History

Perhaps you remember my post a few weeks ago about how Lone Eagle Road, in West Bradford, is so named because back in 1928 the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh made an emergency landing nearby; "Lone Eagle" was the name of his plane.
Shortly after the item ran, I got a message from my loyal reader Tom Cummings, who had just turned four years old in 1928 but remembers the incident well and had some photographs of the plane that he wanted to show me.
I went over to visit him in his Mortonville home on Wednesday afternoon and came back with two stories, and I'm not sure which is better.
Mr. Cummings said he and his mother took the horse and buggy to the train station to pick up the mail and heard the news about Lindbergh's landing (getting the latest local news at the post office; some things never change!). They immediately drove over to the pasture, where people had had gathered from far and wide (many of those who brought their cars got stuck in the mud) to saw the silver plane.
Lindbergh and his passenger, his attorney Harry Breckenridge, had been forced to land in heavy fog and hit a fence rail while landing (Mr. Cummings said souvenir-hunters quickly snatched up the splintered rail). They spent the night at a nearby house with the Elkinton family, and a few local men were assigned to keep an eye on the plane overnight.
He said before Lindbergh took off the next day, he had all the kids line up and shook hands with them. He said he has tried to identify which boy is him in a photo that he has ("I tried a magnifying glass and everything"), but unfortunately he can't. As Lindbergh flew off, he dipped his wings to the crowd.
Mr. Cummings was kind enough to take me over to the site, on which the Chestnut Ridge housing development is being built. I wonder whether the new residents are aware of what happened in their back yards back in 1928.
And the second story?

Well, that would be Mr. Cummings himself, a widower, a local history buff and a member of the Greatest Generation. He was in the Marine Corps during World War II, fought at Iwo Jima in the Pacific ("I didn't think I'd make it out alive," he recalled), and earned two purple hearts, which he keeps in a glass case with his military ID card and other memorabilia.
I turned to him and said, "You are a hero, sir." It was an absolute honor and a privilege to meet him. And next he has promised to tell me about the storm that devastated Ercildoun!