Cross as well as a full colonel’s commission in the U.S. Army Reserve. The din was overwhelming as the twenty-five-year-old pilot stood on the podium with a bemused expression. When at last the multitude fell silent he made a brief speech about how the European outpouring of affection had been not just for him, but actually a demonstration of their friendship with the United States. Hundreds of photographers took pictures while Lindbergh’s remarks were carried by radio to some thirty million Americans.
Afterward there was the usual round of celebrations and ceremonies, including the announcement by the U.S. Postmaster General that a new ten-cent “Lindbergh” airmail stamp would be issued depicting the Spirit of St. Louis, the first ever that honored a man still living.‡
Two days later Lindbergh took off in Spirit for New York City where another mind-boggling shindig awaited him. He was placed aboard Mayor Jimmy Walker’s yacht and paraded down the Hudson to the Battery while hundreds of harbor boats followed and dozens of airplanes strewed hundreds of thousands of flower petals on the procession. He was then put in the back of a touring car and, led by ten thousand marching soldiers, paraded up bunting-decorated Broadway past Wall Street, which had shut down for the occasion, through a perfect blizzard of shredded stock ticker tape tossed from thousands of windows along the route of the Canyon of Heroes.§ It was printed that four million people attended the celebration, including a hundred thousand who had crammed into the plaza at City Hall to witness the occasion. The loquacious Mayor Walker, wearing a black top hat, opened the ceremony by declaring, “Colonel Lindbergh, New York City is yours—I don’t give it to you; you won it!”‖ Walker pinned on Lindbergh the gold and platinum Medal of New York City.
The parade then continued up Fifth Avenue where it stopped at St. Patrick’s Cathedral so Lindbergh could receive the blessing of Cardinal Hayes, who told him, “I greet you as the first and finest American boy of the day.” The parade at last ended in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow where Governor Al Smith presented Lindbergh with the Medal of Valor of the State of New York—a first for a non–New York resident—and proclaimed him “an ideal example for the youth of America.”
As if that weren’t enough, Lindbergh was trundled out to Long Island that night for a big fancy dinner dance, before embarking on the next round of receptions the next day, and the next. Everyone wanted some of Charles Lindbergh, and so far he seemed to be accommodating most of them. Like Ambassador Herrick back in Paris, Lindbergh seemed to sense a good thing when he saw it, and rather than give in to his natural tendency toward shyness and introspection, he endured the endless palaver for the sake of the future of aviation—or so he said. He was smart enough to realize this adulation might not go on forever, and that some positive good might come of it.
This positive good revealed itself on Lindbergh’s fourth day in New York. After an exhaustive twenty-two-mile parade before nearly a million residents during Lindbergh Day in Brooklyn—followed by a ceremony at Roosevelt Field, followed by an appearance at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx—the exploit finally paid off. Never mind the medals and the adulation and the promotional offers he would never accept; on Thursday evening, June 14, at the Hotel Brevoort on Fifth Avenue, Lindbergh was presented by Raymond Orteig with the Orteig Prize, consisting of an elegant scroll, a medal, and a check for $25,000. In accepting it, Lindbergh generously congratulated Orteig for issuing a challenge that initiated the construction of, and consequent improvements to, so many aircraft seeking his prize. Likewise, a short time later he received another $25,000 from the Vacuum Oil Company, the lone endorsement that he had agreed to before the flight.a This put him on a firm financial footing for the first time in his life.
The next day, a Saturday, Lindbergh flew to St. Louis, a nine-hour trip mostly in the rain, to show his appreciation to his backers. The entire city turned out on his behalf of course; half a million people lined the parade route that was decorated with his picture on every wall, in addition to the usual patriotic bunting. On Sunday, when the weather cleared, he delighted the crowds by flying stunts.
By now Lindbergh hoped for some well-deserved time off from the frantic schedule that had overtaken him the instant he put down in Paris. This was easier said than done, however. When he went downtown a day later in a new car, Lindbergh was relieved that people stared at the car and not at him. But no sooner had he set foot on the pavement than somebody recognized him and as if from nowhere a mob of p
eople appeared and chased him, grabbing at his clothes and his person.15
BY THIS TIME LINDBERGH was engrossed in the stupendous amount of mail he had received. Thus far there were some three and a half million letters from all parts of the globe and a hundred thousand telegrams—everything from “congratulations” to “welcome home” to marriage proposals by the dozens. As with Eddie Rickenbacker, there was interest in Lindbergh by every Rotary, Kiwanis, Optimist, Sertoma, and Exchange club in the country, as well as the usual mammalian lodges. There were messages of congratulations, often accompanied by a gold medal of some description, from practically every country in Europe and Central and South America, including Bulgaria, Romania, Peru, and the Canal Zone—which presented him with a large gold Indian idol to the Eastern Sun. The gold alone in all of these medallions, at today’s prices, is worth a small fortune.
