pon meeting a potential suitor, Anne and Elisabeth Morrow would assign him to one of four romantic
categories: Sparkler, Twinkler, Worthy or Lump. Daughters of Dwight Morrow, a senior partner at J. P. Morgan who would go on to become the United States ambassador to Mexico, the Morrow sisters never lacked for male attention. The family's mansion in Englewood, N.J., abounded in charming Twinklers, dependable Worthies and harmless, if rather dull, Lumps (''usually other girls' cousins brought in at the last minute''). Sparklers, on the other hand, were exceedingly rare, and despite -- or perhaps because of -- their mother's warning that they ''were unsteady and would never settle down,'' Sparklers were what her daughters coveted most. By the time she was 20, Anne Morrow had rejected at least one impeccably qualified Twinkler, determined, apparently, to live up to a vow she had made upon graduating from Miss Chapin's School in 1924. Asked to declare her life's ambition, she wrote, ''To marry a hero.'' Anne was holding out for a Sparkler.

In impressively short order and to nearly everyone's surprise (Elisabeth was the family beauty), she got one: Charles Augustus Lindbergh, the 6-foot-2, blue-eyed aviator and arguably the country's first global superstar. After just three dates -- two in an airplane, one in a car -- Lindbergh and Anne were engaged. He was the ultimate Sparkler, all drive and stoicism packed into a flawless physique, a man who inspired Anne to write: ''The idea of this clear, direct, straight boy -- how it has swept out of sight all other men I have ever known. . . . My little embroidery beribboned world is smashed.'' But Lindbergh, it turned out, had less admirable traits as well. He was a control freak who came to the dinner table with To Do lists for his wife and children, a Nazi sympathizer who accepted a medal from Hermann, a eugenics enthusiast and something of a casual sadist, whose repertory of practical jokes included passing off laxatives as candy to one unsuspecting flying buddy and kerosene as water to another. Toward his own family, Lindbergh could also be cruel, locking his 18-month-old son out of the house in an effort to foster ''independence'' and then forbidding his wife to cry when the baby was, famously, kidnapped and murdered a few months later. And, true to the prediction of Anne's mother, this Sparkler at least could never settle down. When they were not traveling the globe by air, he and Anne led a peripatetic existence on the ground, occupying and then vacating homes in England, France, New Jersey, Michigan, Connecticut, Switzerland and Hawaii.

Lindbergh's peculiarities and predilections are now familiar thanks to ''Lindbergh,'' a superb biography by A.Scott Berg, and ''Under a Wing,'' a moving memoir by his youngest daughter, Reeve. His wife, however, remains more of a mystery, managing to survive the prying of journalists, the publication of her diaries and letters and entire decades spent a good deal in the public eye, her privacy miraculously intact. An experienced pilot and mother of six, Anne Morrow Lindbergh was also one of midcentury America's most popular authors. Her most successful book, ''Gift From the Sea,'' sold more than 300,000 copies in 1955 alone, catapulting her publisher, Pantheon, from fiscally precarious obscurity to prosperous international standing virtually overnight.

More striking, the book was a feminist manifesto, albeit a covert one. Beneath its modest tone, genteel rhetoric and gently-lapping-wave metaphors simmered an unmistakable frustration, the kind that a few years later, in the pen of Betty Friedan, would find its expression as full-blown wrath. Polemic, however, was not Anne Morrow Lindbergh's style. ''I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women,'' she wrote with characteristic wryness. ''I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls -- woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center.'' Was life at 22,000 feet any less stultifying than landlocked domesticity? For all its reckless glamour, did marriage to a Sparkler mean becoming a Lump yourself?

Mrs. Lindbergh was a Calvinist by upbringing and inclination and found some feelings shameful and alarming. As Mrs. Lindbergh grew older, compliance became her personal crusade -- her hair shirt, as her daughter Reeve called it. She struggled to keep her own desires in check, willingly accompanying her husband on arduous trips in crude aircraft to Asia and Africa, all the while homesick for her children. She permitted herself but few outbursts, and those she allowed she kept private and succinct: ''Damn, damn, damn! I am sick of being this 'handmaiden to the Lord,' ''she wrote in her diary during a monthslong trip to Europe. Unnerved by her husband's enthusiasm for Hitler's Germany, she nevertheless undertook a public plea for peace with the Nazis -- partly as a show of solidarity with her suddenly unpopular mate. Her book ''The Wave of the Future'' was an instant best seller and an irresistible target for F.D.R.'s pro-war administration. Harold Ickes, then secretary of the interior, called it ''the bible of every American Nazi, Fascist, Bundist and appeaser.''

