throughout France, Europe and particularly upon his return to the United States was no less enthusiastic. His first night in Paris, Lindbergh slept at the home of the United States Ambassador to France. Soon after, he met the President of France, addressed the French Assembly, was received by King George V of England, and given accolades the world over for his feat.
To get him home, and America wanted him home fast, President Calvin Coolidge dispatched the United States cruiser Memphis under the command of Admiral Guy Burrage to Cherbourg where it picked up Lindbergh and his plane. The Secretary of War, Dwight F. Davis, had already arranged to promote Lindbergh to the rank of Colonel in the Air Corps Reserve, a title Lindbergh would cling to in the ensuing years.
He was exceedingly tall, and his height seemed to amplify his solitary nature. He captured the imagination of a nation with his stoical and fearless nature, and he appeared bright, even if he was somewhat aloof and lonely. He was quiet and reserved, not given to boastful behavior. He was, in short, a person whom everyone could romanticize as the adventurer, who embodied all that we wanted him to embody. He became an American Hero.
The country could forgive him his idiosyncrasies. It would shower him with admiration, pridefully boast to the world of his name, and, in his presence, defer to him. This would later include law enforcement officers who were involved in the investigation into the disappearance of his first born son. As America's Hero he quickly became acclimated to deferential treatment.
When he stepped off the ship at Alexandria, he was met by his mother. She had been brought to Washington as the guest of President and Mrs. Coolidge. From there he joined a parade which led him to a huge stage erected at the Washington Monument. Waiting on the stage was the President of the United States, who gave a long speech extolling the virtues of a young man who, only a few days earlier, had been a virtual unknown.
Lindbergh responded with these words. "On the evening of May 21, I arrived at Le Bourget, France. I was in Paris for one week, in Belgium for a day and was in London and in England for several days. Everywhere I went, at every meeting I attended, I was requested to bring home a message to you. Always the message was the same. `You have seen,' the message was, `the affection of the peoples of France for the people of America demonstrated to you. When you return to America take back that message to the people of the United States from the people of France and of Europe.' I thank you." And Lindbergh sat down. It is the shortest known response ever given to a Presidential speech.
Lindbergh was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and for the first time in an action unconnected with war, the Congressional Medal of Honor, the United States' highest award for bravery for a person serving in the Armed Forces. The French presented him with the French Legion of Honor, and the British with the Air Force Cross. He received thousands of offers to endorse products, lucrative job offers, gifts, proposals for marriage, and several million letters, telegrams and cables.
On June 13th he traveled to New York City and was given a parade attended by what is still believed to be the largest crowd in New York City history. Some four and one half million people turned out to see him in the motorcade. In a speech at City Hall, Mayor James J. Walker looked up from his script at the end of his long discourse and said, "Colonel Lindbergh, New York City is yours I give it to you. You won it."
The Wright Aeronautical Corporation had assigned a corporate public relations specialist named Dick Blythe, along with an assistant, Harry Bruno, to handle the Colonel's public relations, and to help sort through the offers which were pouring in. Lindbergh had signed contracts with Mobile Oil, Vacuum Oil, AC Spark plugs, and Wright before departing. Each contract averaged $6,000 and the companies were now cashing in. Each could have afforded to pay him much more after the flight, and many more wanted his endorsement. On June 16, 1927 he was awarded the Orteig Prize and given the $25,000 at a small ceremony. Interestingly enough, Raymond Orteig's committee had to bend the rules to present the money. The published rules had stated that in order to qualify, sixty days had to lapse between the time the entry was received and the time the flight took place. It had not. Even though the rules had been well publicized in advance everyone had agreed that they could overlook it "in this case." After all, Lindbergh was special.
He wrote an account of his flight called We, which earned him $100,000 in royalties. In the summer of 1927 he was also paid to take a crosscountry tour. Flying the Spirit of St. Louis he made stops in all 48 states, flying through all weather conditions and missing only one date in Portland, Maine. In every location he was mobbed, particularly by women. He was, after all, perceived to be the most eligible bachelor in the world, though anyone who took the time to inquire further found that Lindbergh held most women in disdain.
Harry Guggenheim, who had established the Foundation for Aeronautical Research, was the financial backer of Lindbergh's crosscountry flight. Known as "Captain Harry," Guggenheim was a wealthy philanthropist who was more than willing to provide Lindbergh a safe haven from the crowds and press by offering him a permanent room at his mansion on the north shore of Long Island. There Lindbergh rubbed elbows on a regular basis with influential people such as Thomas Lamont, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. the publisher George Palmer Putnam, Herbert Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and a banker named Dwight Morrow.
These were the power elite of society mostly Republicans. Dwight Morrow was also the Ambassador to Mexico and a prominent Republican whose name was already being touted as a possible Presidential nominee. When Ambassador Morrow invited Lindbergh to come to his home in New Jersey and later to Mexico, Lindbergh readily accepted.
Morrow's New Jersey home was a sprawling manorial mansion in Englewood. He was married, and the father of a son and three daughters, one of whom was Anne Spencer Morrow.
Lindbergh used the invitation to Mexico to promote a South American tour, and to begin it, announced that he would fly nonstop from Washington to Mexico City in December of 1927.
Upon arrival Lindbergh found that Morrow had arranged a greeting by the President of Mexico and he was widely feted wherever he went. He stayed at the Ambassador's home during the Christmas holiday with his mother, who had also been invited by the Morrows, and who had reluctantly come.
While staying there he spent time with the three daughters. It was reported that he got along very well with Constance, who was younger than Anne and still attending an exclusive boarding school, Milton Academy, in Milton, Massachusetts.
Anne arrived from Smith College shortly after Lindbergh's arrival. In 1927 she was twenty-one years old. She was intelligent and sensitive but also extremely shy and introverted. Although she was not quite sure of herself around Lindbergh, she was definitely attracted to him.
In her diaries, Anne wondered whether Lindbergh would be more attracted to her older sister Elisabeth, or her younger sister Constance, with whom he seemed more at ease and able to engage in conversation. The pair seemed to have developed a natural rapport.
Dwight Morrow invited him to spend more time with them at their summer home off the coast of Maine. Later that year Lindbergh quietly began courting Anne Morrow. He asked her to go flying with him and this became his regular method for seeing her. Anne's diaries reveal mixed emotions about Charles Lindbergh and she wrote that he was "terribly young and crude in many small ways."11
Lindbergh maintained his tumultuous relationship with the press. He responded angrily at several newspaper accounts which reported that he was "getting a swelled head," and in a huff declared that henceforth he would only see reporters when it had to do with aviation.
Unless of course it furthered his own interests, as it did on October 3, 1928 when he released to the press a telegram he had sent to Herbert C. Hoover, then the Republican nominee for President:
The more I see of your campaign the more strongly I feel that your election is of supreme importance to the country. Your qualities
