“America is fortunate in her heroes; her soul feeds upon their deeds; her imagination revels in their achievements. There are those who would rob them of something of their lustre, but no one can debunk Lindbergh, for there is no bunk about him. He represents to us, fellow-Americans, all that we wish—a young American at his best.”
Only by reducing this record to catalog form could it possibly be made to include a fully detailed description of Lindbergh’s four amazing days in New York. Every night there was a banquet. Every day there was a festive lunch. Not hundreds, but thousands attended these entertainments; and at the speaker’s table there always sat distinguished men whose names were household words among Americans.
Lindbergh spoke at every banquet. Recurrently he paid gracious thanks to those who had helped make his visit such a gorgeous success; he usually ended by speaking on behalf of aviation, the welfare of which he never forgot even in the most crowded moments of his days.
The Merchants’ Association gave him a gigantic luncheon. The Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce entertained him at a banquet that filled to overflowing the famous ball room of the Waldorf.
On Wednesday night he gave an exhibition of his endurance that once more reminded the world it was fêting no ordinary hero. After dining on Rodman Wanamaker’s yacht and seeing a special performance of a light opera, Lindbergh attended a charity benefit at one of the big theatres. About 1:30 a.m. he escaped through a back door and hurried to Mitchel field. Although still in his evening clothes he borrowed a helmet and hopped off for Washington at 3:05 a.m. By 7:30 a.m. he was back in New York with his own plane.
His last day was too crowded for him to take a nap after his sleepless night. He went to Brooklyn where above a million people gave him another moving welcome. He kept a public luncheon date. He attended a large tea and reception at the Waldorf Hotel where Raymond Orteig presented him with the $25,000 prize that had long stood for the first flight from New York to Paris. At eight, a little tired but still as fresh looking as ever, he followed Charles Schwab in speaking before a massed aviation banquet that included many leading pilots of the world.
VI
St. Louis
At 8:17 a.m., Friday June 17th, Lindbergh hopped off in his plane for St. Louis. At Paterson he passed over the plant of the Wright Aeronautical Corporation where had been built the motor that had taken him across the Atlantic. At 11:16 he reached Columbus, Ohio. At Dayton he was joined by an escort of thirty fast Army planes. They took off from the field where the old hangar of Orville and Wilbur Wright still stands.
About 5 p.m. he approached St. Louis in a wet fog. He dropped lower and circled the city. As at New York the sky was dotted with planes. Streets and house tops were massed with people. As he landed at Lambert Field a cordon of troops protected him from the eager crowds.
For the evening he managed to escape to the home of a friend where he got a little much-needed rest, though reporters and business solicitors still swarmed about him. Saturday morning came the huge city parade with luncheon and banquet to follow. Sunday he gave an exhibition flight over the old World’s Fair grounds. Not an hour, scarcely a waking minute, was he free from demands upon his time and attention.
By this time his mail had exceeded the wildest imagination. It was estimated that more than 2,000,000 letters and several hundred thousand telegrams were sent him. He gave out the following statement:
“To the Press: As an air mail pilot I deeply appreciate the sentiment which actuated my countrymen to welcome me home by air mail, and regret only that I have no way in which to acknowledge individually every one of the tens of thousands of air mail greetings I have received, for my heart is in the air mail service, and I would like to help keep alive the air-consciousness of America which my good fortune may have helped to awaken.”
By this time statisticians began to get busy. One official association estimated that the tremendous increase of interest in flying developed by Lindbergh’s feat caused publications in the United States to use 25,000 tons of newsprint in addition to their usual consumption.
Roughly 5,000 poems were believed to have been written to commemorate the first New York to Paris flight. A town was named “Lindbergh.” Scores of babies were reported christened after the flier. An enormous impetus was given the use of air mail.
Inspired editorials were written in every part of the civilized world. The following from the New York Times suitably completes this very superficial record of the early Lindbergh welcome by mankind:
“Such a man is one in a host. In treating of the psychology of those who adore Lindbergh it must first be set down that he has the qualities of heart and head that all of us would like to possess. When he left Newfoundland behind, the dauntless fellow seemed to have a rendezvous with Death, but his point of view was that he had an engagement in Paris. Two gallant Frenchmen had lost their lives, it was believed, in an attempt to fly across the Atlantic to the United States. An American, unknown to fame, in whom no one but himself believed, made the passage smoothly, swiftly and surely, traveling alone and almost unheralded. From New
