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Colonel Lindbergh enters the court for the 1935 trial of Bruno
Hauptmann, the man who kidnaped and murdered his first-born child.
The Lindbergh residence in Darien,
Connecticut (left). Here, Anne and
Charles have reared their five chil
dren to be highly self-reliant individ
uals. Jon (above) is their oldest and
has the most independent spirit of
all. The young Lindberghs (right) be
gan married life in 1929, just 2 years
after Charles' historic flight. It was
the beginning of a struggle for pri
vacy that culminated in tragedy.
THE LINDBERGHS. FLORA RHETA SCHREIBER
led his family into seclusion years ago; here is a glimpse of how they live today
cle over a tall, erect frame. On the train as in
town he speaks to nobody. And nobody pays any
attention to him.
From the Darien house, the two youngest Lind
bergh children also leave for school each weekday
morning. Reeve, a light-haired and fair-skinned
girl (all the Lindbergh children are fair-complex-ioned),
takes the school bus for Darien Junior High
School where she is a ninth-grade student, makes
excellent grades, and is president of the student
council. Scott heads for Darien High School where
he is a senior and manages the basketball team.
Her husband and children gone, Anne Lindbergh,
now 53, is left at home like any other housewife,
to supervise the household with its two servants.
She sometimes drives into town for marketing.
When she does, she greets people. Or, if the occa
sion demands, she will visit the children's schools
for a play or a parent-teacher conference. But as
one principal put it, "She seems only to be doing
her minimal parental duty in a shy way."
Shy to the world, Anne and Charles Lindbergh
are open and giving to each other. The farther they
have retreated from others, the closer they have
become to each other. "Their marriage," says a
friend, "remains today, after all the tragedy and
troubles, as happy and inspiring a relationship as
I have ever seen."
Theirs is a modern marriage, with the wife a
fully equal partner. Anne Lindbergh has flown
with her husband on survey flights and has been
his partner in aerial explorations. She has quali
fied for a first-class glider pilot's license. She did
her husband's camera, work and became navigator,
radio operator, and copilot on his long flights.
Yet she has played the woman's role, too. Before
they were married, he told her that he wanted a
large family, a dozen children or so. Laughingly,
she agreed. She thought that children would soften
him and make .a dent in the armor with which he
shielded himself. The winter before their baby was
kidnaped, she thought she saw a thawing in her
husband. It had been a winter of great happiness
for them. But with spring came the tragedy and
an end to the thaw.
Tragedy, however, also gave Lindbergh new
dimensions of thought and feeling. Slowly he moved
toward sharing his wife's attitude of philosophical
brooding. As a youth, his thoughts had revolved
around planes and engines. He himself has said,
"Science was more important to me than either God
or man." But the companionship of Anne, personal
tragedy, and years of intensive study have changed
him. Today, grimly aware of the powerful and dia
bolical forces that science can unleash, he has de
veloped a deep need for personal religion.
As for the children, the Lindberghs have encour
aged them to be themselves, to place value on
acts of daring and accomplishment, on nature and
one's inner self, rather than on material things.
The Lindberghs also have encouraged their chil
dren to be self-reliant. To this end the children at
tended public schools, not the private ones which
the family could easily afford. Even when young,
the children were expected to earn their own spend
ing money. Both Jon and Land, the two older boys,
used to earn spending money by operating lobster
pots off the Darien shores. Once, when a storm blew
up, Jon, then only 10, was stranded. He didn't re
turn home for two days. "Didn't your parents
worry?" a friend asked him. His self-assured an
swer was, "They knew that I knew what to do."
His parents, fearing that the death of their first
child would cause them to overprotect Jon, had
disciplined not only him but themselves to unsenti
mental toughness.
At home with the children, the Lindberghs have
stressed such simple pleasures as picnics, feeding
the birds, playing in the yard, walking in the woods,
and gathering around a big fire for games, music,
and conversation. From the time the children were
very young, Lindbergh has talked with them about
nature the sky, stars, animals. He has enjoyed ski-,
ing, sledding, swimming, and skin diving with them.
Anne, who is 19, is a sophomore at Radcliffe Col
lege. She plays the flute, solves complicated math
problems, and writes poetry. She possesses a rare
gift for putting persons at ease.
Land, now 22, who was born in England during
the years of his parents' retreat to Long Barn, is a
student at Colorado College. He enjoys rapids
shooting. His idea of a vacation is to ride the white
water of Colorado's wild Cataract Canyon.
Jon, now 27, works for a scientific firm in San
Diego, Calif. He was scientific adviser for a movie
called "Underwater Warrior" and has established
his own reputation for daring as an explorer of
underground caves, as a mountain climber, and as
a promising marine biologist. He is married to Bar
bara Helen Robbins, daughter of a mining engi
neer, whom he met when they were students at
Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.
During the ceremony itself, at the moment of the
exchange of rings, Reeve, the youngest of the Lind
berghs, came up with a bouquet Lindbergh later
told the Rev. Walter D. Waggoner, who officiated
at the ceremony, that he has always been deeply
pleased by the warm attachment between his eldest
and youngest children.
For Jon, marriage ended four years of living in a
tent some six miles from the Stanford campus in
the Los Trancos woods. The small tent was to the
son what the large house beyond the trees in Darien
is to the father and mother a retreat and a sanc
tuary; a source of solace and of strength; a symbol
of a cherished privacy.
Family Weekly. January 31. I960