The world went wild with emotion in May 1927 when a 25-year-old Minnesota farm boy, turned airmail pilot, astounded the people of the globe with his highly prepared, excitingly daring, solo flight from New York to Paris. The plane, which he designed, is still one of the most popular attractions in the Smithsonian Institution. Much is known about the Spirit of St. Louis. Not so much is known about the spirit of the man who flew it. "The public's reception of him took on the aspects of a vast religious revival, " wrote a book editor. A Harvard theologian says that for the time "Lindbergh changed the reputation of human nature." The pilot's character immensely magnified the achievement. His modesty and courtesy became legendary. It was said that his place in history was secured not only by what he did before and during that flight, but what he did not do after it. Will Rogers wrote, "People hadn't read clean stuff in so long they just went crazy over this." T. Willard Hunter, a personal acquaintance of Charles Lindbergh, weighs the character element of the Lindbergh phenomenon. He examines what went into that character - the Swedish heritage, family influences, his "lone eagle" childhood, attitudes toward religion, his early worship of science and later alarm at the global destruction threatened by "materialistic science, " and his views on the role of force in both preserving and toppling civilization. The author explores Lindbergh's U.S. intelligence activities in Germany before World War II, his struggle against American participation, his concern for the plight of German Jews, the Nazi-sympathy charges, the Goering medal, and why he experienced such a devastating fall from grace. Thisbook is about the inner man and tries at each stage to deal with the why, with the motivations, with what made Lindbergh tick. It is a fresh understanding of a complex personality who contributed greatly to the way life is lived on this planet.
This Minnesota boy who grew up in Northfield as the son of a college professor records an interesting memoir that took him from president of the Carleton College student body to Harvard Law School, where he intended to pursue a political career. Under the influence of Walter H. Judd, then a medical missionary to China and later Congressman from Minneapolis, to whom the book is dedicated, the author experienced a change of direction, which took him for decades into lobbying for a new spirit in government with the Moral Re-Armament program (now Initiatives of Change). During that period he came to know and work with some of the pioneers of Alcoholics Anonymous, an MRA offshoot.
Hunter is also the author of this biography entitled "The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh: Another Dimension," a look at the inner motivations of the aviator, whom he knew personally.
A lifetime champion of the public platform, Hunter was pictured in 1984 and 1985 in The Guinness Book Of World Records for a marathon Fourth of July oration at Independence Hall, Philadelphia. He was also the founder of the annual Walk to Los Angeles. from the Mission San Gabriel, an event commemorating the founding of Los Angeles, September 4, 1781.
Hunter and his wife, the former Mary Louise Merrell, who have produced three sons, now live in Claremont, California, a college town east of Los Angeles.
