As always, click the pictures for larger images
Watch brief Lindbergh video…turn sound on…
Since well before noon thousands of bundled up people had been standing in a chilly wind on the freshly paved tarmac at the brand new Miller Field. By 1:45, all eyes were riveted on the sky to the southeast. Suddenly, someone cried “There he is!” Other voices repeated the message until the sound became a gentle roar. “There he is!” Then one voice cried “He’s flying over downtown!”. Sure enough, the plane made a couple of back and forth runs to the south, then turned northward. It passed over the airport once, turned and landed. As it taxied toward the single hangar, the crowd could see clearly for the first time the logo on its fuselage: “Spirit of St. Louis.” The pilot cut the engine and stepped out. He was wearing a long leather coat, a dark blue suit with white pinstripes, a white shirt, a light blue tie and a pilot’s helmet. The crowd gave a much louder roar. After a brief conference with mayor Thomas Barber, the pilot climbed into the back seat of a Packard touring car. It was 2:00 P.M, Friday, October 14, 1927 and Charles A. Lindbergh, better known as Lucky Lindy, was on the ground in the Camel City.
National Guard troops and special police officers were on hand to maintain order. Lindbergh was joined in the car by his chief aide, Donald Keyhoe and Mayor Barber. There were a dozen other cars, all Packards, filled with state and local officials and members of the press. The cavalcade, with a police motorcycle escort, pulled out of the airport and turned south on Liberty Street, then west on Northwest Boulevard, then south on Hawthorne Road, coming to a stop adjacent to Wiley School. The route was lined with thousands of people, standing at the roadside, sitting in parked cars, leaning out of windows, hanging from the rooftops.
Lindbergh and his entourage walked around the building and onto a platform that had been built on the east side of the school, facing up the length of Hanes Park. Immediately below the platform stood the 15,000 children enrolled in the Winston-Salem public schools. Beyond them, stretching to the park boundaries, were tens of thousands more folks come to see the most famous man in the world. Both local newspapers said that it was the largest crowd in the city’s history.
The R.J. Reynolds High School band, which had been entertaining the waiting crowd with a wide variety of patriotic and popular tunes, played the “Star Spangled Banner.” Mayor Barber introduced the keynote speaker, attorney William Hendren. He welcomed the spectators and the dignitaries and made a few remarks, then introduced the governor of North Carolina, Angus McLean. When the governor had finished his remarks, he introduced Lindbergh, who, greeted by a mighty roar, spoke to the crowd. It was not a long speech, and it was the same speech he had delivered many times before, urging the people to get behind aviation and support the building of commercial and military aircraft. He did add a local note, encouraging the Twin Citizens to continue to develop their excellent new airport.
Soon the cavalcade resumed, this time to the five year old Hotel Robert E. Lee on West Fifth Street. Lindy gave a brief press interview, then grabbed a quick nap. The banquet began at 7:00 PM in the hotel ballroom, which was packed to the rafters. After dinner, a series of dignitaries spoke, all hewing to the brevity requirements of the Lindbergh tour. Lindbergh finished with another brief speech and had retired to his room by nine o’clock.
The next morning, Lindbergh was back at Miller Field going through his lengthy pre-flight checklist before another large crowd. When done, he climbed into the cockpit. Someone gave the propellor a couple of spins, the engine caught, and with a wave of his hand, Lindbergh taxied the “Spirit” to the end of the runway, turned and took off, bound for a flyover at Danville before a later landing in Richmond.
Charles Lindbergh was only 25 years old when he made his famous flight. Since Le Bourget airport in Paris was in an industrial district, and he would be arriving in darkness, when the factories were closed, he thought that it would be easy to find the airport by its lights. But as he approached, everything looked lit up. He thought perhaps that he was lost. But as he drew nearer, he realized that the lights were coming from thousands of automobiles stuck in a massive traffic jam trying to get to Le Bourget to watch him land…perhaps his first intimation as to just how famous he was about to be.
During his transAtlantic flight, every sighting, from ship or shore, was excitedly noted. When he passed over Ireland, telegraphs and telephones reported every inch of his path until he again disappeared over the ocean. That night, as the Spirit of St, Louis landed at Le Bourget, the crowd surged past French troops with fixed bayonets. Eager hands snatched Lindbergh from the cockpit and began to carrying him toward the crowd. He was rescued by two French aviators in a small Renault vehicle and whisked away to safety.
Crowd control became a problem in some places during his victory tour of the US. It seemed that everyone wanted to touch him. And his boyish good looks particularly inflamed young women, who shouted at him and tried to mob him as later young women would do to Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. In Greensboro on the morning of October 14, 1927, the route from Lindley Field to the stadium ran past both Women’s College and, two blocks farther, Greensboro College, which was still mostly a female school. Lindy may have felt like he was running the gauntlet. The Greensboro Record reported that every coed on both campuses turned out and that many had comments: “He’s sooo cute! Hey, handsome! Marry me! Oooh, just like his pictures!” Once or twice Lindy’s police escort had to fend off young women who tried to climb into his car. According to the reporter, Lindbergh seemed embarrassed, but kept a smile on his face and waved, but did not look directly at the young women.
