“We would appreciate a good clean bathtub”: Katharine to Bishop Wright, April 11, 1909, ibid.
“The waiters at the table are so dirty”: Katharine to Bishop Wright, April 14, 1909, ibid.
“They always come at such unearthly hours”: Katharine to Bishop Wright, April 20, 1909, ibid.
A lunch in honor of the three Wrights: Ibid.
“improves all the time”: Katharine to Bishop Wright, April 14, 1909, ibid.
They would be heading to London: New York Times, May 2, 1909.
After two days in London: Paris Herald, May 4, 1909, May 5, 1909.
“We do not forget”: Wilbur Wright to Léon Bollée, February 11, 1909, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, LOC.
11. Causes for Celebration
After a rousing welcome at New York: New York Times, May 9, 1909, May 12, 1909; Paris Herald, May 12, 1909.
“Oh, there’s Daddy”: “Bishop Wright Kisses Sons as They Arrive,” Dayton News, no date, Wright Family Scrapbooks, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, LOC.
“Hello, Tom!”: “Strewn Carnations in Aviators’ Path,” ibid.
“bronzed and hard”: Paris Herald, May 12, 1909.
“I’m so glad to get home”: Dayton Journal, May 14, 1909.
Outside the crowd grew to more than ten thousand: Milton Wright, Diaries, 1857–1917, 693.
“real celebration”: Dayton Daily News, June 16, 1909.
“beehive of industry”: Dayton Herald, May 13, 1909.
Shortly after the lunch the entire party: New York Times, June 11, 1909; Washington Post, June 11, 1909; Paris Herald, June 11, 1909.
“I esteem it a great honor”: New York Times, June 11, 1909.
The whole story of America: Ibid., June 19, 1909.
On Main Street a “Court of Honor”: Dayton Daily News, June 16, 1909.
“Everywhere is the tri-colored bunting”: Ibid.
“It is a wonderful lesson”: Ibid.
The following morning, Thursday, June 17: Ibid., June 17, 1909, June 18, 1909.
A line of eighty automobiles: Dayton Journal, June 19, 1909.
There were laudatory speeches: Ibid., June 18, 1909, June 19, 1909.
“We have met this day”: Ibid., June 19, 1909.
“9 A.M.—Left their work in the aeroplane shop”: New York Times, June 18, 1909.
Less than forty-eight hours later: Dayton Journal, June 21, 1909.
It was six-thirty the extremely warm evening of June 26: Washington Herald, June 29, 1909; Chicago Inter-Ocean, June 19, 1909; Washington Evening Star, June 29, 1909; Dayton Herald, July 8, 1909.
“pawing the ground”: Washington Herald, June 29, 1909.
The Senate had adjourned: Ibid.
“open sesame to the Treasury vaults”: Ibid.
His hands and face were grimy: Washington Post, June 29, 1909.
“His coat was buttoned tightly”: Washington Herald, June 29, 1909.
The brothers were waiting: Ibid.
“She’s blowing at a 16-mile clip”: Washington Post, June 29, 1909.
“Take her back to the shed”: Washington Herald, June 29, 1909.
“There is always an element”: Washington Post, June 29, 1909.
“utter immunity of the two brothers”: Washington Herald, June 29, 1909.
“like pallbearers”: Ibid.
“I’m damned if I don’t admire”: Washington Post, June 29, 1909.
Wilbur had “no quarrels”: Washington Herald, June 30, 1909.
The crowd, noticeably smaller: Ibid.
“If it’s new, you have to get used to it”: Chicago Inter-Ocean, June 30, 1909.
“all manner of birds”: Bishop Wright’s diary, June 30, 1909, Milton Wright, Diaries, 1857–1917, 696.
Another day, when Orville took off again: New York Times, July 1, 1909; Washington Evening Star, July 1, 1909; Dayton Journal, July 1, 1909.
Then, on July 2: Undated, unsourced news article in Wright Family Scrapbooks, circa July 1909, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, LOC; Washington Herald, July 3, 1909.
