Jon Lindbergh dead at 88

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/06/us/jon-lindbergh-dead.html

Family triumph (Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight) and tragedy (the kidnapping “crime of the century”) shaped his early life, but he made his mark in the depths.

Jon Lindbergh, an acclaimed deep-sea diver and underwater demolition expert whose life as the son of Col. Charles A. Lindbergh was shaped by the height of fame and the depths of tragedy that his family experienced, died on July 29 at his home in Lewisburg, W.Va. He was 88.

His daughter Kristina Lindbergh said the cause was metastatic renal cancer.

Mr. Lindbergh was one of the world’s earliest aquanauts. He explored the ocean depths, pioneered cave diving and participated in daring underwater recovery missions, including one to find a hydrogen bomb that was lost in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain in 1966.

The quest for adventure was in his DNA. In 1927 his father piloted the first solo nonstop trans-Atlantic flight in history, an epic feat that made him arguably the biggest celebrity in the world. Colonel Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, a writer and the first woman in the United States to earn a glider pilot’s license, were glamorous symbols of the American can-do spirit, and they flew all over the world together, drumming up interest in the fledgling pursuit of aviation.

But their prominence also made them a target — of awe-struck curiosity seekers, paparazzi and evildoers. On March 1, 1932, their 20-month-old son, Charles Jr., was kidnapped for ransom from their home in New Jersey and killed in what the press called “the crime of the century.”