several points during the flight Anne thought that she would plead with Lindbergh to land the plane, but did not. It was the worst flight she had yet endured with her husband and it caused her to be so sick that when they landed in New York she had to be carried from the plane by stretcher and rushed to the hospital.
Since the press was waiting for Lindbergh at the airport to report on his efforts to break the cross country speed record, Anne's apparent sickness was reported the next day in the newspapers. Lindbergh angrily denied that Anne had been ill, and his office castigated the press for reporting such. However, years later Anne herself admitted in Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead that the flight had caused her great misery, particularly in her condition. Today any physician would strongly advise against an expectant mother, seven months pregnant, flying without oxygen for a prolonged period. Oxygen deprivation to a near full term fetus is quite dangerous.
In May of 1930 Anne moved in with her parents at Englewood to await the birth of their first child. The country, and most certainly the press, was greatly interested in the arrival of the first born of Charles Lindbergh. Several newspaper accounts drew a parallel between awaiting the arrival of the Lindberghs' baby and the British anticipating the arrival of an heir to the throne.
But when the baby, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, III, was born on June 22, 1930 (which was Anne's 24th birthday), the world was kept waiting two weeks before Colonel Lindbergh would release either the name or photographs of the baby. The family reported that both mother and child were doing very well, and that the baby was "normal" in all respects. Later it was disclosed that the child had two overlapping toes on one of his feet, but other than that was "healthy and normal." This description of the baby as "healthy and normal" appears often in published accounts of the baby's birth, during the time of the kidnapping, and of his death. It was often rumored, though never established, that there was something "wrong" with the Lindbergh baby.
Colonel Lindbergh developed a pattern during the beginning of his marriage, and after the birth of his son, which he followed for most of his life. He would travel frequently, spending little time at home. In July of 1930, his business affairs were growing, and he was placed on the "preferred customer" listing at J.P. Morgan's Bank, which enabled him to buy choice stock at below market value. Since his interest in a number of airline companies was growing, a family friend of the Morrows, Manhattan lawyer Colonel Henry C. Breckinridge, became Lindbergh's advisor.
He also struck up an association with Dr. Alexis Carrel, a Nobel scientist and French doctor who was working at the Rockefeller Institute in New York. Lindbergh often joined Carrell at the Institute and helped him develop a perfusion pump to keep organs alive. Its designs were studied later during the development of the artificial heart. Carrel was a strange individual who wore a black hooded robe in the laboratory and insisted that all of his lab assistants do the same. He had won the Nobel Prize in 1912 for his work on suturing blood vessels during surgery instead of destroying them. But as he grew older, his views became more radical, and he wrote papers and published articles on subject matter well beyond his expertise.
In a published book entitled, Man, the Unknown, Carrel postulated that "dark skinned people" were part of the "lesser races" because of their high exposure to sun light, as opposed to the Scandinavian races which did not get exposed to as much light. Lindbergh was fascinated with Carrel's views on these and other subjects, and after he and Anne fled to Europe following the trial of Hauptmann, lived for a time near Carrel's island home off the coast of France.
In the spring and summer of 1931, the Lindberghs prepared for a northern surveying flight to the Orient. It was hoped that by doing so a commercial air route could be developed since this seemed to be the shortest route. For this trip the Sirius was equipped with retractable landing gear and pontoons as most of the landings would be on water.
It was also a route filled with hazards. Water landings, even under the best of circumstances, could be extremely dangerous. Lindbergh was widely criticized for the route he had charted. Several prominent explorers and experts on the Arctic advised him that his "straight line between two points" approach to his charted course was filled with unnecessary risk taking, and that by slightly altering his course he would avoid many of the more extreme hazards. He refused. Risk taking was welcomed by Colonel Lindbergh. Hadn't he, after all, piloted in all sorts of weather, crossed the Atlantic alone, wing walked, completed a double parachute jump on his first leap from an airplane, and survived several crashes? One of the scientists reminded Lindbergh, however, that this time he was taking his wife on the trip.
Of the many dangers encountered several could have been avoided. After departing Point Barrow, Alaska, the northern most point of the trip, he was forced to land due to a fuel shortage. He did so at an inlet called Shishmaref near Nome, and had greatly miscalculated the time of sunset. He set down in near darkness with fog approaching, an extremely dangerous combination for water landings. Not carefully tracking the hours of sunset near the Arctic Circle was a mistake commonly made by inexperienced pilots. Later the Arctic expert and flyer John Grierson publicly criticized Lindbergh in a letter for taking this kind of a risk. He asked why he hadn't checked sunset time at Nome before leaving Barrow. Lindbergh defended himself, but was not convincing in his arguments.
While flying south from the Soviet Union to Japan, Lindbergh had to land between very jagged mountainous peaks in dense fog. For Anne, it was the most terrifying landing she had ever experienced, describing it as "a knife going down the side of a pie tin, between fog and mountain." She wondered whether her husband would then say "It was nothing at all."14
There were three forced landings of this kind during their trip which effectively ended in China. The Lindberghs had been gone since July 31, 1931. Anne missed her baby, who was being cared for by her parents and their staff. When the plane was damaged in China at the beginning of October, she was frustrated and homesick, and wanted to return as quickly as possible. When a cable arrived in Shanghai on October 5, 1931 telling her that her father had died from a brain hemorrhage, Lindbergh canceled the flight, ordered the plane shipped back to San Francisco, and booked passage on the first ship home. They were reunited with their son on October 27th. When Anne Morrow Lindbergh's account of this journey was published in her first book entitled North to the Orient, she established herself as a first rate author. She would go on to become well published.
Dwight Morrow's death at 58 was a shock to his family. Anne wanted to stay with her mother, to be close to the family during a very difficult period. While Anne enjoyed a very close relationship with her mother, this was not the case between Charles and Mrs. Morrow. During his later antiwar and proNazi activities, Anne's mother publicly criticized her soninlaw for his "unAmerican" behavior. Dwight Morrow had once remarked, "what do we know about this young man Lindbergh?"15
Though livable, their new home in Hopewell, New Jersey was not complete. On weekends, the Lindberghs would stay there, along with the Whatelys and the Lindbergh dog. Betty Gow would not accompany them to Hopewell. This was her time off, and it gave Anne a chance to have time alone with the baby.
Lindbergh settled into a routine of traveling into New York City on Monday mornings for his work with the airline. Later in the day Anne and the baby would return to Englewood. Colonel Lindbergh had found that when he stuck to a regular pattern, the press was far less likely to bother him. He closely guarded, and kept secret, any variation in his schedule.
Such was not the case, however, on Monday, February 29, 1932. Charles' telephone call to Anne, instructing her to stay over an extra day, reflected a clear deviation from their usual pattern.
The Colonel himself stayed over Monday night in Englewood. On Tuesday morning he telephoned Anne and told her to stay over in Hopewell one more night, again citing the weather and the baby's cold. He left other specific instructions about the baby, and said that he would drive home to Hopewell from work that evening. According to Anne's testimony at the Hauptmann trial, Charles honked his horn in the driveway upon his arrival at 8:25 p.m. that evening. In a letter the next day to her motherinlaw
