NEW stamps - Charles Lindbergh's death on Maui, 30th Anniversary

Aloha,
Greetings from Hawai'i Post in the Hawaiian Islands. Hawai'i Post is
an express mail delivery company on the island of O'ahu that requires
stamps to prepay postage on all urgent letters and packages.

Two stamps and a mini-sheet were issued on August 26th 2004 in memory
of the 30th Anniversary of the death of Charles Lindbergh on Maui.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born on February 4 1902 in Detroit
Michigan, but spent most of his childhood on a farm in Little Falls,
Minnesota. His Swedish-born father, Charles Augustus Lindbergh Sr, was
an attorney and represented Minnesota as a U.S. Congressman from 1907
to 1917.

At the age of 18, he attended the University of Wisconsin where he
studied engineering. However, after two years, he left school to
become a pilot. He bought a war-surplus Curtiss Jenny in 1923 and
"barnstormed" for a time. In 1924 he joined the Army Air Corps as a
pilot trainee, graduating in 1925 at the head of his class and taking
a commission in the Army Air Service Reserve. After graduation he was
hired as chief pilot for Robertson Aircraft Corporation, one of the
first private companies to win a commercial contract to fly airmail
for the U.S. Postal Service . After two successful parachute jumps
from crashing mailplanes, he was nicknamed "Lucky Lindy". Leaving the
company, he went on to become the first aviator to fly solo non-stop
across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris, France in his plane
the "Spirit of St. Louis" on May20/21 1927. For this achievement, he
won the $25,000 Orteig Prize.

This flight brought him instant fame and fortune and he toured all
over the U.S. and gave many speeches. On May 27 1929, he married Anne
Morrow, daughter of U.S. Senator Dwight Morrow. On March 1 1932, the
Lindberghs' 20-month-old son, Charles Jr, was kidnapped from the
family mansion in Hopewell, New Jersey, and held for a ransom which
was paid (see wanted poster on mini-sheet). About ten weeks later, the
baby's dead body was found. In 1934, after tracing some of the ransom
money, police arrested Bruno Hauptmann and charged him with the
murder. Convicted by a jury of the heinous crime (mostly on
circumstantial evidence) after a widely publicized trial, he was
executed in 1936.

Lindbergh sought a retreat from the world to escape the Press and
curiosity seekers. He first moved to Europe, where in 1938, he
travelled to Germany to tour the Nazi Luftwaffe. A Nazi official,
Hermann Goering, presented Lindbergh with a German medal of honor, but
his acceptance of this medal caused an outcry in the U.S. Lindbergh
resigned his Army Air Corps commission after President Roosevelt
publicly denounced him. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in
1941, Lindbergh tried to re-enlist, but was refused. During the war he
was a consultant in the production of B-24 bombers and a test pilot.
As an "advisor", he flew fifty combat missions.in the Pacific Theater
of Operations.

After WWII, Lindbergh withdrew from public life. He worked as a
consultant to the U.S. Air Force and Pan American Airways. In 1954,
President Eisenhower restored Lindbergh's commission and promoted him
to Brigadier General in the U.S. Air Force. Lindbergh became involved
in conservation and was instrumental in expanding the Haleakala
National Park on Maui in 1969 to include the Kipahulu coastal area of
'Ohe'o.

In 1970, he built a house in Kipahulu (just south of Hana) on East
Maui in the Hawaiian Islands, which he named "Argonauta" (as shown on
the first stamp and the mini-sheet). "Argonauta" was designed by John
Theodore Jacobsen with three-foot thick lava rock walls supporting a
wooden A-frame. His wife and author Anne Morrow had a small writers
cottage built close by. Although he did not live permanently on Maui,
Lindbergh and his family visited often and felt at peace there.

After being diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1974, he flew with his
family from New York to Maui and he died near Hana in a rented cottage
(close to his Physician) a few days later on August 26th 1974. He is
buried in the churchyard at Palapala Ho'omau Congregational Church,
Kipahulu on the Old Hana Highway, just a few miles south of Hana. The
inscription on his tombstone reads "...If I take the wings of the
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea" (from Psalm 139,
verse 9).

The first stamp prepays the Overnight rate. It shows "Argonauta",
Lindbergh's house on Maui. Also a portrait of Lindbergh as an older
man.

The second stamp prepays the Same Day rate. It shows Lindbergh in his
flight suit as a younger man. An outline of his famous plane, the
"Spirit of St. Louis" is on the lower right. "26 AUG. 1974" on the
lower left is the date of his death on Maui.

The mini-sheet shows a collage of memorable moments in Lindbergh's
life.

For more information about this issue, please go to:
http://www.hawaii-post.com/2004-26AUG.html

For more information about other issues from Hawai'i Post, please go
to:
http://www.hawaii-post.com/stamps.html

Mahalo (Thank you),

Hawai'i Post
P O Box 8735
Honolulu Hawai'i 96830
U.S.A.

http://www.hawaii-post.com