The president of Honduras sent a watch hidden within a twenty-dollar U.S. gold piece. In addition to a gold medal, Nicaraguans sent a native-made hammock. Not to be outdone, the nation of Guatemala presented him with “native-woven linen scarves and girdles and a set of decorative gourds.” Many U.S. states also sent gifts, mostly gold medals, although Colorado sent a picture of the newly named Lindbergh Peak, painted by “the children of the Rocky Mountain Region.”
Even more elaborate presents were sent from cities worldwide, including an engraved gold dress sword from the city of Hamburg; a chest of 197 pieces of sterling flatware from Providence; 140 pieces of dinner china from Syracuse; and from Hartford a cane carved from a tree out of Mark Twain’s garden. Most touchingly, Limerick, Ireland, sent a lace shawl “for Capt. Lindbergh’s mother,” and the children of Patchogue, New York, gave her “a golden thimble set with diamonds.” From San Diego came a sterling silver model of the Spirit of St. Louis, while from El Paso there arrived a serape and sombrero.
From Saint Croix in the Virgin Islands “an inlaid sword from the 1830s” turned up. Perhaps the most unusual gift came from the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which sent Lindbergh a mahogany paperweight set with a hunk of iron from the anchor of Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria, as well as a resolution from the city government naming the city’s main thoroughfare Lindbergh Avenue.
There were honorary academic degrees by the dozens, as well as honorary memberships in practically every flying club in the world, most accompanied by a plaque, scroll, or medal. From an association known as the Gold Mines of Honduras arrived a “gold chest of native gold nuggets.” How these were obtained went unsaid. For reasons of his own, William Randolph Hearst presented Lindbergh with an exquisite pair of silver celestial and terrestrial spheres, circa 1700—the only known pair in existence. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers presented him with a silver cigarette case—somewhat oddly, for it had been well publicized that Lindbergh didn’t smoke. And there were far bigger deals than that: Ryan Aircraft gave Lindbergh a five-seat, high-wing cabin monoplane, to which the Wright Company added a Whirlwind J-5C 220-horsepower engine. The Franklin Automobile Company gave him a brand-new four-door sedan, and Henry Ford matched that with a four-door sedan for Lindbergh’s mother, while GM gave him a two-door Cadillac convertible. Both professional baseball leagues gave him lifetime passes, as did the Shubert theatrical organization to all of its Broadway plays. Standard Oil gave him stock. A donor who wished to remain anonymous sent Lindbergh a stickpin with the Spirit of St. Louis cut from a single diamond. Another donor who wished to be unknown sent Lindbergh a German shepherd police dog.
There were art pieces offered, depictions of Lindbergh in all mediums and stages of excellence, and sculptures “made of pure silver, ivory, plaster, and soap; airplane models of solid gold as well as fragile silk.” In all, there were more than fifteen thousand gift items,16 inspired by everything under the sun—from an ivory inlaid billiard cue to a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. Lindbergh declined an offer of a live monkey, a free home in Flushing Meadows, and several motion picture contracts, one worth $5 million. As he had with the cash award from the French Aéro-Club, he declined an offer of 5,000 Swedish crowns from a Stockholm newspaper, suggesting instead that it be distributed “for aviation purposes.”b
LINDBERGH’S EARLIEST BIOGRAPHER, Fitzhugh Green, probably did not overstate matters by much when he described the adulation lavished on the young aviator as “the greatest torrent of mass emotion ever witnessed in human history.” Lindbergh was by then unquestionably the most famous man in the world, a heroic phenomenon—the perfect combination of bravery, aviation genius, modesty, sagacity. An affable personality, good looks, and a winning smile. Some people saw in him the work of “Divine Providence,” while to others he very nearly resembled the Second Coming.
It is noteworthy that the Spirit of St. Louis Organization (the backers) refused any claim on or share in the gifts to Lindbergh, which remain highly valuable.
There was some discussion, reported in the newspapers, about creating a new cabinet-level position for Lindbergh as secretary of aviation, but nothing came of it. Harry Guggenheim, president of his family’s aviation trust fund, had quickly recognized that Lindbergh was the best thing to happen to aviation since the Wright brothers, and he offered him $50,000 to take the Spirit of St. Louis on a three-month tour of America to promote air travel, a proposition that Lindbergh accepted.
