A new display at the Old Court House Museum features a limited edition print of legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh’s airplane.
by Leon Pantenburg
I was on the second floor of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, looking in awe at the actual “Spirit of Saint Louis” airplane. It was 1987, and I had just moved to Washington D.C.
The plane was a “custom-built, single-engine, single-seat, high-wing monoplane. that Charles Lindbergh flew on May 20–21, 1927, on the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight from Long Island, New York, to Paris, France, for which Lindbergh won the $25,000 Orteig Prize.[1]”(Wikipedia)
But looking at the tiny airplane, it was hard to imagine that flight, or the sheer, guts, tenacity and fortitude needed to try it. It was hard to imagine flying it anywhere – I’d seen bigger, more powerful crop dusters!
Charles Lindbergh was one of my childhood heroes See the display!
I read Lindbergh’s Pulitzer prize winning book “The Spirit of Saint Louis” in high school, and saw the movie of the same name. The Mississippi River goes right through Lindbergh’s home town of Little Falls, Minnesota. On my 1980 Source-to-Sea canoe voyage of the Big River, my brother Mike and I took a break to tour the museum there. My respect for Lindbergh dramatically increased.
Anyway, the theme of the print is “Point of No Return” and it is one (I’m not sure which one) of a thousand printed. The painter was William J. Reynolds and the original was completed in 1977. The title refers to the last point in the flight where Lindbergh would have enough fuel to turn around and make it back to New York.
That theme can apply to a lot of things in life. At some point, in any endeavor, there is a point where a person has to go on or turn back. Where you fish or cut bait. Continue or abandon the activity completely. Get it on or give it up. It is the last place where that either/or decision can be made.
So the “Point of No Return” print fits in well with the display at the Old Court House Museum. I hope other viewers find it as inspiring as I did!
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