Photograph by Bob Arteaga
Erik Lindbergh was flabbergasted.
Visiting St. Louis for the first time, in 1996, Charles Lindbergh’s grandson saw homages to his grandfather everywhere. “I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “My first impression of St. Louis was intense. My hosts drove me through St. Louis, down Lindbergh Boulevard and to various Lindbergh sites and museums. It was overwhelming for me to see such identification with Lindbergh in a city. I was, like, ‘Wow! There’s so much Lindbergh here.’”
Of course there is.
Eighty years ago, the world we know today—a global village fueled with instantaneous information, powered by mind-bending technology and captivated by the culture of celebrity—was born. Eighty years ago this month, to be precise, Charles Augustus Lindbergh stepped out of an airplane at Paris’ Le Bourget field, 33 hours and 30 minutes after taking off from New York. He’d flown solo and nonstop, and he was exhausted, oblivious to the fact that the world was anxiously waiting for word by telegraph, telephone or radio. Shy, diffident, the “Lone Eagle” was about to become a hero for the ages—and St. Louis was the money behind the man.
Eighty years have passed, but Charles Lindbergh, St. Louis’ most famous adopted son, remains part of our collective psyche. His reputation has been darkened, his record broken … but we still can’t get him out of our heads.
The Big Cinch
It all started when a group of high-powered businessmen—akin to the Civic Progress of today—dined at their club, lit their cigars and listened with uncharacteristic patience to an intense young airmail pilot. He told them he was absolutely certain he could be the first to fly from New York to Paris and win the $25,000 Orteig Prize—if only he had the money to buy the right plane.
It was 1926, and Lindbergh, a former barnstormer and something of a mechanical genius, was living here as an employee of the Robertson Aircraft Corp., running airmail between St. Louis and Chicago. These runs had convinced him that he could accomplish the transatlantic flight; the weather could be no worse than what he had already experienced in the Midwest.
Several pilots had died or suffered injury while competing for the Orteig Prize, offered by New York hotelier Raymond Orteig to encourage flight between his city and Paris, and no one had ever won it. But in the years since his wing-walking days, Lindbergh had gone through Army flight training and earned a reputation for caution.
He had $2,000 in savings, and he figured he’d need an additional $15,000.
The first to pony up was Maj. Albert Bond Lambert (note the last name), an enthusiastic balloonist and the city’s first licensed pilot. The others were banker Harold M. Bixby, head of the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce; broker Harry H. Knight and his father, Harry F. Knight; aircraft execs Frank and William Robertson; Earl C. Thompson; J.D. Wooster Lambert; and St. Louis Globe-Democrat publisher E. Lansing Ray.
Bixby suggested that Lindbergh name the plane the Spirit of St. Louis. Today Bixby’s nephew, Charles Houghton, says his Uncle Harold had more in mind than honoring his own city. “What most people don’t know is that the patron saint of Paris was Louis IX, Saint-Louis,” Bixby says, “so the French were just thrilled when this plane arrived. Besides honoring the backers and the community, there was that wonderful connection to the French people.”
Houghton says that, according to the story passed down in his family, Bixby was set to provide the rest of the money for the project himself. “His wife, my Aunt Debbie, said, ‘Oh, no! I don’t want you to give him that money, because he’s going to kill himself.’ So Uncle Harold went to the Racquet Club and got his friends—Mr. Knight, Mr. Lambert and others—to put up money, too. Aunt Debbie relented because then he wouldn’t be the only one responsible if it didn’t turn out.”
Houghton laughs: “I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it explains what a leap of faith these backers took.”
Outdoing His Family
When you walk through the doors of the Jefferson Memorial, the first thing you notice is the plane hanging in the vast entry hall. It’s not the original—that one still draws crowds at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C. This plane, according to Bascom Curator Sharon Smith, is an exact replica built for the 1957 film The Spirit of St. Louis, starring Jimmy Stewart.
The Jefferson Memorial houses the most extensive collection of Lindbergh memorabilia anywhere. Lindbergh’s own family is in awe of it. “It just floors me when I see all those artifacts,” Erik says. “I’ve been in the archives and have seen the things they don’t have displayed. Even us Lindberghs don’t have anywhere near that amount.”
The collection was supposed to be temporary. After the 1927 flight, the Missouri Historical Society contacted Lindbergh with a request for a 10-day exhibit of the medals and gifts he received in Paris. “So many people came to see the display,” Smith says, “that Lindbergh extended it—and kept extending it.” Then he began to ship artifacts and gifts people would give him in his post-flight travels, including the 48-state Guggenheim tour he took from July to October of 1927.
