Chapter One
KARMA
"...living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming
of impossible future conquests ...
-C.A.L.
FOR MORE THAN A DAY THE WORLD HELD ITS BREATHand then the small plane was sighted over Ireland.
Twenty-seven hours after he had left Roosevelt Field inNew York--alone, in the Spirit of St. Louis--word quicklyspread from continent to continent that Charles A. Lindberghhad survived the most perilous leg of his journey--the fifteen-hour crossing of the Atlantic. He had to endure but a few morehours before reaching his destination, Paris. Anxiety yielded toanticipation.
The American Ambassador to France, Myron T. Herrick,went to St. Cloud after lunch that Saturday to watch theFrance-American team-tennis matches. When he took his seatin the front row, five thousand fans cheered. During the courseof the afternoon, people in the stands heard newsboys shoutingthe headlines of their éditions spéciales, announcing Lindbergh'sexpected arrival that night. In the middle of the match,Herrick received a telegram-confirmation that Lindbergh hadpassed over Valencia in Ireland. All eyes were on the Ambassadoras he hastily left courtside, convincing most of the spectatorsthat their prayers were being answered. Before thematch had ended, the stands began to empty.
Herrick rushed back to his residence in Paris, ate a quickdinner at 6:30, then left for the airfield at Le Bourget, to thenortheast of the city. "It was a good thing we did not delay anotherquarter of an hour," Herrick recalled, "for crowds werealready collecting along the road and in a short time passagewas almost impossible."
The boulevards were jammed with cars ten abreast. Passengers pokedtheir heads through the sliding roof panels of the Parisian taxis, greetingeach other in jubilation. "Everyone had acquired a bottle of something and,inasmuch as the traffic moved very slowly," one reveler recalled of that nightin 1927, "bottles were passed from cab to cab celebrating the earthshakingachievement." A mile from the airfield, the flow of traffic came to a stand-still.
Once the radio announced that Lindbergh had flown over southern England,mobs formed in the heart of Paris. Thirty thousand people flocked towardthe Place de l'Opera, where illuminated advertising signs flashed newsbulletins. Over the next few hours, the crowds spilled into the BoulevardPoissoniere--until it became unpassable--where they expected to find themost reliable accounts of Lindbergh's progress posted in front of the ParisMatin offices. "Not since the armistice of 1918," observed one reporter,"has Paris witnessed a downright demonstration of popular enthusiasm andexcitement equal to that displayed by the throngs flocking to the boulevardsfor news of the American flier, whose personality has captured the hearts ofthe Parisian multitude."
Between updates, people waited in anxious silence. Two French fliers--Nungesser and Coli--had not been heard from in the two weeks since theirattempt to fly nonstop from Paris to New York; and their disappearanceweighed heavily on the Parisians' minds. Many muttered about the impossibilityof accomplishing a nonstop transatlantic crossing, especially alone.Periodically, whispers rustled through the crowd, rumors that Lindberghhad been forced down. After a long silence, a Frenchwoman, dressed inmourning and sitting in a big limousine, wiped away tears of worry. Anotherwoman, selling newspapers, approached her, fighting back her own tears."You're right to feel so, madame," she said. "In such things there is no nationality--he's some mother's son."
Close to nine o'clock, letters four feet tall flashed onto one of the advertisingboards. "The crowds grew still, the waiters frozen in place between thecafé tables," one witness remembered. "All were watching. Traffic stopped.Then came the cheering message 'Lindbergh sighted over Cherbourg andthe coast of Normandy' " The crowd burst into bravos. Strangers pattedeach other on the back and shook hands. Moments later, Paris Matin posteda bulletin in front of its building, confirming the sighting; and bystanderschanted "Vive Lindbergh!" and "Vive l'Américain!" The next hour broughtmore good news from Deauville, and then Louviers. New arrivals onto thescene all asked the same question: "Est-il arrivé?"
Fifteen thousand others gravitated toward the Itoile, filling the city blockthat surrounded a hotel because they assumed Lindbergh would be spendingthe night there. Many too impatient to stand around in town suddenly decidedto witness the arrival. Students from the Sorbonne jammed into busesand subways. Thousands more grabbed whatever conveyance remainedavailable, until more than ten thousand cars filled the roads between the cityand Le Bourget. Before long, 150,000 people had gathered at the airfield.
