The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
GOEBEL AND LINDBERGH IN TULSA
enough money to attempt some greater feat that would attract the
attention of a corporate sponsor. Each day's newspaper carried the
story of some "birdman" or barnstormer who had flown higher,
faster, longer, or farther than anyone else had previously been able
to do. Records were set only to incite someone else into declaring
that they could do better or die trying.'
Daredevils who survived the difficult and impossible became ce-
lebrities. With notoriety came favors, endorsements, public adula-
tion, and regular employment.2 Two pilots who achieved fame in
this romantic age, Arthur C. "Art" Goebel, Jr., "the Conqueror of the
Pacific," and Charles Augustus Lindbergh, "the Conqueror of the
Atlantic," met in Tulsa on September 30, 1927.3 It was cause for a
celebration highlighted with a parade and speech making, giving
the affair an aura equal to that of a triumphal warrior's homecom-
ing. Only one of them, Goebel, would ever approach that status in
Oklahoma. In the next decade, as a contract employee of Phillips
Petroleum Company, he became a Bartlesville icon.
Lindbergh's and Goebel's lives had many parallels leading up to
the epic flights that gave them renown. Goebel, son of a German im-
migrant, was born in Belen, New Mexico, on October 19, 1895, and
christened Arthur Cornelius Goebel, Jr.4 Swedish immigrant Au-
gust Lindbergh was the grandfather of Charles Augustus
Lindbergh, who was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 4,
1902.5 Both pilots were only sons, although Charles had two half
sisters from his father's first marriage.6 Each young man had been
raised in a rural environment, Lindbergh in Little Falls, Minnesota,
and Goebel in Rocky Ford, Colorado. They enjoyed common youth-
ful pursuits such as swimming and hunting. Each had a decided
lack of interest in formal education, were regarded as "loners," and
owned motorcycles that they rode regularly and with zeal. Goebel
was different in that he had a small circle of friends who rode up
and down the Arkansas River Valley with him and knew him to be a
great pal.7 The stoic, nearly friendless Lindbergh spent more time
with his parents and grandparents than with peers.8
In other ways the two young men were dissimilar and had some
unique experiences. Goebel grew up on a sugar beet farm learning
to detest farm work, focusing on mechanics, and later embracing
aviation as a less arduous occupation than farming.9 Lindbergh de-
lighted in performing the routine chores of a dairy farm, using that
enjoyment to produce food for the war effort during World War I
rather than attending his senior year of high school.10 He later com-
pleted the course of study and attended the University of Wiscon-
53