Will Rogers: A Political Life

Seven. The Nation’s Number-One Air Passenger

Seven  The Nation’s Number-One Air Passenger A fter Will Rogers stopped in Concord, New Hampshire, on May 20, 1927, to raise more donations for Mississippi River flood relief and work the lecture circuit, he sat in his hotel room that night listening to the radio and, along with millions of other Americans, waited anxiously for the latest news. He typed away at his column , but his mind was elsewhere: “No attempt at jokes today. A slim, tall, bashful, smiling American boy is somewhere out over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where no lone human being has ever ventured before. He is being prayed for to every kind of Supreme Being that has a following. If he is lost it will be the most universally regretted single loss we ever had. But that kid ain’t going to fail.”1 Rogers was right, for the kid didn’t fail. Just after eight that morning and amid a dreary rain, twenty-five-year-old Charles Lindbergh took off from muddy Roosevelt Field, Long Island, in his small monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Thirty-three hours later, Lindbergh arrived in Paris to become the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Overnight, the handsome youngster became the most idolized man of the era. Will Rogers was among the millions of enthralled Americans who took Lindbergh to their hearts as they had no other human being in living memory. “The ones of us here now will never live to see a thing that will give us a bigger kick than his flight did,” Rogers wrote afterward.2 In September, Rogers spoke at a banquet honoring the young aviator at the Hotel Coronado in San Diego. His remarks favoring air power impressed Lindbergh. “Get the biggest air force in the world,” Rogers said, “and just sit here and take care of your own business and we will never during our lifetime [have] to use it.”3 He also complained about the lack of progress in American commercial aviation, which then lagged far behind European air travel. “Flew into Russia,” he told the dinner guests. “Russia has lots of airplanes . Everybody has more planes than we have. We talk more progress than we do. We build three golf courses to every flying field.”4 After the banquet Lindbergh invited Will and Betty to fly back to Los Angeles with him in a Ford trimotor; Rogers shared the cockpit with the world’s newest hero. “You have never seen him at his best till you sit out in the pilot’s seat by his side,” a thrilled Rogers wrote afterward. “When he has a plane in his hands there is no careworn or worried look. That’s when he is in his glory.”5 Lindbergh’s daring flight across the Atlantic in 1927 launched a golden era of flight, a period when aviators around the world clamored to set new records for flying the fastest, farthest, and highest: Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett flew over the North Pole, and, a year after Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart flew from Newfoundland to Wales to become the first woman to cross the Atlantic, while the German dirigible Graf Zeppelin crossed from the opposite direction. Amateur pilots strove for fame, as in April 1929 when a seventeen-year-old chorus girl, Elinor Smith, stayed aloft for over twentysix hours to set the women’s solo endurance record.6 New aviation technology advanced at breakneck speed, from Wiley Post setting a high-altitude record in a pressurized suit to Jimmy Doolittle landing a plane only on instruments. Pan American Airways launched its first passenger flight from Key West to Havana in October 1927. A month later the U.S. Navy commissioned its first modern aircraft carrier, the USS Saratoga. Lindbergh’s remarkable transatlantic flight, one of the most amazing feats of the century, had a huge impact on Rogers, for it increased his commitment to aviation, confirmed his belief in its potential to change the world, spurred his wanderlust, and led to lasting friendships with Lindbergh and other famous pilots. Rogers had not only caught the aviation fever that swept The Nation’s Number-One Air Passenger [ 125 ] Rogers with Charles Lindbergh across the country, he was stricken with it. Less than a month after Lindbergh ’s flight, he took off as a passenger on his own record-breaking crosscountry flight. No transcontinental air...