Wilbur, who, seeing a photographer: Ibid.
faster than Wilbur had ever flown: Katharine to Bishop Wright, July 22, 1909, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, LOC.
“You have had all the details from the papers”: Hart O. Berg to Wilbur and Orville Wright, July 26, 1909, ibid.
“He told me that he had never been so thrown about”: Ibid.
From Washington, Katharine wrote: Katharine to Bishop Wright, July 27, 1909, ibid.
“I know him well”: New York Times, July 26, 1909.
All the same, throughout France: Ibid., July 27, 1909.
An estimated eight thousand spectators: Katharine Wright postcard to Bishop Wright, July 19, 1909, ibid.
On Friday, July 30: Paris Herald, July 31, 1909.
The price to be paid by the department was $30,000: New York Times, August 1, 1909.
“Orv finished the Fort Myer business”: Katharine Wright to Agnes Beck, August 5, 1909, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, LOC.
“congress of aviators”: Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1909.
they “had the frankness of schoolboys”: Roseberry, Glenn Curtiss, 354; Kelly, The Wright Brothers, 289.
“So I have gone back to my old plan”: Wilbur to Orville, September 18, 1909, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, LOC.
“I have been here about a week”: Wilbur to Katharine, September 26, 1909, ibid.
Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan was thick: New York Evening Telegram, September 29, 1909.
“Once his great aeroplane, so near the horizon”: New York Evening Sun, September 29, 1909.
Harper’s Weekly: Harper’s Weekly, October 9, 1909.
“Goes pretty well, Charlie”: New York Herald, September 30, 1909.
The morning of Monday, October 4: New York Journal, October 4, 1909; New York Evening Sun, October 4, 1909.
a tiny American flag fixed to the rudder: New York Journal, October 4, 1909.
“wonderful Wilbur Wright”: New York Evening Telegram, September 29, 1909.
“I went to a height just a little above the ferryboats”: New York Journal, October 4, 1909.
“awful noise”: New York Evening Telegram, September 29, 1909.
“I think I came back”: Ibid.
“I was staring with both eyes”: Ibid.
“A man who works”: Ibid.
“flew like a cannon ball”: Ibid.
“It’s a darn good thing”: “Bird Men Thrill Gotham,” uncited news article dated September 30, 1909, Wright Family Scrapbooks, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, LOC.
“We must get up clear of the belt of disturbed air”: Scientific American, October 23, 1909.
“On Monday I made a flight up the Hudson”: Wilbur to Bishop Wright, October 7, 1909, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, LOC.
The Comte de Lambert, having told almost no one: London Times, October 19, 1909; New York Times, October 19, 1909.
“And what do you think happened”: Edith Wharton to Sara Norton, October 20, 1909, Wharton, Letters of Edith Wharton, 192.
What she had neglected to say: London Times, October 19, 1909.
There also, to his great surprise, were Orville and Katharine: Ibid.
“I am only the jockey”: New York Herald, October 19, 1909.
“It is our view that morally”: Wilbur to Octave Chanute, January 20, 1910, McFarland, ed., The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Vol. 2, 979.
“I am afraid, my friend”: Octave Chanute to Wilbur, January 23, 1910, ibid., 981.
Chanute, had “turned up”: Ibid.
found Chanute’s letter “incredible”: Wilbur to Octave Chanute, January 29, 1910, ibid., 982.
“you are the only person”: Ibid., 983.
“mere pupils and dependents”: Ibid., 984.
“Neither in 1901”: Ibid., 982–83.
“If anything can be done”: Ibid., 986.
“My brother and I do not fo
rm”: Wilbur to Octave Chanute, April 28, 1910, ibid., 991.
“I hope, upon my return”: Octave Chanute to Wilbur Wright, May 14, 1910, ibid., 995.
“They are the imperturbable”: Ruhl, “Up in the Air with Orville,” Collier’s Weekly, July 2, 1910.
“Pau was a mighty interesting place”: Ibid.
“a highly significant fact”: New York Times, April 8, 1910.
“The insistence of Professor Bell”: Christian Science Monitor, April 8, 1910.
