Booty

To win a $25,000 prize offered by Manhattan Hotelman Raymond Orteig, a young (25) onetime mail pilot left Roosevelt Field in a Ryan monoplane at 7:52 a. m., May 20, 1927 to fly nonstop to Paris. He carried 425 gal. of fuel, four sandwiches, two canteens of water, army emergency rations. Sitting on a gasoline tank, seeing through a periscope, Capt. Charles A. Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis to Le Bourget Field in 33 1/2 hr., landed to receive such acclaim as had been given no private citizen before or since.

Capt. Lindbergh pocketed his $25,000 prize, refused offers of $200,000 (cinema), $400,000 (vaudeville), $50,000 (radio), $75,000 (advertising), $150,000 (C. C. Pyle). What he could not refuse were the thousands of gifts which poured in on him from the ends of the earth. Because a handful of St. Louis businessmen had backed him with $15,000, he sent his trophies to the Missouri Historical Society, which housed them in a wing of the Jefferson Memorial at Forest Park. St. Louis. The Spirit of St. Louis he sent to Washington's Smithsonian Institution.

The St. Louis Lindbergh Collection was visited by 50,000 people the first ten days, 5,000,000 the first four years, 500,000 every year since. Last week, on the eighth anniversary of the Paris flight, announcement was made that the collection had been deeded to the Missouri Historical Society. The 3,000 items included: the grease-stained Lindbergh flying suit; the Congressional Medal of Honor; decorations from 20 governments; 49 old life-membership passes in fraternities and lodges; 18 gold keys to cities in Europe and the U. S.; 14 portrait busts in silver, bronze, plaster, peachstone, soap; numerous paintings; 256 books; 200 medals; 64 models of the Spirit of St. Louis, including one cut from a half-inch diamond; gold & silver loving-cups; gold & diamond-studded personal jewelry, including six stickpins, ten watches, nine rings; a pair of 18th Century silver globes worth $50,000; a package of chewing tobacco.*

*Undisplayed gifts include corsets, hosiery, cocktail shakers, beaded bags, cigaret cases.

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