100 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • MAY 2018
REAR VIEW
BUMPY LANDINGS
The rise and fall of Anne Morrow Lindbergh
By ANNIE WILKINSON
“It was the best of times, it was the
worst of times.”
Charles Dickens’ 1859 words still
ring true. Many people believe they
control their lives: With luck or
power, they soar and grow in stature.
Others navigate the tightrope of
survival, fearing a fall from grace.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh lived
through the best of times, marrying
wisely, raising five children, learning
to fly, and becoming a best-selling
author. Then, the times shifted,
destiny intervened, and the sky fell.
THE BEST OF TIMES
Born in 1906, Anne Morrow was
raised in a New Jersey mansion, the
daughter of a successful diplomat
and a feminist pioneer. At age 18,
she declared her wish: “To marry a
hero.”
And she did. In 1927, she met
Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. The
25-year-old daredevil barnstorming
pilot had made history at Roosevelt
Field airfield (now the Source
Mall), when his Spirit of St. Louis
made the first nonstop solo trans-
Atlantic flight. His subsequent
tour in his plane popularized flight
and bolstered the Golden Age of
Aviation.
The first date for the “Lone Eagle”
and the Smith College senior was
in an airplane over LI. Their 1929
marriage catapulted Anne into
celebrity.
She became the first woman to
earn a glider pilot’s license, then
practiced for her pilot’s license in a
“Bird” at the Hicksville Long Island
Aviation Country Club, the haven
for the society and aviation elite.
She went “round and round the
field alone…making one hideously
bumpy landing after another.”
Anne often flew from Uniondale’s
Mitchel Field in a Weaver Aircraft
Company biplane, as “Willie K”
Vanderbilt’s Motor Parkway snaked
past potato fields below.
She was Charles’ co-pilot, navigator,
and radio operator on global
route surveys. When Charles set a
transcontinental speed record, she
was the seven-months-pregnant
navigator.
Internationally adored, the
handsome adventurer and the shy,
attractive author/pilot could do no
wrong.
THE WORST OF TIMES
The Lindberghs moved to a secluded
New Jersey mansion in 1932 to avoid
the press. Shortly after, their firstborn
infant son was kidnapped.
Ransom was paid, but after several
months his dead body was found
nearby. Newspapers dubbed it the
“Crime of the Century.”
It was later revealed that Charles
had locked the 18-month-old baby
outside, encouraging independence.
He forbade Anne to cry after the
kidnapping and murder. He was
lonely and stoic, perhaps because
his parents had separated when he
was 7 years old.
After the murder, the Lindberghs
rejected the relentless media and
fled to England. Anne’s first book
was published in 1935, and a
German carpenter was convicted of
the murder and executed.
In 1936, the U.S. government
asked Charles to tour German
aircraft factories. Impressed
by Hitler’s airpower, Charles
deemed a war unwinnable. As
the leading spokesman for the
isolationist anti-Semitic, America
First movement, Charles wrote
in Reader’s Digest that Western
countries should band together
to preserve their inheritance of
European blood.
Supporting Charles, in 1940 Anne
published The Wave of the Future,
advising America to reject foreign
wars. Its defeatist tone was despised;
she later labeled her work naive.
Furious Americans, having endured
the 1929 stock market crash and the
Great Depression, rejected their
Golden Pair as Nazi apologists. In
early 1940, the Lindberghs moved to
Lloyds Neck; by late 1940, Charles
was labeled a traitor.
In her diary, Anne wrote, “I am now
the bubonic plague among writers
and C. is the anti-Christ!” … “My
marriage has stretched me out of my
world, changed me so it is no longer
possible to change back.”
In the early 1950s, Anne sought
psychotherapy; Charles, displeased,
vacated their bedroom. She later
had an affair with her therapist. In
1955, her feminist manifesto Gift of
the Sea was published.
CONTRADICTIONS AND
COMPLIANCE
Charles died in 1974, Anne in 2001.
Family skeletons surfaced: Charles
had controlled his family with
tedious checklists, lectures, and
banned holiday celebrations. Anne
kept quiet, valiantly keeping up
with her husband’s travels.
One diary entry read, “Damn,
damn, damn! I am sick of being this
‘handmaiden to the Lord.’”
In 2003, the news broke: From 1957
until his death, Charles had fathered
seven children with three mistresses
in Germany. Anne’s relatives said
Anne had suspected something,
but didn’t know what. Her stalwart
silence preserved the myth till the
end — because they had, after all,
the best of times.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of Chrles Lindburgh, during the period
when she accompanied him on a round-the-world survey flight in a
Lockheed Sirius floatplane.