The threesome had also become far richer financially. The time in Europe had resulted in an accumulated compensation from contracts and prizes of some $200,000.
Wilbur had also found among the French a wealth of friendship such as he had never known. As he would write much later in a letter of gratitude to Léon Bollée, “We do not forget that you expended much time and gave yourself much trouble in order to be of assistance to us and that you rejoiced with us in our successes and grieved with us in our troubles.” These were not things to compensate for with money, “but we cherish them forever in our hearts.”
For Orville the four-month-long Grand Tour had provided a greatly needed change of scene and the chance to recuperate at his own pace. For Katharine it was a colossal reward for all she had done for her brothers for so long in so many ways.
Further, as would become increasingly clear later, they had seen Europe at an almost perfect time, when prosperity and peace prevailed, when Americans in abundance were discovering and enjoying the experience of European travel and the changes in outlook it brought as never before, and when the horrors of modern, mechanized warfare were still to come. Travelers from all parts of America who were there then would never forget the time. Nor would the three Wrights. Nor were they ever again to enjoy such a time together.
For now, for all three, there was the overriding good feeling of being homeward bound.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Causes for Celebration
Telegram from Katharine, telling of their safe arrival in New York, saying they will be home Thursday.
BISHOP WRIGHT’S DIARY, TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1909
I.
After a rousing welcome at New York, with a chorus of harbor whistles blaring as their ship came in, and a swarm of reporters and photographers surrounding their every move during a one-day stopover in the city, the three Wrights went on by train to Dayton, arriving at Union Depot, Thursday, May 13, 1909, at five in the afternoon. The crowd at the station was of a size rarely seen in Dayton. Cannons were booming, factory whistles blowing across town, everyone at the station cheering.
Seeing Bishop Wright, as she and her brothers stepped from the train, Katharine shouted, “Oh, there’s Daddy,” and rushed to throw her arms around him. Wilbur and Orville then warmly embraced their father, but so wild was the noise no one could hear what was being said.
There were more embraces for Lorin and Netta and their children. Then, as they began inching their way through the crowd, Wilbur and Orville started shaking hands. Seeing a big, veteran member of the Dayton police force, Tom Mitchell, Wilbur said, “Hello, Tom!” “Good boy!” said Tom as he took Wilbur by the hand.
Katharine was described in one account as looking like the typical American girl at a homecoming, in a smart, gray traveling gown, with a large, broad-brimmed picture-hat of dark green. The only woman in the world who had made three flights in an airplane, she was now as much a subject of attention nearly as her brothers.
In New York she had lectured reporters on some of the “flippant” accounts that had appeared in the American press about the notable Europeans who had taken an interest in her brothers. She loved America, she said, but the American people did not always understand Europeans, who were an appreciative people. She could not listen to anyone saying unkind things about them without protesting. But here in the noise and crowds of the moment there was no call for such comment.
Wilbur looked “bronzed and hard,” and Orville, too, looked well—certainly a great deal better than when he had left Dayton in January—but walked still with a limp. In the middle of all that was happening, Bishop Wright, as was noted, rarely spoke a word, but “feasted” his eyes on the two sons who had made the name Wright, as well as Dayton, known to the world.
Eleven carriages awaited at the entrance to the station to carry the family and a variety of town officials to Hawthorn Street, each of the three reserved for the Wrights pulled by four white horses. The bishop and Orville rode in the first, Wilbur and Reuchlin in the second, Katharine, Lorin, and Lorin’s family in the third.
The streets were filled with more crowds the whole way. Sidewalks were packed. People were leaning from windows, children waving small flags. Hawthorn Street and the Wright homestead were bedecked with flags and flowers and Japanese lanterns. Standing at last at the railing of the front porch, Katharine called out to neighbors across the street, “I’m so glad to get home I don’t know what to do.”
For considerable time, she and the brothers stood in the front parlor receiving a steady procession of old friends and neighbors. Outside the crowd grew to more than ten thousand.
The day after, Mayor Edward Burkhardt, and several city officials called at 7 Hawthorn Street to discuss with the family the “real celebration” to come.
Speaking with a local reporter only shortly afterward, Orville said quite matter-of-factly that though his doctors had told him he was to do no flying in Europe and that he had obeyed them to the letter, he would soon resume his flights at Fort Myer. As he did not say, Wilbur and Katharine felt strongly that a return to the scene of the crash now would put too great a strain on him. He should wait until he was back in practice. But to Orville the matter was settled. Fort Myer it had to be. And he was ready.
The Wright workshop on West Third Street became a “beehive of industry” no less than ever, with Charlie Taylor in charge. “The most important thing we have before us at this time is to get ready for the Fort Myer tests,” Wilbur told reporters, and he and Orville “personally” were constructing the plane to be used there. The old machine had been so badly broken up in the crash that all but the motor and transmission was being built anew.
On May 20 it was announced that President Taft would soon be presenting the brothers several medals at the White House.
