Vt. airport celebrates 90th anniversary of flight

The Spirit of Anne Morrow Lindbergh circled twice above the valley where the Hartness State Airport sits, a crowd of 50 or 60 spectators watching below. They were there to commemorate the anniversary of a landing at Hartness in 1927, when Charles Lindbergh celebrated his historic transatlantic flight.

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Vt. Airport Celebrates 90th Anniversary of Flight After a ceremony Martha and Maurice Lucas, of North Springfield, Vt., look across the runway at Hartness State Airport in North Springfield, on July 26, 2017. The airport celebrated the 90th anniversary of Spirit of St. Louis visit by Charles Lindbergh. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Purchase a reprint » Martha Lucas, of North Springfield, Vt., holds a commemorative coin her parents got on July 26, 1927 at Hartness State Airport in North Springfield, when visited by Charles Lindbergh. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Purchase a reprint » Donald Whitney, of Springfield, Vt., speaks Reeve Lindbergh Tripp, daughter of Charles Lindbergh on July 26, 2017 in North Springfield, Vt., at the Hartness State Airport. Whitney was at the airport 90 years ago when Charles Lindbergh visited in 1927. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. By Henry Nichols Valley News Correspondent Thursday, July 27, 2017 SPRINGFIELD VT AVAIATION North Springfield, Vt. — The Spirit of Anne Morrow Lindbergh circled twice above the valley where the Hartness State Airport sits, a crowd of 50 or 60 spectators watching below. They were there to commemorate the anniversary of a landing at Hartness in 1927, when Charles Lindbergh celebrated his historic transatlantic flight. The crowd on Wednesday cheered as the glider made its descent from the west, and finally came to a stop in front of them on the runway. Reeve Lindbergh stepped out of aircraft, which was dedicated to her mother, and onto the tarmac in Springfield. Ninety years earlier — on July 26, 1927 — the Spirit of St. Louis had made a similar landing here at Hartness. Lindbergh’s father, Charles, stepped out of the plane that day, to the cheers of about 30,000 spectators. Vermont was one of 82 stops on his 1927 tour of the United States, which commemorated his flight earlier that year, on May 21, when he became the first person in history to fly to Paris from New York City. “The airport makes me feel close to my parents,” Reeve Lindbergh said. The man who flew the glider, 78-year-old Walter Striedieck, of Rockingham, Vt., said that Reeve Lindbergh and her mother have made historic impacts of their own. “I think it was the most significant decision of his life to marry a woman of that quality,” Striedieck said of Charles Lindbergh and his wife. Anne Morrow Lindbergh was the first and only name that came to mind when Striedieck was naming his glider. It was an easy choice, he said, because of her writing, philosophy and her own flying accomplishments. “Charles made a good introduction for the Lindbergh women,” Striedieck said. Morrow Lindbergh was the first woman to ever receive a first class glider pilot’s license; was the first, with her husband, to ever fly to South America from Africa; and perhaps more than that, she wrote a national best-seller, in Gift from the Sea. The environmentalist tone of the book, and especially the inspiration shared within it, have stuck with Striedieck over the years. “I like to think of her as the Oprah of her time,” he said. The book preaches simplicity, rails against greed, and suggests, Striedieck said, that as we look for our calling in life amid the triumphs and the tragedies, we should only “lie on the beach, and wait for a gift from the sea.” “She had about as much triumph and tragedy as anyone,” Striedieck said. “You know, she lost her firstborn son.” Donald Whitney, one of the spectators at Hartness on Wednesday, said he remembered following the Lindbergh kidnapping in the news. The Lindberghs’ 20-month-old son, Charles Lindbergh Jr., was taken from the family’s New Jersey home in 1932. The family frantically searched for the boy before his body was found two months later. The Lindberghs eventually went on to have five more children. Whitney was here too, when he was only 4 years old, for the 1927 landing of the Spirit of St. Louis. “It was practically bumper-to- bumper with Model T Fords,” he said. Today, “as the crow flies, I live about a mile from the airport.” Those two events — the Lindbergh transatlantic flight and the Lindbergh kidnapping — captured the American psyche to an almost equal degree. But regardless of the tragedy of the kidnapping, those in attendance at Hartness would agree that 1927 was only the beginning for the Lindbergh family. The youngest of the Lindbergh siblings, Reeve Lindbergh is very much alive and well. She’s written several books, including memoirs about her family, like Under a Wing, and No More Words: A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Her most recent work is an illustrated children’s book, Homer, the Library Cat. Henry Nichols can be reached at henry.nichols@tufts.edu.