DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Charles A. Lindbergh in Texas — and friend, this one's worth pulling over for. Now, every barnstormer worth his goggles had one ambition above all others: to fly in Texas.
Charles A. Lindbergh was no different. Born in 1902, he was young and hungry and restless, and when he bought his first World War I surplus Jenny — picked it up way over in Georgia — he pointed that plane straight toward the Lone Star State.
Flew it to Texarkana in 1923, just so he could say he'd done it. Just so he could say he'd flown in Texas. That's the kind of man he was.
But Texas wasn't done with him yet. In March of 1924, Lindbergh was traveling with a fellow named L. A.
Klink, the two of them trying to fly Klink's Canuck all the way to California. Now, a Canuck and a California dream sounds like a fine combination — until the Texas Hill Country has other ideas. They landed in Camp Wood.
Small town. Real County. And the next day, attempting a take-off, Lindbergh accidentally crashed right into Warren Puett's Store.
Nobody hurt. Store damaged. And here's the part that tells you something about this place and the people in it: Lindbergh offered to pay for the damage, and his offer was rejected.
Just flat-out turned down. They called him "Slim" back then, and Slim made a lot of friends in Camp Wood. The kind of friends a man doesn't forget.
Two weeks after that visit — two weeks — he became a U.S. Air Service cadet at Brooks Field in San Antonio. He completed his advanced flight training at Kelly Field in 1925.
Texas had a hand in shaping what came next. And what came next was history. May 20th and 21st, 1927.
Lindbergh made the first solo flight from New York to Paris. The whole world stopped and looked up. World acclaim, they called it, and that doesn't even begin to cover it.
Later that same year of 1927, he came back to Texas — back to the state that had once swallowed his take-off attempt whole — and this time he was surveying the first commercial transcontinental air route, right through Amarillo. Then in 1929, he inaugurated U.S.-Mexico airmail service down in Brownsville. And he kept going.
He drew up and proved major world air routes. He flew in combat in World War II. He collaborated in medical research.
He helped organize the Berlin airlift. The man who once crashed into a store in Camp Wood became one of the great aviation pioneers of the entire century. He died in 1975.
But in Camp Wood, Texas — where they turned down his money and called him Slim and shook his hand — they never stopped calling him a hero. And I'd say they earned the right to say so.
What the marker says
Texas was important in the career of aviation hero Charles A. Lindbergh (1902-75). When he bought his first World War I surplus Jenny in Georgia, he flew it to Texarkana in 1923, so he could say he had flown in Texas -- the ambition of every barnstormer. With L. A. Klink in March 1924, he landed Klink's Canuck in Camp Wood while trying to fly to California. The next day in attempting a take-off, he accidentally crashed into Warren Puett's Store. No one was hurt, and his offer to pay for the damage was rejected. Then called "Slim," Lindbergh made many friends here. Two weeks after visiting Camp Wood, he became a U.S. Air Service cadet at Brooks Field, San Antonio. He completed advanced flight training at Kelly Field in 1925. On May 20-21, 1927, he made the first solo flight from New York to Paris, to world acclaim. Later in 1927, he returned to Texas, surveying the first commercial transcontinental air route through Amarillo; in 1929, he inaugurated U.S.-Mexico airmail in Brownsville. A great aviation pioneer, he drew up and proved many major world air routes. He flew in combat in World War II; collaborated in medical research; helped organize the Berlin airlift; and remained a hero to people of Camp Wood and Texas. (1977)