Celebrity Deathwatch: Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Wife to Famous Aviator, 94

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/02/07/obit.lindbergh.02.ap/index.html

Anne Morrow Lindbergh dead at 94

February 7, 2001
Web posted at: 9:41 p.m. EST (0241 GMT)

MONTPELIER, Vermont (AP) -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the wife of aviator
Charles A. Lindbergh, who became his co-pilot and wrote extensively about
their pioneering adventures in flight, died at her rural Vermont home
Wednesday. She was 94.

Lindbergh died in her home in Passumpsic about 30 miles northeast of the
state capital, according to her son-in-law Nathaniel Tripp.

Lindbergh, who published 13 books of memoirs, fiction, poems and essays,
also had a secluded home in Darien, Connecticut.

A painfully shy woman, she was thrown into the spotlight of her famous
husband immediately after they met in 1927, shortly after he made his famous
solo flight across the Atlantic.

"Mother died quietly in her second home in Vermont with her family around
here," said Reeve Lindbergh, the youngest of the Lindbergh children, in a
statement issued by the family foundation.

She soon became her husband's co-pilot, co-navigator and radio operator. The
couple's flights across oceans and around the world fascinated the American
public.

In 1932, the already-famous Lindberghs drew worldwide attention when their
first child, 20-month-old Charles Jr., was kidnapped and murdered.

In an introduction to her journals, she affectionately recalled her famous
fiance as "a knight in shining armor, with myself as his devoted page."

Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow were married on May 27, 1929, in a private
ceremony at the Morrow residence in Englewood, New Jersey The couple had six
children together. Charles Lindbergh died in 1974.

>From 1929 to 1935, the Lindberghs flew across the United States on tours
promoting air travel as a safe and convenient method of transportation.

In 1930, she became the first American woman to get a glider pilot's
license.

On their flights, while her husband sat in the front seat, Lindbergh was in
the rear seat, operating the radio and gathering weather conditions and
landing information.

On April 20, 1930, the Lindberghs set a transcontinental speed record,
flying from Los Angeles to New York in 14 hours and 45 minutes. Anne
Lindbergh was seven months pregnant at the time.

In 1934, Lindbergh was the first woman to win the National Geographic
Society's Hubbard Gold Medal for distinction in exploration, research and
discovery.

Lindbergh published 13 books, many of them autobiographical, including five
volumes of diaries and letters that gave detailed accounts of the
Lindberghs' lives from the 1920s through the 1940s.

In an introduction to "Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead," the volume covering the
years 1929-32, she wrote of the joy flying gave her: "Flying was a very
tangible freedom. In those days, it was beauty, adventure, discovery -- the
epitome of breaking into new worlds."

In the same book, she wrote of the pain she and her husband felt after the
body of their son was discovered in May 1932, 10 weeks after the sleeping
baby was kidnapped from the Lindberghs' newly built house near Princeton,
New Jersey.

"We sleep badly and wake up and talk. I dreamed right along as I was
thinking -- all of one piece, no relief. I was walking down a suburban
street seeing other people's children and I stopped to see one in a carriage
and I thought it was a sweet child, but I was looking for my child in his
face. And I realized, in the dream, that I would do that forever. And I went
on walking heavy and sad and woke heavy and sad."

Among her other books were "Gift from the Sea," a 1955 best-selling
collection of essays; "The War Within and Without," memoirs covering the
years 1939-1944, when Charles Lindbergh was criticized as being pro-Nazi;
and "Listen! the Wind," chronicling the Lindberghs' 1933 trip to Greenland,
Iceland, Scandinavia, Russia, Europe, Africa and South America.

Lindbergh, who struggled throughout her life to maintain her family's
privacy, wrote of her disdain for the media spotlight: "I was quite
unprepared for this cops-and-robbers pursuit, an aspect of publicity that
has become a common practice with public figures. I felt like an escaped
convict. This was not freedom."

She wrote in her diary that when her husband landed in Paris, he was
"completely unaware of the world interest -- the wild crowds below. The rush
of the crowds to the plane is symbolic of life rushing at him -- a new
life -- new responsibilities -- he was completely unaware of and unprepared
for."

She broke with her tradition of privacy when she opened her late husband's
and even her own papers to biographer A. Scott Berg, whose book "Lindbergh"
came out in 1998, writing to him that "you can't write about Charles without
writing about me."

In 1999, another book came out, focusing this time on Lindbergh: Susan
Hertog's "Anne Morrow Lindbergh: A Life."

Lindbergh was born Anne Spencer Morrow, June 22, 1906, in Englewood, New
Jersey, the second of four children. She was the daughter of Dwight Whitney
Morrow, a banker who later became U.S. ambassador to Mexico and a U.S.
senator, and Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, a writer and teacher.

After attending private schools, Anne Morrow entered Smith College in the
fall of 1924, following in the footsteps of her mother and her older sister.
She graduated from Smith in 1928. Her academic record was fairly
undistinguished until she began to flourish in her writing classes at Smith,
where she won the Elizabeth Montagu Prize and the Mary Augusta Jordan Prize
for her literary work.

In December 1927, she met Charles Lindbergh. She was a shy and studious
senior at Smith College. He was already an American hero, having recently
become the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

He took her flying on their first date; they were engaged within a year.

In addition to the kidnapped child, the Lindberghs had five other
children -- Jon, Land, Scott, Reeve and Anne, who died in 1993.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


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