At the stadium, a Greensboro teenager presented Lindbergh with a freshly painted portrait. Headlines across the nation shouted “One-armed 16 year old artist painted Lindy’s portrait!” Shortly afterward, Joe King moved from Greensboro to Winston-Salem to take advantage of Reynolds High School’s nationally acclaimed art program, met and married a talented young woman named Earline Heath, and went on to become the celebrated artist “Vinciata”. See the whole Joe “Vinciata” King story here:
On April 4, 1927, R.J. “Dick” Reynolds, Jr. turned 21, thus gaining access to an annual trust fund income estimated at $100,000 (roughly $1.5 million today). A few weeks later, Charles Lindbergh made his epic transAtlantic flight. Dick Reynolds had already developed a hearty interest in aviation, had received his pilot’s license and owned several aircraft. Within weeks of Lindbergh’s landing in Paris, Dick Reynolds purchased Roosevelt (formerly Curtiss) Field on Long Island, which was the center of American aviation endeavor at the time…most of the top aviators kept their planes there, and it was the takeoff point for Lindbergh’s historic flight. As the story goes, when Lindbergh’s itinerary for his triumphal tour in the fall of 1927 was announced, it showed only one stop in North Carolina…Lindley Field at Friendship near Greensboro…supposedly, Dick Reynolds had a quiet chat with Lindbergh and suddenly the Twin City was added to the itinerary…
Once Lindbergh’s new itinerary was announced, local leaders in the Camel City leaped into action. At the time, Winston-Salem had only one real airport… on the Sedge Garden/Kernersville Road southeast of the city. By the standards of the day it was a pretty good airport…it at least had intersecting runways…but it was too far from the business center, and worse, located on poorly maintained roads…local leaders had already begun discussing a better located and equipped airport by June of 1927…Lindbergh’s new itinerary gave added urgency to their plans…within a few weeks, they had announced a new airport on North Liberty Street…it would be located on land under lease to Forsyth County…a number of local leaders agreed to donate services to complete it in record time…since Clint Miller made the greatest contribution, the field was named for him…at the banquet at the Hotel Robert E. Lee on October 14, 1927, RJR Tobacco executive Robert Lasater made a dramatic announcement…he had purchased the airport for $100,000 and was donating it to the Winston-Salem Foundation, which eventually led to it becoming the property of the local airport commission, where it remains today…
When Dick Reynolds temporarily gave up his womanizing ways to marry Elizabeth Macaw Dillard in the 1930s, he returned to the Camel City and ran for mayor. One of his first projects was the upgrading of Miller Field…the result was the opening of the Smith Reynolds Airport in 1942…it was considered to be the best and most modern airport in the southeast for some time to come…
Meanwhile, local citizens heeded Lindbergh’s advice to continue to improve Miller Field. Additional buildings and equipment were added. In the summer of 1928, it was announced that the airport would be officially dedicated during a grand air show to be held on Saturday, September 1. It was advertised as being the biggest air show ever held in the region, with over twenty planes in attendance. The highlight of the event would be the appearance of three huge Martin Army Air Corps bombers, which would simulate a bombing attack on the Twin City. It rained heavily on the first, so the dedication and show were postponed until Monday, the 3rd.
On Monday, the bombers wiped out the city…some of the paper bombs had passes inside for free airplane rides. The airfield was formally dedicated as the Miller Municipal Airport. There were flying races, aerobatics demonstrations and contests. The bombing contest, trying to hit a tobacco basket from 200 feet altitude, was won by a drop within eleven feet of the target. But the highlight of the day was the amateur race, which pitted two 17-year-old best friends, Charles Gideon Hill in his Waco and Zachary Smith Reynolds in his Monocoupe against each other. Smith won the race, but C.G. Hill received his pilot’s license for his performance. Three years later, at age 20, Smith would make the longest solo flight ever at the time, from London to near Hong Kong. That momentous event is chronicled here:
In July, 1932, Smith would die from a gunshot wound on a sleeping porch at Reynolda after a drunken party. The party had been thrown by Smith and his wife Libby Holman Reynolds to celebrate C.G. Hill’s 21st birthday.
North Carolina Collection 
good one tks
On 2/5/2018 12:04 AM, North Carolina Room — Forsyth County Public Library wrote: > WordPress.com > Fam posted: “As always, click the pictures for larger images Watch > brief Lindbergh video…turn sound on… Since well before noon > thousands of bundled up people had been standing in a chilly wind on > the freshly paved tarmac at the brand new Mille” >