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MONTPELIER, Vt. (Reuters) 7 Feb 2001- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the
widow of aviator Charles Lindbergh and author of 13 books, died at her
daughter's home in rural Vermont, family members said. She was 94.
"Mother died quietly in her second home in
Vermont with her family around her," Reeve Lindbergh, the couple's
youngest child, said in a statement issued by the Lindbergh Foundation. |
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Anne Morrow Lindbergh was born
inEnglewood, N.J. in 1906, she was
the daughter of the successful millionaire businessman, ambassador,
and U.S. Senator
Dwight Morrow; her mother was Elizabeth Cutter Morrow,
a poet and a women's education advocate.
Growing up, Anne Morrow spent her summers on Cape Cod, Martha'sVineyard
and on an island off the coast of Maine.
While her father was ambassador to Mexico, she met the young hero,
Charles Lindbergh, after his historic flight. They married on May 27, 1929,
and soon after, her husband taught her to fly and to navigate.
In 1931, she became the first U.S. woman to get a glider pilot's
license. Later, she and her husband covered 30,000 miles over five
continents pioneering new air routes across the Pacific.
Two years later tragedy struck the couple. A kidnapper climbed into
their home in central New Jersey and took their 20-month-old son Charles
III, leaving a ransom note behind.
Anne was pregnant with their second child at the time. In what became
known as the "crime of the century", the couple paid the ransom but
their baby's body was found several months later in nearby woods. In addition
to Charles III, the couple had five other children: Jon,
Land,
Anne,
ScottandReeve.
Besides her love for flying, Anne Morrow Lindbergh loved to write.
She first won literary acclaim when she was very young. At her graduation
from
Smith College, she won the Mary Augusta Jordan Prize for the most
original literary piece and the Elizabeth Montagu Prizefor the best essay
on women of the 18th Century. The novels, essays and diaries she
later composed have been described as "works of art."
Throughout her aviation career, Anne Morrow Lindbergh continued
to author numerous books, among them: North to the Orient, chronicled
the couple's flight in a single engine airplane over uncharted routes throughCanadaand
Alaska
to
Japan and China. Listen! The Wind , documents their
30,000-mile survey of north and south Atlantic air routes.
The Wave
of the Future,
Gift From the Sea and (1956). “Bring Me A
Unicorn;” “Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead;” “Locked Rooms and
Open Doors;” “The Flower and the Nettle,” and others.
She wrote in her novel, Gift From The Sea:
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"The "veritable life" of our emotions and
our relationships also is intermittent. When you love someone you do not
love them all the time, in the same way, from moment to moment. It is an
impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly
what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of
life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist
in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency,
on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life
as in love, is in growth, in fluidity--in freedom, in the sense that the
dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same
pattern. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in
demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship
lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to
what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship
and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands.
One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits--islands,
surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continually visited and abandoned
by the tides. One must accept the security of the winged life, of ebb,
and flow, of intermittency. "
"Come with me, she says, to a place where
distinctions slip away; where there is no time, no culture, and no
preconceived notion of sexual identity. Only then can we see who we are.
Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell
of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell
of ego. Perhaps one can shed at this stage in life as one sheds in beach-living;
one’s pride, one’s false amibitions, one’s mask, one’s armor. Was that
armor not put on to protect one from the competitive world? If one ceases
to compete, does one need it? Perhaps one can at last in middle age, if
not earlier, be completely oneself. And what a liberation that would be!"
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh |
Anne
Morrow 's life was a shining example and a beacon for many women to emulate.
Many of her works dealt with the issues of love,
marriage,
youth and aging,
always
believing that we are all islands -- in a common sea. -- she
will be sorely missed.
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