WE DROVE THROUGH A TUNNEL, so dark I felt like a ghost, my skin a pale wisp of smoke. I moved closer to Charles, who patted my shoulder absently as he smoothed the papers on his lap. And then we were born into the light; dazzling, blinding, relentless light. A roar greeted the sight of our car; a wild, frightening roar. The driver steered the car down a narrow path, lined on all sides by waving, shouting throngs fielding, like weapons, signs bearing my husband’s name. Then we stopped, and Charles emerged from the car first. His appearance whipped the crowd into an even greater frenzy; the cheers were so unhinged I heard violence simmering just beneath the surface of approval. I was afraid to step out of the car; afraid of what could happen tonight. It seemed that anything was possible these days; anger was so prevalent, rippling like waves over our country. Outside Madison Square Garden, the anger had been directed toward us. Cries of “Nazi! Fascist!” had greeted our arrival. Rocks had been thrown at the armored car.
There was anger inside the Garden as well, but Charles was not the source of it. Rather, he was the white knight leading this seething crowd toward their common enemy—President Roosevelt. The guards were having a difficult time holding back the swarming crowds; my limbs felt like lead, my chest as if I’d swallowed a block of ice, as I finally slid out of the car.
“Lindbergh! Lindbergh for President!” roared the crowd. Flashbulbs popped, more blinding than ever in my life; I had to shield my eyes from the relentless glare. My ears rang from the noise of the crowd, all around me, above me, as well—I felt like we were truly in a fishbowl. And I couldn’t help but think of what good targets we would be, were someone to aim a rifle at us.
Somehow I followed Charles down a red carpet to the podium, where others were already seated—Father Coughlin himself, the leader of the Christian Front; Norman Thomas, the leader of the American Socialist Party; Kathleen Norris, a popular writer; Robert R. McCormick, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune. We took our seats, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was sung, and one by one the others spoke. Brief, heartfelt speeches on the necessity of staying out of the European war, and of building up America’s defenses instead of building up England’s. I did not pay them any mind; I was concentrating on Charles. He looked relaxed; his limbs loose, his hands still, even as his jaw was set in that familiar angle of determination, and those blue eyes were more focused and intent than I had ever seen them. I was glad he did not turn his gaze upon me, for I felt it might burn a pinpoint hole, just like a magnifying glass would, through my skin.
Finally Charles rose, and every voice in the cavernous arena fought to shout the loudest. “Lindbergh for President!” “Lindbergh for President!”—the chant started in some far-off corner, building and building until my face throbbed from the intensity of it.
Charles did not acknowledge the chant; he simply stood tall, full of purpose and right, and in that moment I knew I was seeing my husband finally make the transition from boy hero to monument. He was giant, he was granite; he was supported by the stone foundation of his convictions. And despite my fears and misgivings concerning the entire situation, my heart thrilled at the sight of him; no one but him could have rallied such a mismatched group of people. Communists, Socialists, anti-government radicals, pacifists; left on their own, they would simply have languished and died.
But Charles had rallied them all; he had taken up the mantle of leadership as easily as he had slipped into his first leather flight jacket. America First, that was his cry. America First—Lindbergh would keep us out of war.
“My fellow citizens,” Charles began, and then waited for the crowd to settle down. “We are assembled here tonight because we believe in an independent destiny for America.” A frenzy of foot stamping, hand clapping, cheering filled the hall. Charles stood humbly, accepting it, before he continued with his speech; his plea for America to stay out of the war now raging all across Europe.
“We deplore the fact that the German people cannot vote on the policies of their government, that Hitler led his nation into war without asking their consent. But have we been given the opportunity to vote on the policy our government has followed? No, we have been led toward war against the opposition of four-fifths of our people. We had no more chance to vote on the issue of peace and war last November than if we had been a totalitarian state ourselves.” Charles didn’t mention Roosevelt by name, but he didn’t have to. And only I heard the sadness behind the bitterness in his voice.
