“And what is so rare, as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays.
[James Russell Lowell]
This verse brings back memories of high school English. This was one of the poems we read by Lowell. I am sure it is still read in such classes since it is a classic. I can’t help but think of the month and not think of Lowell’s words. It is also the month of my good and loving wife, June’s birthday! The month will bring our second grandchild graduated from college, Karen. Along with her we will celebrate the graduation of two other grandchildren from high school, Paul Berger and Meg Baker.
My sons, Bill and Dan, and I exchange books. When I got a list from Dan I saw the title “Lindbergh”. It brought back thoughts of his historic flight in 1927 from New York to Paris. So I asked Dan to lend me the book. Was I surprised to see a biography of 500 plus pages, with another 120 pages of notes and index! It also had pictures. A. Scott Berg wrote it and won the Pulitzer Prize for it. The one I had was a paperback edition, but booksize, that was published in 1999. It is very detailed. He used diaries, letters and notes from the files of the Lindbergh’s. I remembered besides the flight the horror of their first child being kidnapped and eventually found dead. I had read in another fiction book some one referring to that kidnapping and so I was reminded of it. But on reading this detailed biography I learned that Charles Lindbergh and his wife Ann’s lives were much more than these two events.
They both wrote books and some became best sellers. They loved to travel and literally went around the world. Charles taught Anne how to fly and she often did. They suffered much with the kidnapping of their first child. There were two and half years before a warrant was issued for an arrest! Then finding the child dead was even worse and the trial was about a year later in which the person charged, Hauptmann, was found guilty. But he never confessed to it and went to death without doing so even though he was offered a life sentences if he would do so. The press and the photographers after and during this period were so bad that the Lindbergh’s decided to move to England for a while. Before they returned to America the American Ambassador in Germany invited Charles to visit. He, the ambassador hoped Lindbergh might learn what the Germans were doing with regard to fighter planes. He came and was then invited by Goering to attend a dinner. He and Anne both went. At the same the Germans gave him a medal for his flying the first flight across the Atlantic. When they returned to U.S. Lindbergh began campaigning for America to stay out of any expected European Conflict. He joined “ America First” and spoke all over the country. He was derided, called a ‘Nazi’, had to resign his commission in the Army Air Force as a Colonel,and even President Roosevelt by inferences agreed with the criticisms.
Today people seem to remember this period in his life more than any other. In reading his objections it was clear he had America’s interest in mind because of his knowledge of their arms and air weapons that he felt it would be a mistake. He also felt American need not get involved in the European culture and antagonisms.
All of objections should have ended with Pearl Harbor. Despite the barrage of attacks on him Lindbergh helped in upgrading the fighter planes and then went to the South Pacific where he helped the Marine pilots. He flew 50 or more combat flights and killed at least one Japanese who attempted to attack him. His diary noted several times after he did so, that he prayed for the deceased Japanese pilot. General MacArthur invited him to meet with him to discuss ways to improve their air attacks. He was given a uniform without any insignia or rank.
Most people remember him not as the pilot of that first flight and never heard of his invention of a human organ pump but that he was a ‘Nazi”. This of course was never true but shows how much the press influences our thinking. He worked with the famous Dr. Alexis Carrell, a Nobel Prize winner and a doctor at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research when Lindbergh met and worked with him. So besides getting commercial airlines up in the air and the business growing he was responsible for a new medical tool. Here is a comment made in Copenhagen when Lindbergh went there with Dr. Carrel who was to address the International Congress of Experimental Cytology. Lindbergh demonstrated his invention the ‘organ pump” He did so by using a cat’s thyroid gland. “After viewing the mechanism, many of the two hundred and fifty scientists declared that ‘Lindbergh works as a scientist would probably be remembered long after his flight to Paris…” This occurred in 1936. In the ‘60’s, “When Dr. Theodore I Malinin and Lieutenant Vernon Perry, who were expanding the study of organ profusion, informed Lindbergh that his 1935 pump was still practical. But they noted it was limited in the new field cryobiological perfusion research. Lindbergh developed a new machine of glass and plastic that could accommodate larger organs and with stand colder temperatures.” (p.528)
Lindbergh was organized right down to his death. He purchased a burial lot in Maui, Hawaii, where he and Ann often stayed. It was a lot next to a chapel. He ordered a special casket to be delivered on his death. He prepared how a quiet ceremoney without Press or Photographers would be held. As he lay dying in the summer of 1974 he met with his children privately and reconciled any prior differences. He corrected his 14-page will, which had eliminated his son Scott by putting him back in the document. About dying he said he never realized that “death is so close all the time – its right there next to you” and he felt totally relaxed about it. He died quietly on August 26,1974.
I am now reading a book by Steven Pinker entitled “The Language of Thought: Language As A Window Into Human Nature” One paragraph really had me laughing and I would like to share it with you.
“A good way to appreciate the role of verb construction in language is to ponder jokes that hinge on an ambiguity between them: same words, different constructions. According to a frequently e-mailed list of badly translated hotel signs, a Norwegian cocktail lounge sported the notice “Ladies are requested not to have children at the bar.” In The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lector (a.k.a. Hannibal the Cannibal) taunts his pursuer by saying, “I do wish we could chat longer, but I’m having an old friend for dinner”. And in his autobiography the comedian Dick Gregory recounts an episode from the 1960s: “Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant and this waitress came up to me and said, We don’t serve colored people here. I said, That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken”
As the month draws to its end we will celebrate the birth of June. I will celebrate how fortunate I am to have her in my life and taking such good care of me. The numbers don’t count. But I still recall with a laugh how when her oldest son reached fifty years of age she of course sent him a birthday card, but it was addressed to her ‘brother’!
We are having summer weather and not enough rain. We had records set in the early months of the year for cold and now we have an early summer. Well, as some wise man noted “The only thing we can do with the weather is ‘talk’ about it”
Until next time, Pax Tecum!