Flowers, platitudes and overflow crowds greeted Charles A. Lindbergh everywhere he went following his historic solo flight across the Atlantic back in 1927.
But a cactus welcome?
Yep, cactus â all fashioned by Tucson florist Hal Burns into a life-size replica of Lindbergh's plane, Spirit of St. Louis.
"Dad didn't wear gloves. He said his fingers were full of cactus," says Burns' daughter, Dorothy Myrick, 71.
Just months past his trans-Atlantic flight, Lindbergh popped into Tucson on Sept. 23, 1927, as part of a goodwill tour and to dedicate Davis-Monthan Field.
There to greet him was the thorniest "flying machine" ever devised.
"Lindbergh walked to the plane with my dad and said, 'Sure you don't want me to get in that?' " says Myrick, whose father died in 1982.
Ocotillo ribs formed the fuselage and wings, prickly pear pads were on the propeller and tail, and a barrel cactus substituted for the nose. White cholla flowers spelled out "Spirit of Tucson" on the fuselage.
"Dad never saw Lindbergh again, but every time an anniversary would roll around, he would get calls," remembers Myrick. "He never dreamed it would get all that attention."