What many people forgot was that my husband was, first and foremost, a military man. His training had been invaluable. He believed, passionately, in the future of a military air force, and in his allegiance to his commander in chief.
But when his commander in chief publicly likened him to an appeaser, a Copperhead, he could no longer remain loyal. Most fatally, President Roosevelt had questioned the Lone Eagle’s courage. “That young man would have wanted Washington himself to quit, given the odds,” the president had recently told a newspaper reporter. “‘We can’t possibly win’ is no reason for an American not to stand up against aggression.”
So Charles had resigned his military commission only a couple of weeks ago; it had troubled him greatly, but ultimately he could think of no other option. And he turned his considerable powers of concentration and charm to the aid of the America First Committee, flying all over the country, making speeches like this on its behalf. With me, naturally, by his side.
I sat there. I sat there, listening intently to his words, increasingly sure, always measured, never giving in to the frenzy that inevitably greeted him. I was ever mindful of the cameras, for I was suddenly a politician’s wife.
I see myself now, from a distance, sitting there, a grim smile on my face, so different from that jaunty, carefree grin of the daring aviatrix I once had been. A young woman, yes—barely in her thirties, her mind almost always on her children at home. But that was no excuse.
A mother who had lost her firstborn in the most horrific, public manner, and whose vision was still often clouded with the residue of tears. But that was no excuse.
An eager young wife who had been shaped, just like every other eager young wife of my generation, by her husband, but I was a wife who had wanted to be shaped, had willingly put herself in his hands and demanded he make her over in his superior image.
But that was no excuse.
Just as I ran out of people and events and coincidences to blame for my son’s death, I have run out of excuses for sitting there and publicly endorsing my husband’s views. Even if, inside, I questioned, even if I wondered, worried, saw the inevitable outcome long before he did and despised myself for not doing enough to prevent it; despised him even more for not being able to see it, too—
I did it. I sat there and nodded and clapped.
And I’ve regretted it every day of my life since.
Charles looked out at the crowds, more and more frenzied as time went on, and spoke straight from his heart. Recognizing this, I questioned my morals, not his. At least, I knew—and I also understood that this knowledge would have to remain foremost in my mind and heart, if we were going to survive the next few years—that he spoke only what he truly believed.
I, however, did not.
That night, after we left Madison Square Garden for the refuge of our Manhattan hotel room, having fielded phone calls from the press, supporters—Frank Lloyd Wright sent a telegram congratulating Charles on his fine speech; William Randolph Hearst invited us to a weekend at his castle, San Simeon; Henry Ford offered him a job for life—Charles was the one who slept the peaceful slumber of those whose hearts and minds are untroubled.
I did not find such peace that night, and I knew I wouldn’t the next night, either.
Nor had I, for many, many endless nights before, and I could not blame only my husband for that.
WHEN WE FIRST RETURNED from Europe, Charles had been able to keep his political thoughts separate from his military duties, and in the beginning, the press backed down, as if to let him prove his patriotism. But after Great Britain and France declared war, Charles could not remain silent. After the Battle of Britain, he began to write articles and give speeches cautioning against any rush to take sides; at first, he was given as much airtime as he wanted by the various networks. After all, in this time of crisis, America wanted to hear from its hero.
But as time went on, he more than cautioned; he became an outspoken critic of the administration. Soon he had become the de facto spokesman for America First—that ragtag group of individuals bent on keeping America out of the war for a number of reasons that didn’t really matter, at least not then, because a significant number of Americans agreed with them. The war in Europe was not our business.
But most of our friends and family, East Coast elites—and many, like my brother-in-law, Aubrey, with family overseas—were appalled; they sniffed, long before it was verbalized, the unspoken anti-Semitism of my husband’s cause. Initially, I was exempt from this; my friends sometimes asked me, point-blank, how I could betray my father’s legacy, but they did so with the indulgent disbelief you would give a child having his first tantrum.
In late 1940, however—finally pregnant again, after years of trying—I did my best to alienate them for myself.
