Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, 1906-2001

Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh was born in Englewood, New Jersey on 22 June 1906, the daughter of ambassador and politician Dwight Morrow and author and Smith College president Elizabeth Cutter Morrow. From 1924-1928 Anne studied literature at Smith College, where she graduated in 1928 with a bachelor's degree in English. In May 1929, after a brief courting period, Anne married Charles Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974). Anne had met Lindbergh in Mexico
in 1927, while her father was serving as ambassador. With Charles, she had six children: Charles Augustus, Jr. (1930-1932), Jon (1932-), Land (1937-), Anne (1940-1993), Scott (1942-), and Reeve (1945-).

In March 1932 Anne's first child, Charles, Jr. ("Charlie"), who was twenty months old, was kidnapped from the Lindberghs' home near Hopewell, New Jersey. The press dubbed the kidnapping the "Crime of the Century." In May 1932 after a seventy-two day search, Charles was found dead in a shallow grave only three miles from the Lindbergh estate. In 1936 Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant, convicted criminal, and World War I veteran, was executed by the state of New Jersey for the murder of the Lindbergh baby. In December 1936 the Lindbergh's fled America for England to escape harassment by the press and the general public. In April 1939, with war looming in Europe, the Lindberghs returned home to the United States.

In 1934 Anne published her first book, North to the Orient, based on her flights to China and Japan with Charles in 1931. In 1938, she published her second book, The Listen! The Wind, inspired by her visit to Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands, near the coast of Africa. In 1940 she published her most controversial work, Wave of the Future, which critics--in light of Charles' involvement with the America First movement and the Lindberghs' visits to Germany to meet with high-ranking Nazi officials--considered pro-fascist. Despite such criticism, Anne kept writing, publishing the novel The Steep Ascent in 1944, a thinly-veiled fictitious account of a woman aviator flying with her husband over Europe. In 1955 Anne published her classic work and bestseller Gift from the Sea, which called for women and mothers to seek moments of peace, solitude, and introspection amid the busy realties of modern life.

In addition to her novels and other creative writing, Anne published a significant amount of poetry, including her collection The Unicorn (1956). In 1962 she published the novel Dearly Beloved, concerning the troubles involved in love, relationships, and married life. Later, she published a compendium of essays for Life magazine, issued as Earth Shine. In the 1970s Harcourt Brace publishers, with the help of Anne and Charles, issued volumes containing excerpts from Anne's correspondence and diaries: Bring Me a Unicorn (1971); Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead (1973); Locked Rooms and Open Doors (1974); The Flower and the Nettle (1976); and War Within and Without (1980). Anne lived in Maui with Charles until his death in August 1974 and later moved to Connecticut. Anne Morrow Lindbergh died in 2001.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (b. Anne Spencer Morrow, June 22, 1906, Englewood, N.J.-d. Feb. 7, 2001), American author, aviator, wife of fellow aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh (June 22, 1906 – February 7, 2001) was an American writer and aviator. She was the wife of decorated pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh, with whom she made many exploratory flights. Anne Spencer Morrow was born on June 22, 1906, in Englewood, New Jersey Her father was Dwight Morrow, a partner in J.P. Morgan & Co., who became United States Ambassador to Mexico and United States Senator from New Jersey. Her mother, Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, was a poet and teacher, active in women's education,[3] who served as acting president of her alma mater Smith College.[ She first attended the Dwight School for Girls in Englewood.[8] After graduating from The Chapin School in New York City in 1924, where she was president of the student body, she attended Smith College from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1928.[4][9]Morrow and Lindbergh met on December 21, 1927, in Mexico City.[11] Her father, Lindbergh's financial adviser at J. P. Morgan and Co., invited him to Mexico to advance good relations between it and the United States They were married in a private ceremony on May 27, 1929, at the home of her parents in Englewood, New Jersey.[13][4][14]

That year, Anne Lindbergh flew solo for the first time, and in 1930, she became the first American woman to earn a first-class glider pilot's license. In the 1930s, Charles and Anne explored and charted air routes between continents together.[15] The Lindberghs were the first to fly from Africa to South America and explored polar air routes from North America to Asia and Europe.[16]

Their first child, Charles Jr., was born on Anne's 24th birthday, June 22, 1930.[17] On March 1, 1932, the Lindberghs' first child, 20-month-old Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., was kidnapped from their home, Highfields, in East Amwell, New Jersey, outside Hopewell. Over the course of their 45-year marriage, the Lindberghs lived in New Jersey, New York, the United Kingdom, France, Maine, Michigan, Connecticut, Switzerland, and Hawaii. Charles died on the island of Maui in 1974.

After suffering a series of strokes that left her confused and disabled in the early 1990s, Anne continued to live in her home in Connecticut with the assistance of round-the-clock caregivers. During a visit to her daughter Reeve's family in 1999, she came down with pneumonia, after which she went to live near Reeve in a small home built on Reeve's Passumpsic, Vermont, farm, where Anne died in 2001 at 94, following another stroke.[41] Reeve Lindbergh's book, No More Words, tells the story of her mother's last years.[42]