Lindbergh wasn’t rich at that point, but it must have dawned on him that he would never again be poor. He was scheduled to write a quick book about his flight for the George P. Putnam publishing company that was sure to be a best seller. Unfortunately, Putnam’s had contracted with an embellishment-prone New York Times reporter to write the manuscript, and when Lindbergh saw the galley proofs, which had been produced only two weeks after his return to the United States, he nearly became unhinged.
Again, the story was written in the first-person purplish “aw shucks” prose and took great liberty with the facts. Lindbergh refused to have anything to do with it. He suggested a compromise in which he would write the book himself, but the publisher was appalled to learn that he didn’t intend to start until after his U.S. tour was over in the fall. At last an agreement was reached in which Lindbergh would isolate himself for the remaining month before the tour began to see if he could repair the offending manuscript and, where necessary, write his own version of the events.
To say that Lindbergh’s enforced isolation was “splendid” would be an understatement. Harry Guggenheim offered him the best bedroom suite at Falaise, his Norman-style castle at Sands Point, which opened onto a magnificent terrace overlooking Long Island Sound and a view of the Connecticut shore beyond.c There, Lindbergh had the run of the 350-acre estate, laced with riding trails and sculptured glades inhabited by flocks of peacocks, as well as the private beach on the Sound.
Guggenheim, who liked to be called “Captain Harry,” after his service as a combat aviator in World War I, took it upon himself to school the young flier in the social graces and made a determined but failed attempt to dress Lindbergh in stylish clothes. Good to his word, Lindbergh a month later delivered a finished and much improved manuscript to Putnam’s that was published under the title We, which is how Lindbergh habitually referred to himself and the Spirit of St. Louis. As predicted, it quickly became a best seller, earning Lindbergh royalties of $250,000.d
That done, on July 20, the aviator took off from Mitchel Field and flew across the Long Island Sound to Hartford, Connecticut, where a hundred thousand people awaited him. For the next three months, Lindbergh’s tour became the world’s longest victory lap. At each stop as he zigzagged across the United States he was met by adoring crowds, swooning girls, autograph hunters, reporters, and photographers. He loved the flying, and performing stunts, but by then the novelty of fame had worn off, and Lindbergh began to dread his own popularity and the attendant publicity. He even stopped sending his laundry out under his own name in hotels because the laundresses would steal his underpants. Accordingly, as one of his biographers has written, he treated t
he crowds with “icy disdain” and the press with “anger and contempt.”17 This, eventually, led the press to retaliate, alluding to Lindbergh’s “war with the press.” Nevertheless, no matter how contemptibly he treated them, the reporters and broadcasters were eternally on the make for news and always came back for more.
During the tour, Lindbergh flew a total of 22,350 miles and was personally seen, it has been estimated, by more than 25 percent of the American population. He was living history. He visited eighty-two cities and flew over countless towns. At each stop there would be a parade, a luncheon, a press conference, and a dinner, usually accompanied by a band playing “Lucky Lindy,” a song written in his honor.e In the morning there was takeoff again, once more attended by a fawning public, all of it set up by advance men supplied by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
During the tour he spent at least one night in each of the forty-eight states, and when he wasn’t performing social duties Lindbergh made a point of inspecting airports and possible airport sites for future aviation expansion. In Detroit, he took Henry Ford up for his first airplane flight, as well as his mother, who had returned to the city to continue teaching her high school chemistry classes. In all these places, Lindbergh continually eschewed advances by the women who almost beyond number brazenly threw themselves at him. Occasionally, though, to the “middle-aged, and the spinsterly,” he would stoop to the kindness of a smile, or even a ride in Spirit—doubtless the thrill of a lifetime.18
Throughout it all Lindbergh had become a one-man aviation chamber of commerce. When at last the tour was done, on October 23, 1927, he wrote that he had seen America, quite literally, “as no man had ever known it before.”
LINDBERGH DUTIFULLY FIELDED questions from the press, but the one thing he bridled at was inquiries about his personal life. Women reporters in particular tended to ask him about love, marriage, girlfriends, and so on. His standard answer was a scornful, “What’s that got to do with aviation?”19 No one would ever have suggested he was gay, but neither could the gossip writers explain why, unlike, say, Eddie Rickenbacker who for a time always seemed to have a girl on either arm, the preposterously handsome Lindbergh was strictly a lone wolf.