VIST. LOUIS
AT 8:17A.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 5P.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 thehome 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 theNew York Timessuitably 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 attemptto 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 York to Paris, without a hand to clasp or a face to look into, was a deed to lose one’s head over. And that’s what everybody in France, Belgium and England proceeded to do.
“After all, the greater was behind—the young fellow’s keeping his own head when millions hailed him as hero, when all the women lost their hearts to him, and when decorations were pinned on his coat by admiring Governments. Lindbergh had the world at his feet, and he blushed like a girl! A more modest bearing, a more unaffected presence, a manlier, kindlier, simpler character no idol of the multitude ever displayed. Never was America prouder of a son.”
The End