“I think he just needed a place to put all his stuff,” Smith says with a grin. By 1932, Lindbergh had made the gifts to the Missouri Historical Society permanent. He would continue to send items through the early 1940s. It’s that collection that is the centerpiece of the current exhibit, just off the main hall. Designed for the 75th anniversary of the flight, the exhibit opened in St. Louis in 2002, then went on national tour.
“St. Louisans take this all for granted,” says Smith, whose job it was to introduce the exhibit at each stop. “It did extremely well on tour, and it was fascinating to see it so well received.”
The exhibit’s back home now, and the museum uses it to teach children about heroism. Among the highlights:
The flight suit. It’s the actual suit Lindbergh wore on the flight. “We know it’s authentic,” Smith says, “because he was a stickler for detail and kept records everywhere.” Scribbled under the collar of the suit—and signed—are the words “San Diego to St. Louis, St. Louis to New York, New York to Paris.”
Items carried on the famous flight. Artifacts from the flight include a patching kit, a canteen, two small flashlights and Lindbergh’s passport—still unstamped. “He thought he would need it when he got to Paris,” Smith says.
Awards and accolades. Lindbergh received scores of medals, trophies and commemoratives from just about every country and city he visited. In the collection: The French Legion of Honor medal given to Lindbergh the day after he landed in Paris (he was the first American to receive such an honor). The medal that accompanied Lindy’s Orteig Prize (“The Smithsonian has the check, though,” Smith says dryly). The Distinguished Flying Cross issued by the U.S. government (again, Lindbergh was the first American to receive such an honor). And the Medal of Honor.
The Service Cross of the German Eagle. The most controversial piece in the collection. “If you notice the ribbon, it’s not faded like the ribbons on the other medals,” Smith points out. “That’s because it wasn’t displayed.” The medal was given to Lindbergh in 1938 by Hermann Goering, who told him it was “by order of der Führer.” At the time, Lindbergh reportedly thought it nothing more than Germany’s finally acknowledging him for his historic flight, but his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, immediately under-stood its significance and called it “the albatross.” He refused to give it back, and public opinion began to turn. Sentiment hardened against Lindbergh a few years later when he joined an isolationist group called America First and began speaking against U.S. involvement in World War II. In a particularly scathing speech in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sept. 11, 1941, he pointed to three groups of “war agitators”—the British, the Jews and the Roosevelt administration—and accused them of subterfuge and propaganda. A group of St. Louisans immediately asked to rescind an honor bestowed on him 13 years earlier, the naming of …
Lindbergh Boulevard
The area’s first “outer highway” runs from Highway 367 in North County to just past Lemay Ferry in South County. It was given the name Lindbergh Boulevard in 1928, at the height of Lindbergh mania. Back then, everyone loved Lindy—except for Kirkwood, which chose to keep its 2.2-mile stretch Kirkwood Road, thank you very much.
After Lindbergh gave that 1941 speech in Des Moines, a group of citizens wanted to strip Lindbergh’s name from the road and forced St. Louis County to hold a hearing. The issue died when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Lindbergh School District
Tucked away in the heart of South County, at 4900 S. Lindbergh Blvd., the Lindbergh School District keeps the aviator’s legacy alive. Schools across the country bear Lindbergh’s name, but this is the only Lindbergh district. Its high school is Lindbergh High, its sports teams are the Flyers, its yearbook is the Pilot, and its auditorium lobby displays what’s probably the largest collection of Lindbergh memorabilia outside the Missouri Historical Society.
The latest piece, added this January, is a bronze bust of Lindbergh at age 25, done by internationally recognized local sculptor Don Wiegand. The bust was finished in 1981 and displayed at Lambert Field near the Lindbergh-plane replica but soon had to be moved to the airport director’s office because too many people were touching it. Wiegand is thrilled to see it wind up in an educational institution. “To me,” he once said, “Lindbergh symbolizes man’s ability to believe in himself.”
Even the school district’s administrative offices have maps and photos in homage to Lindbergh. He signed one photograph and sent it to the school in 1952 by way of apology because he couldn’t make the dedication ceremony when the high school changed its name from Grandview to Lindbergh.
Reeve Lindbergh, Charles and Anne’s youngest daughter, has been a great friend to the district ever since she was first invited—in song—by elementary school students. On one visit, she spent time reading to them.
This spring the district, along with the Lindbergh Foundation, of Anoka, Minn., and the Wiegand Foundation, in Chesterfield, is sponsoring an 80th-anniversary art project. Students in any Lindbergh-named school in America are invited to create art that captures the essence of this quote by Charles Lindbergh: We actually live, today, in our dreams of yesterday; and, living in those dreams, we dream again. A review panel, including Wiegand, will select the best of the artwork for display around the country.
“The Lindbergh connection is very important to us,” says district superintendent James Sandfort. “It’s our identity, our connection, and if you keep your connections, you can always move forward.”
