Admiral Moffett hailed Lindbergh’s accomplishment, but feared the Army might make capital of it by persuading Lindbergh, an Army Reserve officer, to say that his feat had obsoleted all navies. Jerry Land, now our assistant chief, got a big kick out of the whole thing; Lindbergh was his nephew. And then, as the flight proved to be far more than just a seven days’ wonder and Lindbergh’s popularity increased rather than diminished with the passage of time, all sorts of people began getting into the act. When the word was passed around that Lindbergh was coming home on the cruiser _Memphis_ and that he was writing a book to be called _We_, the Navy began to take him very seriously. The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Curtis D. Wilbur, radioed Lindbergh on the _Memphis_, offering to assign a naval officer as his technical advisor in the preparation of the book. Lindbergh accepted the offer with alacrity, and I found myself assigned to the detail. My job was to see that his book didn’t sink the Navy with a fragmentation bomb. On the day of Lindbergh’s arrival at the Navy Yard in Washington, all the naval aviators in the vicinity were tolled off to act as a guard of honor for him. I walked through the part, but was so little interested that I neglected to attend the ceremonies at the foot of the Washington Monument, and went home as usual for lunch. But after Lindbergh’s tour of the provinces, we began to take notice; not only did his popularity increase, but he developed a knack of being exactly on time for all ceremonies. I had noted, during the time the _Spirit of St. Louis_ had been in the hangar at Anacostia, that Lindbergh himself had never failed to check every detail of her preparations. Now his incredible on-time performance, under trying conditions, seemed to bear out Guy Vaughan’s estimate; he trusted no one but himself and was the best pilot in the country. Then came the day when Charles Lindbergh returned to Washington. Jerry Land sent for me to tell me that Secretary Wilbur had placed his yacht _Sylph_ at Lindbergh’s disposal for a cruise down the Potomac as far as Mount Vernon. A number of dignitaries, including Bill McCracken, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Air; F. Trubee Davison, Assistant Secretary of War for Air; Ed Warner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air; and a number of Slim Lindbergh’s St. Louis backers, were to make the trip. The idea was to give Lindbergh a lot of good advice on his future conduct and afterward we would all adjourn to the house of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover on S Street, where we would meet an agent of George Palmer Putnam, prospective publisher of the book _We_. I was to go along on the _Sylph_ and then do my duty at the Hoover house.