LINDBERGH “DEIFIED”

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 July 1929, Page 2

LINDBERGH “DEIFIED”

OFFERINGS TO THE HERO.

Americans are beginning, to show concern over the unparalleled public adulation of Colonel Lindbergh, one sign of which is the extraordinary array of valuable and beautiful gifts that have been presented to him. A priceless Persian manuscript of the Koran; a ten-pound twist of very special chewing tobacco; a beautiful piece of hand-made filet lace “showing the hero’s plane worked out with considerable skill” by the fingers of a coalminer’s wife; medals, medals, watches, watches; an aeroplane cut from a single diamond; crucifixes, canes, boxing gloves, boots, toothpaste, and tapestries—and the cry is still “they come!” Already they fill a special wing in a museum. The, aviator is generally assumed to have received, in a given time, a greater number of spontaneous, personal gifts than any other unofficial person in history. “Five centuries have been required to make a saint of Joan of Arc,” writes Marquis W. Childs in the New York Herald Tribune magazine, “but in two years Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh has become a demigod. It would seem that a number of people had singled out the most exquisite and rare thing they owned and had forwarded it to Lindbergh.” And in another place, Mi- Childs observes, after reviewing the collection: — “As a (Symbol, Lindbergh, as this exhibition of trophies aptly proves, is all- things to all people. He represents the secret longings of millions of souls, the concrete realisation of their dreams. In him they, see the personification of air ideal. Hence demand that every detail of his private life be known to them. This loaves him, of course, almost no privacy, a fact to which his friends say he will never become reconciled. They declare that he would far rather fly to Paris again, and fly back, too, than to live over again the ordeal that the last two years have meant to him; the ordeal implied by the Lindbergh collection of trophies, the ordeal of deification into the figure of a colossal international hero, a figure to which he himself must all his life pay tribute.” The tangible evidence of that “deification” was found by Mr Childs in “the collection known as the Lindbergh trophies, which now occupy an entire wing in the Jefferson Memorial Museum in St. Louis.” He records the fact that in the beginnipg Colonel Lindbergh was opposed to the public display of the trophies, inasmuch as: “He could scarcely be brought to believe that there could be very much interest in them. He finally consented that th6y should be put on display for ten dayjs. During that time 80,000 persons came to see them. Queues extended for a half-block or more; one day there were 15,000 in line. ,

MILLIONS OF VISITORS. . “Lindbergh was convinced, and somewhat embarrassed. In the first year it was estimated that 1,495,000 people viewed the exhibit, and the figure at the end of the second year will be well over 2,000,000. There are almost always queues, and the interest shown has been compared, editorially, with the never-failing attraction exerted by Napoleon’s tomb. The visitors’ book contains names from all over the world. Almost every city of size in the United States and a large number of national societies, clubs, and conventions, have requested a loan of the exhibit. Lindbergh has denied these requests. Aside from th© fact that the exhibitions would set off a whole new series of press he is said to oppose transportation of the trophies because of the risk involved. While insurance could b© obtained to cover their actual valiie, they are irreplaceable.”

The citizens of Reading, Pennsylvania, presented Lindbergh with a huge silver cup; the citizens of Sacramento, California, with a watch fob of native Californian gold; the citizens of Springfield, Illinois, with a watch; the citizens of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, with a gold fountain pen set with diamonds; the city of Boston with a replica of the “Appeal to the Great Spirit” of C. E. Dallin; the citizens of Seattle, Washington, with a gold ring set with an amethyst; the citizens of Moline, Rock Island, and Davenport, with a silver ring; the American residents of Mexico Citj r with a silver platter; the citizens of Fort Worth, Texas, with a large oil painting of his mother; the army of Guatemala with a silvei’ inkstand; the American colony in Costa Rica, with a five piece tortoise-shell desk set; the borough of Brooklyn with a silver platter; the city of Providence, Rhode Island, with a chest of 197 pieces of sterling silver; the citizens of Fargo, North Dakota, with gold engraved cuff links. These lists are not complete. From a Dr. Procousky, of Teheran, Persia, cam© a superb illuminated manuscript of the “Saado,” and a Persian manuscript of the Koran, dating from 928 A.D.

Accompanying the gifts are letters, some well-phrased, some unconsciously amusing, but all testifying to a wave of hero-worship in what until lately, on the experience of the war and its aftermath, had been deemed a ruthlessly iconoclastic age.