“Anne,” Charles said one autumn evening, “I need you.”
Those words. They would never fail to sway me. They were uttered so seldom, and I couldn’t resist responding to them in a physical way—my body flushing, as if from desire; my nipples even tingling, my pulse racing, reaching.
We were seated in the den of our rented home in Lloyd Neck, Long Island; the boys were in bed. The radio was tuned to Amos ’n’ Andy, a show that Charles loved for its childish humor—he would laugh, slapping his knee, whenever the Kingfish would exclaim “Holy mackerel!” at Andy’s latest misadventure. To all appearances, we were just any American family, and in our hearts, that’s how we saw ourselves. No one else did, however, and I was increasingly lonely and scared, wondering when—if—this madness would stop, when would Charles cease cultivating controversy, when would we once again be the First Couple of the Air, adored, admired. The only thing that would stop it, I knew, was war—and lately, I had almost been longing for it. And then chiding myself for thinking such a thing.
Charles turned the sound down on the radio and came over to the sofa, where I was seated, lazily paging through Life magazine, even though I had to be careful. These days there were too many articles vilifying Charles glaring at me, accusingly, from the pages of every newspaper and magazine. Most, as Charles was quick to point out, were owned by Jewish publishers.
“You know how I’ve always felt that you’re the writer in the family,” he continued—and he put his arm about my shoulder.
“I am?” I asked mildly—although I was pleased beyond reason to hear him say so.
“Yes, you are, and don’t be coy; it doesn’t suit you, Anne. What I need now is for you to turn the tables on the press. I was thinking that it would be powerful if you wrote an article about our position. Clarifying it, really, for naturally the press keeps getting it wrong, simplifying the reasons to further their own views. But you were in Germany. You saw what the future can be—and you saw what democracy did to us, to our baby. This ridiculous march to wage war against a power that is greater than us—maybe even better than us—I need you to write about it. From our point of view.”
Those shared goggles! My heart ached at the memory of how we used to fly together; after coming home to America, I had gotten my wish, we had settled down—or I had, anyway. The last time Charles had asked me to fly with him, I had refused.
“What do you mean, you want to stay home?” he’d asked, incredulous.
“The children need me. I’m their mother.”
“You’re my wife.”
“Yes. And I love being with you! And we will take many trips together. Just not this one. Land has a cold.”
Charles had looked down at me, a perplexed purse to his lips, a disapproving furrow to his brow. Then he went off to make preparations for his trip—to San Francisco, I believe it was. Watching him make his preflight checklist, pack his old calfskin travel bag that he’d had since we were married—he never let me pack for him; he said women didn’t know how to pack things efficiently—I sensed the passing of an era, not just in our marriage but in the world at large. Aviation was no longer romantic, hopeful, bringing countries and peoples together; it was about to tear the world apart.
Tucking Jon and Land into bed at night, I rejoiced that I would be able to do so the next night, and the next, and the next; that they would no longer greet me warily after a long trip, as if they weren’t quite certain they should get attached. But sometimes, I remembered—and longed for—the time when it was just the two of us, above. Not Charles, flying solo. Not Anne, worried about the children. But Charles and Anne; a glorious creature, mythic.
Adored.
I continued to page through the magazine, not seeing, not reading. The glossy pages were slippery in my fingers. I felt my husband’s need—his surprisingly desperate, and desperately cloaked, need—pulling me toward him, irresistibly as always.
But for the first time ever, I was suspicious of it.
“Why me? Why can’t you write it? You’ve written other articles; you’ve written your own speeches. You know how difficult this would make things between Mother and me—not to mention Aubrey! Mother has been awfully good about not criticizing you publicly. Do you want me to break her heart?”
Charles didn’t answer, not at first. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his chin resting in his hands. He stared at something, something I couldn’t see, something I could never see. I always had assumed it was too brilliant and fine for my eyes. Now I wondered if it was really there at all.
