I'm very happy to be with you here today at this history conference. I feel closer to my husband in such a setting surrounded by family and friends in my husband's Home State Minnesota meant a great deal to my husband not only in his childhood and youth the Minnesota background upheld him all his life. It's natural beauty. It's tradition of pioneering courage and it's adventurous Spirit toward the future through him Minnesota came to mean something special to me and I always feel invigorated when I returnMy feeling about Minnesota has deepened since my husband's death. And since I have been studying reading and writing about his life. I am not a historian and I was somewhat appalled to realize that if I spoke at this luncheon, I would be facing five or 600 historians or history professors and Scholars. However, I am interested in history itself and I have been working on one small area of the field these past years. I have been preparing for publication my Diaries and letters written during the most active years of our life together and I've come to realize Henry James statement. It takes a great deal of History to produce a little literature. The fifth and last volume which I finished this summer will be published next year. It covers the pre-war and War years in the United States from 1939 to 1944. It was very important to study the books written about this period before writing my introduction a full review of the background was necessary because many of the facts and certainly the atmosphere of this pre-war period has faded in our minds. No one is hazy about the second world war even those who were not born then but but the Casual opinion the Casual opinion is that we have waged a just war against evil forces and that we won most people can agree on some such condition but the period just before the war is dim in our memory. It was a short episode in our history that has been eclipsed by the magnitude of the war that followed. For the general public and anyone under 40 years old. It is almost a lost era not of course for historians. Who remembers today what was called the great debate on whether or not the United States should participate in World War Two who remembers the arguments of the isolationist or the interventionist. In fact, it might be difficult for many people to recall the name of any isolationist besides Charles Lindbergh. He was as this audience will remember against our participation in World War Two. It is irrelevant to go back into those old arguments today. Some of his prophecies were correct many of them were correct and some were not What interests me is the tenacity with which he fought for what he believed and the courage with which he withstood attacks and abuse because of his stand the label isolationist is still a derogatory term. The best definition I have ever heard of isolationist came from an Ardent interventionist. I found it in a series of lectures given by Walter Lippmann and isolation and alliances Walter Lippmann was trying to explain to a British audience the roots of isolation in our country. He said I quote the tomb isolationist and the myths which are grown up around it suggests passivity and letter G the word isolationist conceals the dynamic and expansionist energy of the American Nation. Those whom we now call isolationist are the True Believers in the foreign policy of the men who conquered and settled the American Continental domain it was this Dynamic pioneering energy that I recognized in rereading Last Summer the anti-war speeches of my husband and though there were differences in their points of view. The speeches were full of the background the beliefs and the virtues of his father and grandfather until I visited Minnesota. And until I read Bruce Larson's excellent biography of Charles Lindbergh senior. I did not realize what a tradition my husband was following. His wartime addresses are full of the character and the Cadence of the old west. Although the factual content of my husband's addresses rests firmly on his technical knowledge of the air power of His day the emotional thrust and language are those of his father and his grandfather one recognizes the tone of those hearty immigrants who had left Europe behind them for the new world of the West. I quote from one of his speeches Let Us carry on the American Destiny of which our forefathers dreamed as they cut their farm lands from the Virgin Forest. But over and Beyond the issue of War and Peace the younger Lindbergh had his ancestors Stones belief in our representative government and issue that he felt and I quote again was even more fundamental than War itself. With pre-war public opinion polls in 1939 to 1940 showing that 80% of the people opposed the United States entry into the war and with Congress almost solidly isolationist. He believed that his fellow citizens were being led by step short of War into an undeclared war without the opportunity to vote on the issue. Those of you who have read Bruce Larson's Lindbergh of Minnesota will remember that the older Lindbergh a congressman from Minnesota had opposed World War One despite strong support from the farmer oriented nonpartisan League. He was overcome by the opposition in the war fever of those days. His meetings were run out of town. He was stoned called a friend of the Kaiser and even hanged in effigy. The records of those days are vividly exhibited in the little balls interpretive Center. Despite the attacks. He stood by his position until defeated for re-election in 1920. I remember my husband once told me that people said of his father when Lindbergh is for you. He'll stick by you till Hell Freezes Over. This is the kind of courage and Independence that went into the making of Minnesota and I believe runs through the character of its native Sons and Daughters even today. It was certainly there in large measure in Senator Hubert Humphrey who crusaded for civil rights for Medicare for arms control long before these causes became politically acceptable. I call this kind of political action heroism just as I think Charles Lindbergh seniors career was heroic and that of his son also and not simply in flying the Atlantic. My husband was not a politician like his father or like Senator Humphrey. The younger Lindbergh was not really a leader a leader wants some certain tangible results. He wants and needs political power position and followers. My husband did not want political power or position or followers. He had a vision several Visions during his lifetime and he wanted to open people's eyes to his vision. He was more of a crusader a lone Crusader most of the time perhaps because he was ahead of his time that nickname. He was given early of the Lone Eagle was prophetic. It was right. He was looking into the future not the immediate future, but the far future and this is why his aims were often misunderstood. There were three major Crusades in his life. The First Crusade was Aviation. He wanted to convince people by his deeds and also by his words that flying was or could be safe. It wasn't safe at all when I started. But he wanted to convince them