A little before ten o'clock, the excited crowd at Le Bourget heard an approachingengine and fell silent. A plane burst through the clouds andlanded; but it turned out to be the London Express. Minutes later, as a coolwind blew the stars into view, another roar ripped the air, this time a planefrom Strasbourg. Red and gold and green rockets flared overhead, whileacetylene searchlights scanned the dark sky. The crowd became restlessstanding in the chill. Then, "suddenly unmistakeably the sound of an aeroplane... and then to our left a white flash against the black night ... andanother flash (like a shark darting through water)," recalled Harry Crosby--the American expatriate publisher--who was among the enthusiastic on-lookers. "Then nothing. No sound. Suspense. And again a sound, this timesomewhere off towards the right. And is it some belated plane or is it Lindbergh?Then sharp swift in the gold glare of the searchlights a small whitehawk of a plane swoops hawk-like down and across the field--C'est luiLindbergh. LINDBERGH!"
On May 21, 1927, at 10:24 p.m., the Spirit of St. Louis landed--havingflown 3,614 miles from New York, nonstop, in thirty-three hours, thirtyminutes, and thirty seconds. And in that instant, everything changed--forboth the pilot and the planet.
THERE WAS NO HOLDING the one hundred fifty thousand people backLooking out the side of his plane and into the glare of lights, Lindberghcould see only that the entire field ahead was "covered with running figures!"With decades of hindsight, the woman Lindbergh would marry cameto understand what that melee actually signified~ed. "Fame--Opportunity--Wealth--and also tragedy & loneliness & frustration rushed at him in thoserunning figures on the field at Le Bourget," she would later write. "And heis so innocent & unaware."
Lindbergh's arrival in Paris became the defining moment of his life, thatevent on which all his future actions hinged--as though they were but a pre-destinedseries of equal but opposite reactions, fraught with irony. Just as inevitable,every event in Lindbergh's first twenty-five years seemed to haveconspired in propelling him to Paris that night. As the only child of woefullyill-matched parents, he had tuned out years of discord by withdrawing. Hehad emerged from his itinerant and isolated adolescence virtually friendlessand self-absorbed. A scion of resourceful immigrants, he had grown up aPractical dreamer, believing there was nothing he could not do. A distractedstudent, he had dropped out of college to learn to fly airplanes; and after indulgingin the footloose life of barnstorming, he had been drawn to the military.The Army had not only improved his aviation skills but also broughtprecision to his thinking. He had left the air corps to fly one of the first airmailroutes, subjecting himself to some of the roughest weather in the country.Restless, he had lusted for greater challenges, for adventure.
In the spring of 1927, Lindbergh had been too consumed by what hecalled "the single objective of landing my plane at Paris" to have consideredits aftermath. "To plan beyond that had seemed an act of arrogance I couldnot afford," he would later write. Even if he had thought farther ahead,however, he could never have predicted the unprecedented global responseto his arrival.
By that year, radio, telephones, radiographs, and the Bartlane CableProcess could transmit images and voices around the world within seconds.What was more, motion pictures had lust mastered the synchronization ofsound, allowing dramatic moments to be preserved in all their glory anddistributed worldwide. For the first time all of civilization could share as onethe sights and sounds of an event--almost instantaneously and simultaneously.And in this unusually good-looking, young aviator--of apparentlyimpeccable character--the new technology found its first superstar.
The reception in Paris was only a harbinger of the unprecedented worshippeople would pay Lindbergh for years. Without either belittling or aggrandizingthe importance of his flight, he considered it part of thecontinuum of human endeavor, and that he was, after all, only a man. Thepublic saw more than that. Indeed, Harry Crosby felt that the stampede atLe Bourget that night represented nothing less than the start of a new religiousmovement--"as if all the hands in the world are ... trying to touch thenew Christ and that the new Cross is the Plane." Universally admired,Charles Lindbergh became the most celebrated living person ever to walk theearth.
For several years Lindbergh had lived according to one of the basic lawsof aerodynamics--the need to maintain balance. And so, in those figuresrunning toward him, Lindbergh immediately saw inevitable repercussions. Atfirst he feared for his physical safety; over the next few months he worriedabout his soul. He instinctively knew that submitting himself to the idolatryof the public could strip him of his very identity; and the only preventive hecould see was to maintain his privacy. That reluctance to offer himself to thepublic only increased its desire to possess him--the first of many paradoxeshe would encounter in his lifelong effort to restore equilibrium to his world.
"No man before me had commanded such freedom of movement overearth," Lindbergh would write of his historic flight. Ironically, that freedomwould be denied him thereafter on land. Both whetting and sating the public'sappetite for every morsel about him, the press broke every rule of professionalethics in covering Lindbergh. They often ran with unverified stories,sometimes stories they had made up, transforming him into a character worthyof the Arabian Nights. Reporters stalked him constantly--almost fatallyon several occasions--making him their first human quarry, stripping him ofhis rights to privacy as no public figure had ever been before. Over the century,others would reach this new stratum of celebrity.