“I don’t mean to sound vulgar,” he said finally. “But—so far no one has dared to attack you. You’re—you’re always going to be the baby’s bereaved mother, and so above reproach. Which is why you are in the perfect position, really. If you give our cause your voice, your name, you will elevate it. Even more—than I can…”
I knew this last wounded him, for his voice trailed off. Yet I flinched, and my heart—my poor, put-upon heart that was still stretched and patched beyond reason—stiffened against this latest indignity. The baby’s death was terrible, but it was sacred; it was mine. Not Charles’s. I’d always felt that; I’d always hugged it to me, selfishly unwilling to share it with him. Or with the world. How many times had I been asked to write about it? To give the “bereaved young mother’s” side of the story? Never, I’d said. And Charles had supported me.
Now he was asking me to trade on it. And for what? Europe was in flames, Stalin was now allied with Great Britain, and I knew the sentiment in our country—in the heartland that had, at first, agreed with Charles—was slowly turning; there was a sense that our involvement in the war was not just inevitable, but righteous.
Still, I didn’t respond, and Charles did not press me. I knew he would not; he never did. He stated—or much less frequently, asked, just once. And then withdrew, as if it was beneath him to repeat himself.
“Anne, please,” he said, his voice suddenly a whisper. “Please. I would very much appreciate it if you would do this for me. I can’t do it for myself.”
My hands—my heart—fluttered, then were stunned into absolute stillness. Only once had I heard my husband ask like this. And that was for the safe return of our son.
I heard myself say, “Yes. Yes, I will do this for you,” before I could fully comprehend the consequences.
Charles nodded. He did not thank me. He did not ask what he could do for me. He simply went back to his chair by the radio and turned the knob up. The accents of Amos and Andy, thick as molasses, exaggerated as the funny papers, filled the suddenly oppressive air of our den.
I picked up the copy of Life, and began paging through it once more. An old photograph of Charles, young, grinning, just landed in Paris, caught my eye. Beneath the photograph it said, “Lucky Lindy—No Longer Can We Count on Him to Know Right from Left. Or Wrong. Where Did Our Hero Go?”
The country missed him. I missed him.
My husband, sitting upright in his chair—for he never slumped—chuckling at the radio, missed the hero, as well. With his lean, bronzed body, high forehead, chiseled jaw, he did not look ordinary; he never could. But he did look lost, somehow; smaller. For so long he had stood tall against the endless horizons of our country’s possibility; now they threatened to engulf him. More than anyone else, Charles Lindbergh missed the hero he had once been; the boy who only needed himself and his machine, beloved by all the world simply for doing what he knew was right, and for doing it better than any man alive.
It was not that easy anymore. And for the first time I felt him passing over the controls of our marriage to me, trusting me to steer us both out of this storm, acknowledging that at least for now, he did not know how.
I had been a passenger in our life together for far too long. And so it was because of this—my desire to restore my husband back to himself, to his countrymen, and, yes, to me—that I sat down at my desk the next day and began to write. Still a devoted diarist, I remained unable to understand my thoughts and emotions until I could write them down, play with them, move them about on the page.
Now, I prayed, I could do the same with our lives, although even then, I suspected that there was no page big enough, no ink powerful enough. But I tried; I had to. My husband, the hero of all heroes, amen, had asked me to.
But the words did not come easily. And when they did, they looked wrong on the page.
“
AMBASSADOR MORROW WOULD WEEP
”
“
BOTH LINDBERGHS SHOULD BE BEHIND BARS
”
“
TREASONOUS TRACT TARNISHES TRAGIC TIARA
”
“
MRS. LINDBERGH
’
S MOTHER DENOUNCES DAUGHTER
”
I was not surprised by the reaction. And my mother did not denounce me.
She did, however, burst into tears when she first read my little book, a pamphlet, really, called Wave of the Future. Con told me this, later, after she refused to take the money I earned from it for Bundles for Britain. And I couldn’t blame her. I tried to have it both ways, fooling myself into believing I could please both my family and my husband. Of course, I ended up pleasing no one. Least of all myself.