it would be and that it was practical and beneficial. He believed that the airplane would span continents and oceans that it would Advance communication and understanding between peoples his first crusade when he was young and idealistic was largely successful. His Second Crusade in midlife. Was at he wore he against the United States involvement in World War II in Europe. He foresaw the destruction that the new weapon of air power and saturation bombing would bring to the world in this Crusade. He was not successful but men learn from their failures as well as from their successes. Great Men grow through their setbacks when the war came he fought for his country carrying out 50 active are missions in the Pacific with men half his age at the end of the war. He was sent on the naval mission to Europe to investigate rocket installations in Germany. On this Mission he witnessed the misery and destruction that war brings. He saw with his own eyes the degradation and Horror in the remains of German concentration camps. He expressed his reactions his post-war convictions in a small book of flight and life I quote. I have seen the science. I worshipped and the aircraft I loved destroying the civilization I expected them to serve. So his last and Third Crusade was to preserve the quality of life on Earth quotes the life of plants and animals as well as that of man the last 20 years of his life. He devoted to his efforts to preserve endangered species of animals to protect initiate and expand national parks and Wilderness areas and to protect the minorities occupying these areas. His final Vision was to see and I quote that the goal of man is man himself. His final aim was I quote to seek a balance between Nature's wisdom and our scientific knowledge and the technical forces. We have let loose. His final Vision was larger than the more limited vision of his first crusade for Aviation or his vision for the second of the Second Crusade for peace. I might say of re calling off war and in his final Crusade one cannot call him an isolationist in the narrow sense of the world. His point of view was global. In the 60s and 70s. He had no reluctance in working with British French Swiss Scandinavians Dutch Spanish South Americans Russians, Japanese Asians and Africans on the protection of endangered species the conservation of our resources and the prevention of a polluted environment. He was one of the first to realize that one cannot be an isolationist in the preservation of our planet. This Crusade is still unfinished. It also was pioneering and it was not popular or understood when he began. A nationwide magazine refused an article he wrote on the protection of the dwindling whale population the editor rejected it and said, I'm a pray the American people are not much interested in Wales. They are now. The role of the pioneer or the reformer or the hero is to look ahead of his time. If we are talking about heroes at this conference. And I think we are we should admit that the concept of hero changes with each era a hero or an outstanding public figure Rises. I believe not only from the traditions and ideals of the past but also from the needs of the present the time and place into which he was born. He Springs also from the aspirations and dreams of the future. That is the seeds of the future that lie hidden in the present so that he is at the same time a reflection of the past a focus of the present and a kind of periscope into the future. This is where you come in. The role of the historian is important. He is there to study to analyze to clarify the components of past present and future in historic characters. He can discover the debt the hero owes to the past the symbol that he is of the present and the influence such a man or woman may have on the future. The balanced Judgment of the historian is particularly valuable today when we are overwhelmed by an abundance of public media constantly creating images of public figures in our present day culture. The image of a hero is sometimes blown up overnight and often torn down a few months later. The historian as I see it attempts to cut through the Mists of Legend propaganda and gossip. He tries to test the image of the public man and find out if possible. What is false and what is true? Or what is probable and what is improbable and what is relevant to the progress of mankind? There are people today who assert that the hero is an anachronism in a recent biography of TE Lawrence by John Mack, which you may have read and he's fascinating. I found this thesis quoted. Ours isn't age in which hero and heroic acts are anachronisms. The hero is out of joint with our pragmatic world. He implies that we know too much. We are too sophisticated. We have seen too many Heroes debunked to believe in their existence. The biographer of Lawrence also makes the excellent point. That in our troubled times when masses of ordinary men and women have experienced the horrors of War torture and Exile the individual hero or heroine is hardly distinguishable. The threats that Loom over all mankind are so inhuman so depersonalized and so completely out of the individuals control that it seems futile to look to a hero for salvation. I am not entirely convinced by these arguments Through the Ages men have always needed and found Heroes to embody their aspirations to compensate for their failures and to inspire them to explore New Paths for mankind. I think we still need and will continue to find them we should admit however that our concept of a hero has changed the homeric hero is outdated the biblical hero of the David and Goliath story beautiful as it is is hard to imagine today the Romantic Heroes of the Middle Ages the Richard Coeur De Leon's seem theatrical and unrealistic. But a new hero image is emerging one that we can actively cooperate with rather than passively idolized. The Contemporary hero to quote again. The biography of TE Lawrence seems to be a kind of political spiritual figure such as Mahatma Gandhi Martin Luther King or dag hammarskjöld whose examples are of Peace non-violence and renunciation unquote. I would add Albert Schweitzer with his reverence for life and Mother Teresa of India with her compassionate dedication to the sick and the poor there are many others. The Lawrence biography also quotes a new and thought-provoking definition of the modern hero, which I want to leave with you. This one comes from an essay of Irving how I quote. The hero as he appears in the tangle of Modern Life is a man struggling with a vision. He can neither realize nor abandon a man with a load on his mind. I think this is a marvelous definition of the Contemporary hero or heroine. Although I would alter it to read a man or a woman with a load on the heart. A definition which I think applies to both of the public men. We are here to celebrate my personal suggestion in answer to the question on the program as how best to memorialize Historic personage has Is to lighten their load by going forward carrying their burden on our own shoulders. I offer these thoughts as a springboard for your next discussion.