Katharine was to go with them to Washington for the ceremony, of course. Bishop Wright, however, felt obliged to take part in some church work in Indiana. To attract as little attention as possible, the brothers and Katharine quietly left Dayton on an earlier train than expected and no notice was taken except for a few railroad officials at the depot.
They were to remain in Washington only the day of June 10. There was a lunch in their honor at the Cosmos Club, which for the occasion waived its long-standing policy of men only so Katharine could attend. Prominent among the more distinguished Washingtonians present was Alexander Graham Bell.
Shortly after the lunch the entire party walked the short distance to the White House, where nearly a thousand men and women stood in the East Room as President Taft formally presented two Gold Medals on behalf of the Aero Club of America. At six feet two and weighing three hundred pounds, the president loomed large as he stood beside the brothers. In addressing his two fellow Ohioans, he spoke appropriately to the point and with unmistakable warmth.
I esteem it a great honor and an opportunity to present these medals to you as an evidence of what you have done. I am so glad—perhaps at a delayed hour—to show that in America it is not true that “a prophet is not without honor save in his own country.” It is especially gratifying thus to note a great step in human discovery by paying honor to men who bear it so modestly. You made this discovery by a course that we of America like to feel is distinctly American—by keeping your noses right at the job until you had accomplished what you had determined to do.
By evening, the three Wrights were back on board the train, on their way back to Dayton. Thorough testing of new propellers had become a primary requirement. In the meantime, however, there was Dayton’s “real celebration,” the Great Homecoming, to be faced, like it or not.
“Gigantic” was the word used to describe the preparations. The whole story of America and Dayton from earliest times was to be portrayed with “historical exactness,” in a parade of enormous floats being built at the National Cash Register plant. Indians and their canoes, the eras of the Conestoga wagon, the canal boat, the first railroad, Robert Fulton’s steamboat, the evolution of the
bicycle, and an up-to-date automobile, would be followed by the first American balloon and a dirigible, all this in prelude to a float titled, “All the World Paying Homage to the United States, the Wright Brothers, and the Aeroplane,” and featuring a handcrafted, half-size replica of a Wright Flyer. There were to be fifteen floats and 560 people in costume (“all historically correct”), in what the newspapers promised to be the greatest parade Dayton had ever beheld.
On Main Street a “Court of Honor” was being created reaching from Third Street to the river, white columns lining both sides of the street and strung with colored lights. “Everywhere is the tri-colored bunting . . . everywhere flutters the pennants and flags and banners,” the papers were saying. Soldiers, sailors, and the Fire Department would march, bands play. Some 2,500 schoolchildren dressed in red, white, and blue would be arranged as a “living-flag” on the Fair Grounds grandstand and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
In the nearly ten years that the Wright brothers had been working to achieve success with their invention, this was to be the first formal recognition by their hometown of their efforts and success and there was to be no mistaking the whole town’s enthusiasm.
While little of such elaborate fanfare appealed to the brothers, they knew that if Dayton saw fit to celebrate, if Dayton felt that was important, then it was not for them to complain or appear in any way annoyed or disapproving. Octave Chanute wrote to Wilbur to say he knew such honors could grow “oppressive” to modest men, but then they had brought it on themselves with their ingenuity and courage. It was well-meant advice, but the brothers had no need to be reminded.
On the eve of the opening of the festivities, the Dayton Daily News ran an editorial expressing much that was felt by a great many:
It is a wonderful lesson—this celebration. It comes at an auspicious time. The old world was getting tired, it seemed, and needed help to whip it into action. There was beginning a great deal of talk about man’s no longer having the opportunities he once had of achieving greatness. Too many people were beginning to believe that all of the world’s problems had been solved. . . . Money was beginning to tell in the affairs of men, and some were wondering whether a poor boy might work for himself a place in commerce or industry or science.
This celebration throws all such idle talk to the winds. It crowns anew the efforts of mankind. It crushes for another hundred years the suspicion that all of the secrets of nature have been solved or that the avenues of hope have been closed to those who would win new worlds.
It points out to the ambitious young man that he labors not in vain; that genius knows no class, no condition. . . .
The modesty of the Wright brothers is a source of a good deal of comment. . . . But above all there is a sermon in their life of endeavor which cannot be preached too often.
The following morning, Thursday, June 17, at nine o’clock every church bell and factory whistle announced the start of what was to be a two-day celebration. Thousands of people poured into the city. Business had been suspended, except for the sale of ice cream and flags and toy airships and Wright brothers postcards. That it was raining lightly the first part of the first day seemed to matter little to anyone. And the show was all that had been expected, one spectacle following another.
There were marching bands, concerts, the presentation of medals and the keys to the city. A line of eighty automobiles—all the newest model touring cars—streamed across the Main Street Bridge and down through the “Court of Honor.” The parade of historical floats, “the greatest street procession ever held in Dayton,” stretched two miles.
There were laudatory speeches in abundance, and Wilbur, Orville, Katharine, and Bishop Wright were to be seen prominently present on platforms and reviewing stands. The second day, the Bishop delivered a brief but eloquent invocation in tribute to his sons.