I wrote of the past, and the future; of democracy and its legacy of chaos, of turmoil, of leaders elected promising one thing and delivering another. I compared the democratic leaders to the modern dictator, so unlike Napoleon, Nero, the czars. The modern dictator, I wrote in words suggested to me by my husband, recognized the world was changing, and that a new order was being established, based on new economic principles, new social forces.
I decried the treatment of the Jews in Germany, neatly failing to mention my husband’s views about the Jews in America. I said I could not be loyal to the Nazi government as it existed now, but that beneath its tainted flag had been something good, something optimistic, before it got derailed.
I explained how people who loved this country—people like my husband—spoke out against the futility of fighting this future precisely because of their patriotism; how they wanted America first to be healed, to be protected, to be set on its own glorious path to the future. Not destroyed by a war that was probably unwinnable—or by coming to the aid of an empire long past its usefulness.
I signed my name to all of this. I posed for a photograph at my desk, looking pensive. My husband embraced me and assured me I had done the right thing not only for my country but for myself. This would be the beginning of a true literary career, he enthused, just a tad too eager. Hadn’t I always wanted to write a great book? I was well on my way now.
He was wrong, of course. Although he never admitted it. But reaction against my essay—more than five thousand words, reproduced as a slim volume, most of which ended up in bonfires—was most strong in the very literary community to which I had always aspired. The dreamy young men of my youth were now editors and publishers and critics. More than one wrote to me personally, asking how someone as bright as myself could be poisoned so thoroughly by someone as evil as my husband.
Smith College also wrote, asking me to please stop saying that I was a graduate.
Slings and arrows—bullets and grenades. I felt attacked from all sides; I did not completely understand what I had done, only why I had done it, and that reason did not seem enough in the sobering aftermath of publication. I was shaken, battered, and acutely—surprisingly—resentful. At first, I found refuge in my newborn daughter, delighting in her perfection, hiding from the world in my childbed. But for a week, I found myself unable to say more than “Good morning” and “Good evening” to an annoyingly affectionate Charles, who, for the first time in our marriage, began his day by asking what he could do for me.
The conversations I had with myself, however, were endless—and even less satisfying.
So by 1941, both Lindberghs were hated equally and once, I would have rejoiced in that; that my own actions were finally considered as significant as my husband’s. Our unlisted telephone rang and rang, and every time I picked it up I heard hatred. Often inarticulate hatred; spewing and venom, not real words. But hatred doesn’t require a common language to be understood.
Jon came home from school with a quivering chin, wondering why his father was a traitor. Land came home from school with a black eye, defending his traitor father. The new baby, Anne Junior, called Ansy, was the only innocent in our household; now almost a year, her happy gurglings and funny talk were a balm upon my soul. I loved to pick her up and hold her, walking from room to room, as if she were my talisman against evil.
In September 1941, just a couple of months after the frightening rally at Madison Square Garden, Charles gave another speech, this one in Des Moines, Iowa; a speech that I warned him not to give. A speech I knew would be the one he would be remembered for, despite the hundreds he had given since that night he landed alone in Paris, the world at his feet.
The sinking of the Greer had just occurred; the sentiment of the country was even more resigned to war. Many of those who had initially supported Charles had turned on him; the crowds were smaller, composed equally of those for and those against him. It was a desperate time, a time when the country seemed to be dancing on the edge, knowing that soon, too soon, we would all be hurtled into the abyss. Dresses were gayer that season, more garish, more colorful than I could remember; songs were faster; people laughed louder, as if to cover up the booms of the war guns across the ocean. Charles knew that he had to make his most exhaustive, reasoned case to date; he must leave no question unasked, however painful.
He began the speech by listing the three groups he believed were agitating for war: the British, for obvious survival reasons; the Roosevelt administration, which desired to use war to increase its power.
