A Defining Moment
“How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?”— Charles Lindbergh.
Charles Lindbergh. Photo By Everett Collection/Shutterstock
Born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 4, 1902, Lindbergh grew up in Washington, D.C., where his father, Charles August Lindbergh, was a congressman. They moved to Little Falls, Minnesota, where little Charles saw a daredevil pilot, or “barnstormer,” buzz through the skies. Lindbergh remembers lying in the grass and looking up at the sky, thinking “how much fun it would be to fly up there among those clouds.” That was the first time Charles Lindbergh thought of becoming a pilot.