We have met this day to celebrate an invention—the dream of all ages—hitherto deemed impracticable. It suddenly breaks on all human vision that man, cleaving the air like a bird, can rise to immense heights and reach immeasurable distances. And we come to thee, our Father, to ask thy peace to rest on this occasion and thy benediction on every heart participating in this assembly.
Amazingly, all through both days and as very few were aware, Wilbur and Orville managed to slip deftly in and out of the picture, back and forth to their West Third Street shop, one of the few buildings in town that remained undecorated and where work went on. A correspondent for the New York Times who kept close watch on them provided a memorable chronology of how they spent the first day:
9 A.M.—Left their work in the aeroplane shop and in their shirt sleeves went out in the street to hear every whistle and bell in town blow and ring for ten minutes.
9:10 A.M.—Returned to work.
10 A.M.—Drove in a parade to the opening ceremony of the “Homecoming Celebration.”
11 A.M.—Returned to work.
Noon—Reunion at dinner with Bishop Milton Wright, the father; Miss Katharine Wright, the sister; Reuchlin Wright of Tonganoxie, Kansas, a brother; and Lorin Wright, another brother.
2:30 P.M.—Reviewed a parade given in their honor in the downtown streets.
4:00 P.M.—Worked two hours packing up parts of an aeroplane for shipment to Washington.
8:00 P.M.—Attended a public reception and shook hands with as many Daytonians as could get near them.
9:00 P.M.—Saw a pyrotechnical display on the river front in which their own portraits, 80 feet high and entwined in an American flag, were shown.
It was estimated that in the course of the fireworks, Wilbur and Orville shook hands with more than five thousand people, and according to the Daily News, only “the instinct of self preservation compelled them to cease.”
Less than forty-eight hours later, the festivities at an end, the brothers were packed and on the train to Washington to resume the trials at Fort Myer. Shipment of the plane had been taken care of. Charlie Taylor was already on the scene.
II.
It was six-thirty the extremely warm evening of June 26, as Wilbur and Orville sat waiting on the starting rail in the parade ground at Fort Myer. Beside them their white-winged machine stood ready for flight. Farther off, behind a rope at the edge of the field, some four thousand people including men of known importance to the nation, stood, according to one account, “pawing the ground” for something to happen. Hundreds of them had been there since three o’clock.
The Senate had adjourned so its members could see the flight. Others waiting included high-ranking army officers; ambassadors; the son of the president, Charlie Taft; and Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon, whose word, as said, was “open sesame to the Treasury vaults.”
Wilbur had assigned to himself full responsibility for seeing that all was in order. Given the heat, he had dispensed with his customary coat and tie. His hands and face were grimy, his work trousers grease-stained, and perspiration streamed down his face.
Orville, by contrast, was described as looking natty as the prize guest of a yachting party. “His coat was buttoned tightly about his slender form, as if it were a mistake about its being hot,” wrote the Washington Herald. “Altogether he . . . exhaled the atmosphere of a man who finds himself on the top layer of the upper crust of the crème de la crème of all that is worthwhile.”
The brothers were waiting for the wind to settle down. Again the wind would be the deciding factor, the wind would have the final say, no matter that most of the United States Senate and several thousand others were being kept waiting.
Orville got up and walked away toward the shed looking nervous. Then Wilbur walked off a while. Then both returned to sit again and chat with a small group of army officers. “She’s blowing at a 16-mile clip,” Wilbur told an inquiring reporter. “That’s far too stiff for a first flight with a new machine.” He looked windward again and sniffed the air.
“Take her back to the shed,” he said.
“There is always an element of uncertainty in a
viation as far as it has advanced,” Wilbur explained to a writer for the Washington Post. “People must remember that this machine has never been flown before, and also that my brother has not been up in the air since his accident last year. They can’t blame me for wanting the first flight to be made under conditions as nearly ideal as possible.”
No one with a keen sense of dramatic effect, wrote the Washington Herald, could have created a better scene to demonstrate the “utter immunity of the two brothers from the fumes of importunity and the intoxication of an august assemblage.”
Uniformed army signalmen gathered “like pallbearers” and wheeled the plane away, and four thousand spectators departed, many expressing opinions, including one senator, who was heard to say of the brothers, “I’m damned if I don’t admire their independence. We don’t mean anything to them, and there are a whole lot of reasons why we shouldn’t.”
That same day, Bishop Wright and brother Reuchlin arrived in Washington, the Bishop having acquired two new suits and two new shirts for the expedition.
Late the afternoon of June 29, Wilbur had “no quarrels” with the weather, and shortly before six o’clock Orville finally took to the air. The crowd, noticeably smaller than three days before, but still numbering several thousand, saw the plane waver, struggling, as it skimmed over the grass for no more than 75 feet, then, at a height of about 15 feet, tilt sharply to the right and its wing touch the ground, at which point Orville cut the engine and the machine came down in a cloud of dust.
A second and third flight were hardly better. Finally, on the fourth try, a flight lasting all of 40 seconds, the plane reached an altitude of 25 feet and took a turn down the field and back. Still it was enough to evoke cheers and automobile horns.
The Wright Brothers Page 24
