Jon Morrow Lindbergh (August 16, 1932 – July 29, 2021) was an American

underwater diver Underwater diving, as a human activity, is the practice of descending below the water's surface to interact with the environment. It is also often referred to as diving, an ambiguous term with several possible meanings, depending on context ...

. He worked as a

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

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 aquanauts in the 1960s. He was also a pioneer in cave diving, 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 o ...

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
p. 220 During his mother's pregnancy with him, his parents received large numbers of letters and phone calls threatening his life.Hertog
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. 339-341Hertog
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
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 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 SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...

, 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 A frogman is someone who is trained in scuba diving or swimming underwater in a tactical capacity that includes military, and in some European countries, police work. Such personnel are also known by the more formal names of combat diver, com ...

with the

Underwater Demolition Team Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT), or frogmen, were amphibious units created by the United States Navy during World War II with specialized non-tactical missions. They were predecessors of the navy's current SEAL teams. Their primary WWII fun ...

(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 ...

. He then became a

, working for

Offshore Divers, Inc. Offshore may refer to: Science and technology * Offshore (hydrocarbons) * Offshore construction, construction out at sea * Offshore drilling, discovery and development of oil and gas resources which lie underwater through drilling a well * Of ...

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara ( es, Santa Bárbara, meaning "Saint Barbara") is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Co ...

, and making dives from offshore oil rigs on the

West Coast of the United States The West Coast of the United States, also known as the Pacific Coast, Pacific states, and the western seaboard, is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous U.S ...

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 Edwin Albert Link (July 26, 1904 – September 7, 1981) was an American inventor, entrepreneur and pioneer in aviation, underwater archaeology, and submersibles. He invented the flight simulator, which was called the "Blue Box" or "Link Trai ...

'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 ar ...

). 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 in 1962. Sténuit and Lindbergh stayed in Link's SPID

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

(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 (born in 1965).Hertog
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 Philip Gordon Wylie (May 12, 1902 – October 25, 1971) was an American writer of works ranging from pulp science fiction, mysteries, social diatribes and satire to ecology and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Early life and career Born in Beve ...

; 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 Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state ...

to die, and helped build his father's grave.Berg, pp. 554, 557. Lindbergh's elder brother, Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., 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 ...

Lewisburg, West Virginia Lewisburg is a city in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 3,930 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Greenbrier County. Geography Lewisburg is located approximately one mile north of the Greenbrier River ...

, 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