The unwanted fame all but guaranteed an isolated adulthood. And, indeed,Lindbergh spent the rest of his life in flight, searching for islands oftranquility. Early on, he was lucky enough to meet Anne Merrow, AmbassadorDwight Merrow's shy daughter, who craved solitude as much as hedid. They fell in love and married. Their "storybook romance," as the pressalways presented it, was, in fact, a complex case history of control and repression,filled with joy and passion and grief and rage. He scourged hiswife into becoming an independent woman; and, in so doing, he helped createan important feminist voice--a popular diarist who also wrote one of themost beloved volumes of the century, and another that was one of the mostdespised.
The Lindberghs' love story had a tragic second act. His fame and wealthcost them their firstborn child. Under melodramatic conditions, Lindberghauthorized payment of a large ransom to a mysterious man in a graveyard;but he did not get his son in return. The subsequent investigation of the kidnappinguncovered only circumstantial evidence; and the man accused ofkilling "the Lindbergh Baby" never confessed--thus condemning the "Crimeof the Century" to eternal debate. Because the victim's father was so celebrated,the case entered the annals of history, and laws were changed inLindbergh's name. The media circus that accompanied what veteran court-watchers still refer to as the "Trial of the Century" forever affected trial coveragein the United States. The subsequent flood of sympathy for Lindberghonly enhanced his public profile, making him further prey for the media aswell as other criminals and maniacs. In fear and disgust, he moved to Europe,where for a time he became one of America's most effective unofficial ambassadors.Several visits to Germany in the 1930s--during which he inspectedthe Luftwaffe and also received a medal from Hitler--called hispolitics into question. He returned to the United States to warn the nation ofGermany's insuperable strength in the impending European war, then tospearhead the American isolationist movement. As the leading spokesmanfor the controversial organization known as America First, he preached hisbeliefs with messianic fervor, incurring the wrath of many, including PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt. By December 7, 1941, many Americans consideredhim nothing short of satanic--not just a defeatist but an anti-Semitic,pro-Nazi traitor.
Lindbergh had spent most of his adult life establishing the role of aviationin war and peace, proving himself one of the prime movers in theaviation industry. But because of his noninterventionist stance, Rooseveltrefused to allow Lindbergh to fly after Pearl Harbor with the very air forcehe had helped modernize. He found other ways to serve. As a test pilot in privateindustry, he developed techniques that increased both the altitude andrange of several planes in America's fleet, saving countless lives. The militarylooked the other way as Lindbergh insisted on engaging in combat missionsin the South Pacific; but his failure to condemn Nazi Germany before WorldWar II haunted his reputation for the rest of his life.
One of his greatest services to his country proved to be in helping launchthe space program. As the first American airman to exhibit "the right stuff,"Lindbergh inspired his country's first astronauts by sheer example. But morethan that, he was--unknown to the public--the man most responsible for securingthe funding that underwrote the research of Dr. Robert H. Goddard,the inventor of the modern rocket. A friend of the first man to fly an airplane,Lindbergh lived long enough in a fast-moving world to befriend the firstman to walk on the moon.
In time, Lindbergh came to believe the long-range effects of his flight toParis were more harmful than beneficial. As civilization encroached uponwilderness in the world he helped shrink, he turned his back on aviation andfought to protect the environment. He rededicated his life to rescuing nearlyextinct animals and to preserving wilderness areas. For years this collegedropout advanced other sciences as well, performing medical research thatwould help make organ transplants possible. He made extraordinary archaeologicaland anthropological discoveries as well. A foundation wouldlater be established in Lindbergh's name that offers grants of $10,580--thecost of the Spirit of St. Louis--for projects that further his vision of "balancebetween technological advancement and preservation of our human and naturalenvironment."
Lindbergh believed all the elements of the earth and heavens are connected,through space and time. The configurations of molecules in eachmoment help create the next. Thus he considered his defining moment justanother step in the development of aviation and exploration--a summit builton all those that preceded it and a springboard to all those that would follow.Only by looking back, Lindbergh believed, could mankind move forward."In some future incarnation from our life stream," he wrote in lateryears, "we may understand the reason for our existence in forms of earthlylife. "
In few people were the souls of one's forbears so apparent as they werein Charles Lindbergh. As a result of this transmigration, Lindbergh believedthe flight that ended at Le Bourget one night in May 1927 originated muchfarther back than thirty-three and a half hours prior at Roosevelt Field. Itstarted with some Norsemen--infused with Viking spirit--generations longbefore that.
Continues...
Excerpted from Lindberghby A. Scott Berg Copyright © 1998 by A. Scott Berg. Excerpted by permission.
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