“It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany,” he continued, moving on to the third group, and I felt my stomach tighten, my breath sour. Sitting in the tiny living room of a rented home on Martha’s Vineyard—we had to leave Long Island when we could no longer walk along the beach without having invectives hurled our way—I listened to my husband on the radio, his voice tinny but sure, confident.
Speaking up at last, I had begged him to rewrite his speech. “This is going too far. You’re going to come off as anti-Semitic. And you’re not.” Are you? I’d wanted to ask, but could not.
“Nonsense.”
“Charles, just by mentioning the Jews, you will color yourself the same as Hitler and the Nazis. You don’t understand what’s happening now. People will accuse you of Jew-baiting. Listen to me! For once, listen to what I’m saying—you do not know what you’re about to do.”
He shook his head. So caught up was he in this mission, he no longer needed any crew. He was flying solo again, right into the cyclone of history.
“The greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government,” he continued to broadcast, talking about the Jews. “We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.”
Other peoples. The Jews—to my husband, they were other people. Not like him. Even if that was not what he intended, it was what would be inferred, and now it was too late. He had said it. Immediately I thought of Harry Guggenheim. Such a dear man; such a good friend.
He’d stopped returning our phone calls a year ago.
I switched the radio off, too sickened to listen to more. I jumped up, desperate to know where the children were; I felt I must gather them close to me and keep them safe. After I made sure that the boys were playing quietly in their room and Ansy was gurgling in her crib, I locked the doors and shut the windows. Whether it was to keep evil inside or out, I could not have decided at that moment.
And if evil was in the shape of a tall, clear-eyed man with stern lips and an unshakable sense of his own right, I could not have decided that, either.
THE PUBLIC OUTRAGE after Des Moines was so vehement that America First almost disbanded. Ultimately, it didn’t matter that they decided to carry on, broken and battered. Soon an event occurred that was larger even than my husband; the headlines, for the first time, more hysterical than they had been announcing his landing in Paris, or the kidnapping of our son.
Pearl Harbor. The bombs dropped—that afternoon, as we huddled by the radio, Charles could only repeat his astonishment that the Japanese had aircraft capable of such long range—and the world changed. America First disbanded after Charles issued a statement urging all Americans to unite, regardless of past differences; he grandly acknowledged that our country had been attacked and naturally we must now fight back. All of us.
Then he telephoned the White House, eager to report for duty; even admitting to the secretary with whom he spoke that his recent political stand might cause complications—such a bitter pill for him to swallow, but he did it manfully, as he did everything else. However, he continued, he hoped the president would agree that differences must be set aside for the good of the country.
While he was waiting for an answer, Charles was asked, offhand, by a reporter about the disbanding of America First. He said, truthfully, that he was saddened for his country. “It was unfortunate,” he added, that the white race was currently divided in this war, when the true enemy was the “Asiatic influence.” His wish was that somehow Germany could have been appeased, and allied with us against Japan, China, and Russia. He closed by restating his desire to fight for his country, no matter what. “I’m an American first,” he said, and I winced.
Soon after this, he heard from the Pentagon. His request to be reinstated was denied. For the duration, former colonel Charles Lindbergh’s services were not required.
Devastated, and so honestly surprised I almost cried, Charles then turned to all the commercial airlines he had helped form, almost from the dust of the fields that, with his name attached, they had been able to turn into giant, gleaming airports and factories now busy with war work. He returned home from several meetings enthusiastic and optimistic. But when the phone did not ring for him the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, he sank into a despair I had never before witnessed, not even when the baby was taken.
“I don’t understand,” he muttered, sitting erect in his chair, even then. “I have more knowledge of the German air force than anyone. I traveled around our airfields when I first came back, helping them to modernize, teaching them fighting tactics I learned in Germany. And one would hope that now, more than ever, differing opinions about the world would be welcomed, for only the best research comes from a result of all different points of view.”
My heart broke for him, seeing what no one else did—the naive farm boy instead of the hero. Statue that he was, monument to his own beliefs, he was no match for wily politicians. Washington wasn’t interested in what he knew; it was interested in how he was perceived by a public that would probably have to elect a president in the middle of a war.
