Jon Morrow Lindbergh (August 16, 1932 – July 29, 2021) was an American
underwater diver. He worked as a
United States Navy demolition expert and as a
commercial diver
Professional diving is underwater diving where the divers are paid for their work. The procedures are often regulated by legislation and codes of practice as it is an inherently hazardous occupation and the diver works as a member of a team. Du ...
, and was one of the world's earliest
aquanaut
An aquanaut is any person who remains underwater, breathing at the ambient pressure for long enough for the concentration of the inert components of the breathing gas dissolved in the body tissues to reach equilibrium, in a state known as satura ...
s in the 1960s. He was also a pioneer in
cave diving
Cave-diving is underwater diving in water-filled caves. It may be done as an extreme sport, a way of exploring flooded caves for scientific investigation, or for the search for and recovery of divers or, as in the 2018 Thai cave rescue, other ...
, and one of the children of aviators
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance ...
and
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Spencer Morrow Lindbergh (June 22, 1906 – February 7, 2001) was an American writer and aviator. She was the wife of decorated pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh, with whom she made many exploratory flights.
Raised in Englewood, New Jerse ...
.
Early life
Lindbergh was born on August 16, 1932, five months after the
kidnapping and death of his older brother, Charles Lindbergh Jr.
Jon's parents had discovered the name "Jon" in a book about Scandinavian history.
[Hertog](_blank)
p. 220 During his mother's pregnancy with him, his parents received large numbers of letters and phone calls threatening his life.
[Hertog](_blank)
p. 212 In 1935, photographers forced a car in which one of Jon's teachers was driving him home off the road in order to take pictures of him. Jon then began to be protected by a detective with a sawed-off shotgun. The Lindberghs soon decided to leave the United States and traveled to the United Kingdom.
[Berg, pp. 339-341][Hertog](_blank)
pp. 278-280
Lindbergh's father tried to teach him how to swim when he was three years old by repeatedly throwing him into the deep end of a swimming pool.
In spring 1940 (when he was seven), his father placed him in a pasture with a butting ram in order to learn to protect himself from it.
[Hertog](_blank)
p. 377 As a teenager, Lindbergh was allowed to make a solo three-day boat trip.
[Milton, p. 426] He also learned to fly before leaving for college, but his father advised him not to pursue aviation as a career.
[Berg, p. 504]
Cave diver, U.S. Navy and commercial diver
In March 1953, when Lindbergh was a
marine biology
Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies ...
student at
Stanford University, he made the first successful cave dive in the United States at
Bower Cave in California. The dive was part of an expedition organized by
speleologist
Speleology is the scientific study of caves and other karst features, as well as their make-up, structure, physical properties, history, life forms, and the processes by which they form (speleogenesis) and change over time (speleomorphology). ...
Raymond de Saussure. Lindbergh discovered a hidden chamber inside the cave, confirming Saussure's theory that the nearby swimming spa was fed from such a chamber. Lindbergh returned the next month to photograph the underwater lake from a rubber raft.
Lindbergh also took up mountain climbing and skydiving while in college. After his second year, he moved out of his dormitory into a tent in the foothills of the
Coast Range.
As a senior at Stanford, Lindbergh took part in an expedition to
Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta ( Shasta: ''Waka-nunee-Tuki-wuki''; Karuk: ''Úytaahkoo'') is a potentially active volcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California. At an elevation of , it is the second-highest peak in the Cascades ...
in California, during which Werner Hopf, a 30-year-old electronics engineer from the
Stanford Research Institute, fell and was seriously injured. Hopf died despite the efforts of Lindbergh and his other companions to save him.
Lindbergh graduated from Stanford, where he had been a member of the
Navy ROTC
The Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) program is a college-based, commissioned officer training program of the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps.
Origins
A pilot Naval Reserve unit was established in September 192 ...
, and did postgraduate work at the
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...
. He served for three years as a
frogman with the
United States Navy Underwater Demolition Team (UDT), reaching the rank of
Lieutenant
A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations.
The meaning of lieutenant differs in different militaries (see comparative military ranks), but it is often sub ...
.
He then became a
commercial diver
Professional diving is underwater diving where the divers are paid for their work. The procedures are often regulated by legislation and codes of practice as it is an inherently hazardous occupation and the diver works as a member of a team. Du ...
, working for
Offshore Divers, Inc. in
Santa Barbara, California, and making dives from offshore
oil rigs
{{about, , the mnemonic OIL RIG, Redox
An oil rig is any kind of apparatus constructed for oil drilling.
