The Wright Brothers - Page 63/72

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.