Much of the criticism was unfair; Anne's pacifism was more naivete than ideology. In the early 1950's, in defiance of her husband, she signed up for psychotherapy. To punish her, Charles moved out of their bedroom. A couple of years later, she embarked on an affair with her doctor. But these violations -- or victories -- were, as far as we know, few and fleeting.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the widow of aviator and conservationist Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., was a noted writer and aviation pioneer. Born June 22, 1906 in Englewood, New Jersey, Anne Morrow Lindbergh was the daughter of businessman, ambassador, and U.S. Senator Dwight Morrow and poet and women's education advocate Elizabeth Cutter Morrow. Her family spent summers at the seashore: Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod and later on the island of North Haven off the coast of Maine. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Smith College in 1928, and married Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., on May 27, 1929. Six children were born to the Lindberghs -- Charles A., III (deceased, 1932), Jon, Land, Anne (deceased, 1993), Scott and Reeve. Much time during the early years of the Lindberghs' marriage was spent flying. Anne served as her husband's co-pilot, navigator and radio operator on history-making explorations, charting potential air routes for commercial airlines. They made air surveys across the continent and in the Caribbean to pioneer Pan American's air mail service. In 1931, they journeyed, in a single-engine airplane, over uncharted routes from Canada and Alaska to Japan and China, which she chronicled in her first book, North to the Orient. They then completed, in the same single-engine Lockheed "Sirius," a five-and-one-half-month, 30,000-mile survey of North and South Atlantic air routes in 1933 (the subject of Anne Lindbergh's book, Listen! the Wind). Charles characterized this expedition as more difficult and hazardous than his epic New York-to-Paris flight in 1927 in the "Spirit of St. Louis." Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1975 The National Geographic Society awarded its Hubbard Gold Medal to Anne Lindbergh in 1934 for her accomplishments in 40,000 miles of exploratory flying over five continents with her husband. A year earlier, she had been honored with the Cross of Honor of the U.S. Flag Association for her part in the survey of transatlantic air routes. In 1993, Women in Aerospace presented her with a special Aerospace Explorer Award in recognition of her achievements and contributions to the aerospace field. Anne Morrow Lindbergh was also the first licensed woman glider pilot in the United States. In addition to North to the Orient and Listen! the Wind, Anne Lindbergh is the author of 11 other published books. They include Earth Shine, in which she wrote of being at Cape Kennedy for the first moon-orbiting flight and how that Apollo 8 flight and the pictures it sent back of Earth gave humankind "a new sense of Earth's richness and beauty;" The Steep Ascent, a novel that tells the story of a perilous flight made by a husband and wife; the inspirational and widely read Gift from the Sea, perhaps her best-known work; and five volumes of diaries and letters from the years 1922-1944. Smith College, Amherst College, the University of Rochester and Gustavus Adolphus College have all presented honorary degrees to Mrs. Lindbergh. In addition, she has also been inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, the National Women's Hall of Fame, and the Aviation Hall of Fame of New Jersey. She is also a recipient of the Christopher Award for the fifth volume of her diaries, War Within and Without. Anne Morrow Lindbergh died February 7, 2001 at her second home in Vermont. Bibliography North to the Orient, 1935 - Anne Morrow Lindbergh's classic account of the Lindberghs' pioneering flight to the Orient via the great circle route in 1931. Listen! The Wind, 1938 The Wave of the Future, 1940 The Steep Ascent, 1944 Gift from the Sea, 1955 - Over one million copies have been sold of this beloved book of great wisdom by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The Unicorn and Other Poems, 1935-1955, 1956 Dearly Beloved, 1962 Earth Shine, 1969 Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928, 1972 Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1929-1932, 1973 Locked Rooms and Open Doors: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1932-1935, 1974 Gift from the Sea, 20th anniversary edition, with an afterword by the author, 1975 The Flower and the Nettle: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1936-1939, 1976 War Within and Without: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1939-1944, 1980 - For which Anne Morrow Lindbergh is named the recipient of the Christopher Award.