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Early Years:
"It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you've wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane."
-- Charles Lindbergh
Born on February 4, 1902, in Detroit, Michigan, Lindbergh grew up the son of a doting mother and an often-absent, politician father. He spent rural summers on the family farm in Minnesota, and school days in Detroit and later Washington, DC, when his father served in the US Congress.
While he was growing up, so too was the new technology of aviation. Less than a year after Lindbergh's birth, the Wright brothers experimented successfully with the first heavier-than-air machine. A few years later, stunt flying, known as barnstorming, thrilled crowds, and by WWI, aviation had become an integral part of the war effort.
Lindbergh took his first trip in an airplane in 1922, and from then on his life revolved around the adventure of flying. Within four years, his skill as an airmail pilot on the St. Louis to Chicago route, the most dangerous in the United States, gave him the confidence to try for the Orteig Prize -- $25,000 offered to the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping. |