But I did not have time to soothe him, for overnight I was forced to deal with ration books and gas cards and rubber drives. The girl I had in every other day to help clean left to work in a factory. The cook—for I had never learned to make more than scrambled eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches—did the same. With a copy of Betty Crocker in one hand and my ration book in the other, I tried to find some way of feeding a family of five. Six, soon, for I was expecting once more; Charles’s vision of a dynasty seemed to be coming true, at least. I was providing him with his own brood of blond-haired, straight-teethed children, none of whom looked at all like me except for Ansy, who inherited my unfortunate nose (which looked much less unfortunate on a rosy-cheeked face framed with white-blond curls).
I had no time to go on walks with him, as he suggested coaxingly, almost flirtatiously, for the first time in ages—since before we’d come back to America. It pained me to have to say no to him. But there was always a meal to prepare; it astonished me how frequently my children required nourishment, now that I was the one to provide it.
And there was no time to sit in the den with him at night and listen as he read from drafts of speeches he wrote but had no opportunity to give, for there was always a child to cajole into bed, a glass of water to fetch, the last bit of a story to read. If I had a minute to myself, I was darning clothes and letting hems out, for everyone was predicting a clothing shortage.
“I despise seeing you like this,” he said one day, and he sounded sincere, which only made me angry, busy as I was—and as he was not. “I despise seeing you waste your potential, no better than any other housewife, worrying over casseroles and coupons. What about us, Anne? What about you—your writing? Whatever happened to that?”
“Well, I’m not enjoying it much myself, but I don’t see any alternative,” I snapped, and went back to the preserves boiling on the stove, studying them closely, wondering why on earth they wouldn’t jell. Shaking his head sorrowfully, Charles left me to the stove—and the pile of dirty dishes that I couldn’t help but notice he had not offered to help wash.
So I was grateful—almost to the point of hysterical laughter—the day I picked up the phone and heard a wheezy voice say, “Henry Ford here. Is Colonel Lindbergh home?”
If there was one man capable of defying Roosevelt and giving my husband a job, it was Henry Ford. Despite Ford’s own isolationist—and more obviously anti-Semitic—background, the government needed him. Or, rather—it needed his factories. Detroit was being turned into a wartime machine, and Ford was calling to ask Charles to help oversee the aviation operations, which would be responsible for building bombers, B-24s.
Charles left the next morning, a blustery March day, and drove straight through to Detroit on a special gas card issued to him by Ford; essential war work, it declared. I rose at dawn to see him off, and I admit I felt relief at seeing him go, despite all the work ahead of me—closing up this house, packing, finding another in Detroit, moving the household, finding a new doctor for me, one for the children, dentists for us all, schools….
But mostly, I felt relief. Not only at being parted—there was some of that, I had to admit; his presence in the house had been oppressive these last few weeks, an annoying, spiteful shadow nipping at my heels wherever I went. But mainly, I rejoiced at the knowledge that for once, we were like everyone else. Not heroes, deified; not demons, vilified.
Just a man and wife saying goodbye because of the war, unsure when we’d see each other again, because housing was difficult to find in Detroit—and Charles made it clear to Mr. Ford that we were to be given no special favors. We would exchange letters, call occasionally when we could get a long distance line. I would take photographs of the children so that he did not miss anything. I would encourage them to write to Daddy, and help them sign their names in cursive, even though they did not yet know how.
As I waved goodbye to Charles, I had tears in my eyes. Tears of pure, soul-cleansing joy, for I felt an honest happiness in sending my husband off to war—as if this one small sacrifice could somehow make up for all the wrong I had done, in both our names. Yet at the same time, I also felt the lightness of anticipation, believing that somehow, the worst was behind us. And that from now on, Charles and I had only good times to look forward to together. Strange, I know, to think that; to feel relief, not sadness; happiness, not horror.
Especially against the backdrop of a world split asunder by war.