VIDEO: Charles Lindbergh's Transatlantic Flight Remembered by Professor Janet Lieberman 85 Years Later

Steven A. Levine 

Coordinator for Educational Programs

Eighty-five years ago today Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris, the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. His accomplishment is seen as one of the most important events of the 20th century, but memories have dimmed and, in an age when jet airplanes routinely cross the Atlantic Ocean, we have lost sight of its significance. In a YouTube video, accompanied by film footage of Lindbergh's flight, La Guardia Community College Professor Emerita Janet Lieberman gives her childhood recollections of the event and a Brooklyn parade celebrating Lindbergh, which she attended with her family. The magnificent Brooklyn parade took place on June 16, 1927 its 22-mile route crowded with 700,000 school children and their parents. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R3fGL67mas

Lindbergh was a little-known air mail pilot based in St. Louis in early January 1927, when he heard about a $25,000 prize being offered to the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris. Lindbergh's historic flight earned him this prize and the adulation of the nation. Radio and newsreel film, new media of the age, spread news of his feat in ways unimaginable only ten years earlier. The 1920s was a decade of ballyhoo and heroes, and the Lone Eagle's transatlantic flight made him the quintessential hero of the era. His momentous feat also became the catalyst for the growth and preeminence of the American aviation industry, overtaking its European rivals.

This is only one piece of the Lindbergh story. To learn more about Lindbergh, including the kidnapping of his son, his associations with Nazi Germany, and support of American isolationism, see the excellent biography The Flight of the Century: Charles Lindbergh & the Rise of American Aviation by CUNY Distinguished Professor Thomas Kessner.  http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryAmerican/19001945/?view=usa&ci=9780195320190