Kinds of oil rig include:
* Drilling rig, an apparatus for on-land oil drilling
* Drillship, a floating apparatus for offshore oil drilling
* ...
on the
West Coast of the United States at depths between 230 and 400 feet.
In 1966, as part of a team from Ocean Systems, Inc., Jon Lindbergh participated in the recovery efforts when
a hydrogen bomb was lost off the coast of Spain.
Man in Sea project
In June–July 1964, Lindbergh participated in
Edwin Link's second Man in Sea experiment, conducted in the
Berry Islands
The Berry Islands are a chain of islands and a district of the Bahamas, covering about of the northwestern part of the Out Islands.
The Berry Islands consist of about thirty islands and over one hundred small islands or cays, often referred t ...
(a chain in the
Bahamas
The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to 88% of the archi ...
). Lindbergh's fellow diver for this venture was
Robert Sténuit
Robert Pierre André Sténuit (born 1933 in Brussels) is a Belgian journalist, writer, and underwater archeologist. In 1962 he spent 24 hours on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea in the submersible "Link Cylinder" developed by Edwin Link, thus ...
, who had become the world's first
aquanaut
An aquanaut is any person who remains underwater, breathing at the ambient pressure for long enough for the concentration of the inert components of the breathing gas dissolved in the body tissues to reach equilibrium, in a state known as satura ...
in 1962. Sténuit and Lindbergh stayed in Link's SPID
habitat (Submersible, Portable, Inflatable Dwelling) for 49 hours underwater at a depth of 432 feet, breathing a helium-oxygen mixture.
[''The Deepest Days'' (Sténuit), ''passim'']
Personal life
Lindbergh married Barbara Robbins on March 20, 1954, in
Northfield, Illinois
Northfield is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States, located approximately north of downtown Chicago. As of the 2020 census, the village's population was 5,751. It is part of a collection of upscale residential communities north of ...
. They were the parents of six children, including aviator and artist
Erik Lindbergh
Erik Robbins Lindbergh (born 1965) is an American aviator, adventurer, and artist. He is the grandson of pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh, the first person to fly non-stop and solo between New York and Paris in 1927. In 2002, Erik Lindbergh h ...
(born in 1965).
[Hertog](_blank)
pp. 439, 489. His second marriage was to
Karen Pryor
Karen Pryor (née Wylie; born May 14, 1932) is an American author who specialized in behavioral psychology and marine mammal biology. She is a founder and proponent of clicker training.
She was formerly a Marine Mammal Commissioner to the U.S. g ...
,
daughter of author
Philip Wylie; they divorced in 1997. Lindbergh was married to Maura Jansen, with whom he had two daughters.
When his father was dying, Lindbergh took charge of transporting him from New York City to
Hawaii to die, and helped build his father's grave.
[Berg, pp. 554, 557.]
Lindbergh's elder brother,
Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr.
On March 1, 1932, Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. (born June 22, 1930), the 20-month-old son of aviators Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was abducted from his crib in the upper floor of the Lindberghs' home, Highfields, in East Amwe ...
, the first of six children born to Charles and Anne Lindbergh, died in 1932 in the
infamous kidnapping — what many termed at the time "the crime of the century". Jon's other Lindbergh siblings are: Land Morrow Lindbergh (born 1937), writer
Anne Spencer Lindbergh (1940–1993),
conservationist Scott Lindbergh (born 1942), and writer
Reeve Lindbergh
Reeve Morrow Lindbergh (born October 2, 1945) is an American author from Caledonia County, Vermont, who grew up in Darien, Connecticut as the daughter of aviator Charles Lindbergh (19021974) and author Anne Morrow Lindbergh (19062001). She gra ...
(born 1945).
He died from
renal cancer
Kidney cancer, also known as renal cancer, is a group of cancers that starts in the kidney. Symptoms may include blood in the urine, lump in the abdomen, or back pain. Fever, weight loss, and tiredness may also occur. Complications can include spr ...
in
Lewisburg, West Virginia, on July 29, 2021 at the age of 88.
Jon Lindbergh obituary
/ref>
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lindbergh, Jon
1932 births
2021 deaths
American aviators
American cavers
American people of Swedish descent
American underwater divers
Aquanauts
Cave diving explorers
Charles Lindbergh
Deaths from cancer in West Virginia
Deaths from kidney cancer
Engineers from California
Jon Morrow
Military personnel from New York City
People from Lewisburg, West Virginia
Stanford University alumni
United States Navy officers
University of California, San Diego alumni