Wednesday, May 25, 1910: Bishop Wright’s diary, 1910, McFarland ed., The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Vol. 2, 996; Milton Wright, Diaries, 1857–1917, 714; Dayton Daily News, May 26, 1910.
“One minute he would be grazing”: Dayton Daily News, May 26, 1910.
“Higher, Orville, higher!”: See McFarland, ed., The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Vol. 2, 996, footnote 5.
Epilogue
“When we think what we might have accomplished”: Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 447.
His writings: Wilbur Wright, Aeronautics, January 1911, 3–4, 35, as cited in Jakab and Young, eds., The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright, 169.
“come home white”: McMahon, The Wright Brothers, 266.
Wilbur’s one known expression: Ibid.
dictated his will: A copy of Wilbur Wright’s will is on deposit in the Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright at the LOC.
“Wilbur is no better”: Milton Wright, Diaries, 1857–1917, 748.
“sinking”: Ibid., 749.
“A short life, full of consequences”: Ibid.
a thousand telegrams: Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 449.
According to one Dayton paper: Ibid.
“Wilbur is dead and buried!”: Milton Wright, Diaries, 1857–1917, 750.
the three of them moved: Ibid., 784.
Orville treated them to a summer-long vacation: Ibid., 810–13.
bought an island: Miller, ed., Wright Reminiscences, 137; Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 478.
One October Saturday he marched: Milton Wright, Diaries, 1857–1917, October 24, 1914, 792.
In September of 1910: Renstrom, Wilbur and Orville Wright, 29.
A few weeks later: Ibid.
experimenting with a new Wright hydroplane: May–June 1914, ibid., 34.
In 1913, within two months: June–July 1913, ibid., 119.
he barely escaped being killed: August 20, 1914, ibid., 120.
Orville had hoped: Jakab and Young, eds., The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright, 218–19.
In his will, Wilbur had left: Miller, ed., Wright Reminiscences, 63; Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 450.
His total wealth at the time of his death: Roach, The Wright Company: From Invention to Industry, 202, footnote 161, quoting an article in the Dayton Herald, “Inventory Puts Wright Estate at $1,067,105.73,” March 18, 1948; Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 525.
“All the money anyone needs”: Kelly, The Wright Brothers, 5.
“Professor Samuel P. Langley”: Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 487; Kelly, The Wright Brothers, 311.
Before the aerodrome was sent back: Kelly, The Wright Brothers, 311–15.
Earlier, when he and Wilbur: Ibid., 307.
In 1928, Orville sent the 1903 Flyer: Ibid., 308.
“to the Wrights belongs the credit”: Ibid.
In an article titled: Orville Wright, “The Mythical Whitehead Flight,” U.S. Air Services, August 1945, 9, as cited in Jakab and Young, eds., The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright, 187–88.
Lindbergh made a point of coming to Dayton: New York Times, June 23, 1927; Chicago Tribune, June 23, 1927; see also telegram from Orville Wright congratulating Lindbergh on his flight and extending invitation to visit Dayton, June 10, 1927, Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, LOC.
“We dared to hope we had invented”: Kelly, “Orville Wright Takes Look Back on 40 Years Since First Flight; Despite Air War, Has No Regrets,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 7, 1943; Jakab and Young, eds., The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright, 261–62; Miller, Wright Reminiscences, 65–66.
“polite almost to a fault”: Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 196.
Orville was also known to drive: Miller, ed., Wright Reminiscences, 16–17; Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys, 513.
On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong: Hansen, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, 527.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Manuscript and Archival Sources
Collections of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, Dayton, Ohio.
Local History Division, Dayton Metropolitan Library, Dayton, Ohio.
Benson Ford Research Library, Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Michigan.
Fred C. Kelly Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries, Syracuse, New York.
Byron Newton Papers, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.
Outer Banks Historical Center, Manteo, North Carolina.
Wright Family Papers, Special Collections and Archives Department, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio.
Milton Wright Collection, United Brethren Historical Center, Huntington University, Huntington, Indiana.
Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, including family correspondence of Bishop Milton and Katharine Wright, Library of Congress (LOC), Washington, DC.
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