The X Prize
At first no one knew what to think of it. In May 1996, a news conference was held on the Arch grounds to announce that a group of St. Louisans was getting behind something called the X Prize, a $10 million award to the first private team to launch a spaceship. The X Prizes were the brainchild of a young man named Peter Diamondis, and he brought his first major attempt to raise money for the spaceship prize to a group of St. Louis businessmen, just as Charles Lindbergh had done nearly 70 years earlier. Doug King, president of the Saint Louis Science Center; William Danforth, then chancellor of Washington University; Walter Metcalfe, then chairman of the Bryan Cave law firm; Andy Taylor, CEO of Enterprise Rent-A-Car; and the late PR genius Al Kerth heard the pitch at the same Racquet Club dinner table where their predecessors had heard Lindbergh’s plea for help.
The project was derided as folly by many in the media—“X Prize or X Files?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan wrote—but eight years later, on November 6,2004, aviation pioneer Burt Rutan and his partners accepted the prize in St. Louis. Today the X Prize Foundation is a worldwide organization that offers prizes to private citizens to tackle such projects as mapping the human genome and building energy-efficient automobiles. Next up: X Prizes in medicine and the environment.
“This springboarded off the help St. Louis backers gave us,” says Erik Lindbergh, a director of the X Prize Foundation. “They helped us get over what I call the ‘giggle factor’ and move into an organization that can solve the grand challenges of our time.
“St. Louis played a huge part in that.”
Enduring Legacy
“The thing that’s extraordinary to me is that he fades from memory but he always comes back,” Charles Houghton says. “All of a sudden he’s in our consciousness again.” The kidnapping and death of his firstborn son had St. Louis weeping for Lindbergh in 1932—but interest was more prurient 71 years later, when three German siblings—Dyrk and David Hesshaimer and their sister, Astrid Bouteuil—claimed to be Lindbergh’s children.
They had 112 letters between him and their mother, Brigitte Hesshaimer, who had been a 31-year-old hatmaker in Munich in 1957, when Lindbergh fell in love with her. DNA tests later confirmed his paternity. The Lindbergh family now acknowledges Hesshaimer and her children but refrains from comment.
What does the double-life drama mean for the Lindbergh legacy in St. Louis? Nothing, really, the Jefferson Memorial’s Smith says with a shrug: “There’s no denying that flight. We connect with that moment: ‘If he can do that, what does that mean for me?’” She does remember that shortly after the story broke, members of the German family came to St. Louis and toured the exhibit at the museum but didn’t speak English. Nobody at Lindbergh High School seemed to mind, either; the students certainly didn’t care. And there were no repeats of the old attempt to change Lindbergh Boulevard’s name.
If anything, the drama proved just how human Charles Lindbergh really was. For all his heroic deeds, he had skeletons in his closet just like the rest of us. Was he complicated? Definitely. Flawed? Apparently. Brave? Unforgettably so.
We’ve Got Spirit, Yes We Do …
Charles Lindbergh is everywhere. A charter member of the St. Louis Walk of Fame, in the Delmar Loop, his plaque can be found at 6519 Delmar.
Airplanes at the Missouri Air National Guard, a unit Lindbergh joined in 1923, have “Lindbergh’s Own” painted on the side.
Lindbergh’s Monocoupe plane is suspended from the ceiling of the main terminal at Lambert St. Louis International Airport.
The business-aviation center of the Midwest, built in Chesterfield in 1964, is named the Spirit of St. Louis Airport.
For years the “Lindy Squared” mural drew eyes to the old Lion Gas Building, at Ninth and Chestnut. It is now one of the recovery projects of the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation.
Loss of Eden, an opera about the German immigrant couple who kidnapped the Lindberghs’ firstborn, had its world premiere at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.
A small shack, originally built by Lindbergh, stands in front of the Godfrey Village Hall (6810 Godfrey Road). The community group Pride Inc. moved the shack there in 2001 from a nearby field that used to hold an airstrip. That airstrip was located along Lindbergh’s airmail route, and he had built the shack as a supply shed and shelter. “Often fog would blanket the river valley, and he was unable to get back to St. Louis on his mail run from Chicago,” Pride spokeswoman Sue Hardin explains. “He’d bunk there for the night and go back as soon as it lifted.”
Remember the Spirits of St. Louis? The American Basketball Association franchise, named in honor of the plane, played at the old Arena 1974–1976. Besides having wacky players and colorful uniforms, the team gave a then-unknown Bob Costas his first professional broadcasting job. Owners Ozzie and Dan Silna folded the team in 1976 when the ABA merged with the NBA, but not before cutting a forward-thinking deal that would have made a risk-taking aviator proud: In exchange for folding a franchise nobody wanted, the Silna brothers got a cut of NBA television-rights money in perpetuity.
