Charles Lindbergh was born on February 4, 1902 in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a United States Congressman and his mother a high school chemistry teacher. Charles moved to Little Falls in central Minnesota when he was a young child. As a child, he was very interested in the new invention the airplane and had a mechanical aptitude. He attended the University of Wisconsin for two years, but withdrew because he heard of a flying school in Nebraska. He began flying in 1922 and later enrolled in a United State Army flight school to become a professional pilot. After graduating with the highest grades in his class, he piloted a mail plane between St. Louis and Chicago starting in 1926. This job was a challenge and Lindbergh had to fly through terrible weather and land at towns without airports and runways. While working at this job, he heard of a contest for the first nonstop transatlantic solo flight between New York City and Paris. The prize offered by Franco-American philanthropist Raymond Orteig was $25,000. This challenge was wrought with danger and had already taken the lives of six pilots. Believing that the best plane for this task was a single-engine airplane, he found a company named Ryan that would build one for him. Packing a canteen of water, sandwiches, maps, and charts, Lindbergh took off Roosevelt Field at 7:52 AM on May, 20 1927 with his plane Sprit of St. Louis. After an excruciating flight of 33 hours and 32 minutes in which he had to hold his eyes open, Lindbergh landed at Le Bourget Airport near Paris. This feat of perseverance and endurance made Charles Lindbergh the greatest sports hero in the 1920s. He won the enthusiasm and acclaim of the world and elated Americans at home. After resting for several days in Europe, President Calvin Coolidge sent a United States Navy ship to bring Lindbergh and Sprit of St. Louis back to America. After celebrations and a ticker tape parade in New York for Lindbergh, the truth about the dangerous voyage came out. Lindbergh had barely cleared the telephone lines on takeoff in his fuel-heavy plane and at times was just 10 feet over the ocean waves. He wrote a best selling novel on the story of his historic flight named We in the same year. In 1954 Charles Lindbergh received the Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography The Sprit of St. Louis. He died on August 26, 1974 in Maui, Hawaii.
-Chris Chan
Copyright 1999 by Chris Chan, Greg Ryslik, and Haig Altunian
