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For immediate release: March 23, 2001
Media advisory:
Lindbergh papers to be opened March 29
Who: Princeton University library officials
What: Six sealed boxes of writings by Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh to be opened
When: March 29 at 3:30 p.m.
Where: Firestone Library on the Princeton University campus
In 1941, aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, gave Princeton University thousands of letters, manuscripts and other documents with the stipulation that they be unsealed after both had died. With the death of Anne Morrow this year, six boxes of documents are being opened and the materials made available to researchers.
The writings open another window into the lives and personalities of the Lindberghs, who were both revered and reviled. Five years after Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo nonstop from New York to Paris, their first child was kidnapped and killed. To escape the media frenzy, the Lindberghs moved to Europe -- and when they returned, Charles Lindbergh was an avid anti-interventionist and a leader of the America First Committee.
The Princeton collection to be unsealed March 29 represents a small portion of Lindbergh materials in archives around the country, but it is the first to be opened. In the early 1930s, the couple lived in nearby Hopewell and Charles Lindbergh conducted medical research in a Princeton University laboratory during that time.
Princeton alumnus and trustee Scott Berg, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his 1998 biography "Lindbergh," said that even as a boy, Charles saved and catalogued things, while Anne "felt that no event was ever complete unless she had written about it." The Lindberghs also felt they had a responsibility to engage with their changing world, Berg said.
With the permission of Anne Lindbergh, the original crate containing the materials was opened briefly in 1993 so that Berg could see the documents. The collection was then parceled into the six boxes and resealed. One box contains the manuscript and other items related to Charles' article "A Letter to Americans," while a second holds items related to Anne's book "The Wave of the Future: A Confession of Faith." The other boxes contain 1,500 to 2,000 letters from the public.
Firestone Library has more treasures to reveal: In 2020 its most famous sealed collection -- T.S. Eliot's 1,131 letters to Emily Hale, an American woman to whom the British poet is believed to have bared his soul -- will be opened. The letters date from 1930 until 1956, when they were sealed.
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