Welcome home!
Main Street and Third on day of great Homecoming Celebration, June 17, 1909.
Probably nothing stirred the Wrights quite so deeply as their welcome when they returned to Dayton from their foreign triumphs. The “homecoming” lasted two days, June 17 and 18, 1909. Whistles blew, bands played, bells rang, men, women and children paraded. During the celebration practically all business in Dayton was suspended.
Orville and Wilbur on second day of Dayton demonstration.
Wilbur and Orville rode to the celebration in a carriage with their old friends, Ed Sines, boyhood newspaper partner of Orville, and Ed Ellis, a long-time friend of Wilbur. The Wrights reviewed a parade in their honor and in the evening witnessed a spectacular display of fireworks. The celebration continued the next day when one of the features was the formation of a huge living American flag by 2,500 school children, wearing red, white and blue. Immediately after the celebration Wilbur and Orville left for Washington to complete the trials for the Army at Fort Myer. The contract with the government had specified that the plane must do forty miles an hour. Actually, Orville completed one 10-mile flight in 14 minutes at approximately 43 miles per hour. The Wright plane was accepted by the Army at the conclusion of these tests.
Michelin Trophy awarded to Wright brothers for achievements in France.
{Medal from the Aero Club of America.}
This trophy from the Aero Club of Sarthe, France, was placed in niche in Wright home.
Immediately after the flights at Fort Myer, Orville and Katherine left for Germany. His purpose was to train pilots for the German company which had been organized. He made many flights on that trip, some of them witnessed by members of the royal family and on one of which the Crown Prince was a passenger. On one he raised the world’s altitude record from 100 meters to 172 meters, roughly 550 feet. Shortly thereafter he flew for one hour, thirty-five minutes and forty-seven seconds with a passenger, thereby establishing a new world’s record for a flight with a passenger.
While Orville was in Germany in 1909, Wilbur was making spectacular flights around New York. In one of these he flew 21 miles from Governor’s Island up the Hudson River to Grant’s Tomb and back.
To train pilots to fly their planes the Wrights opened a flying school on Huffman Prairie where those early and precarious flights had been made. Here a notable group of flyers received their training. One of them was Henry H. Arnold who became Commanding General of the Army Air Corps in World War II.
In May, 1910, Wilbur made his last flight as pilot. Shortly afterward he and Orville flew for a brief time together. It was the only flight when the brothers were both in the air at the same time. Later the same day Orville took up his 82-year-old father. In the spirit of the Wrights the Bishop’s only comment was ... “Higher! Higher!” Orville’s final flight as pilot was made in 1918 from South Field near Dayton.
Orville Wright meeting with members of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
After an illness of three weeks, Wilbur Wright died on May 30, 1912, in his forty-fifth year. The whole world mourned him. Thus, in the prime of life, with a record of achievement privileged to few, passed a notable figure in American creative history. Orville Wright survived his brother for 36 years, passing away January 30, 1948. Throughout his life he maintained his active interest in aviation, was a life member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and a frequent and honored visitor to Wright Field, the great Air Force research center named in honor of the Wright brothers.
Always interested in new developments, Orville Wright visits Wright Field.
The “Kitty Hawk,” Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
The Wright brothers have been honored by many nations. Medals, trophies, monuments tell in part, at least, the story of their great achievement. The original Kitty Hawk aeroplane holds the place of honor in the aeronautical exhibit of Smithsonian Institution, Washington. A replica of the Kitty Hawk in the Science Museum at South Kensington, London, speaks for the British nation in honoring the Wrights. Monuments have been erected at Kitty Hawk, N. C., at Le Mans, France, and at Dayton. And now Wright Hall with its restored 1905 plane takes its place as one of the efforts of a grateful world to honor one of man’s greatest achievements.
Wright Memorial, Kitty Hawk, N. C.
Monument to Wrights, Le Mans, France.
Wright Hall in Carillon Park houses restored 1905 Wright aeroplane.
On the walls of Wright Hall is inscribed this tribute to the achievements and to the personal character of two great Americans:
In honored memory of Wilbur and Orville Wright, citizens of Dayton and of the world. Through original research, the Wright brothers acquired scientific knowledge and developed theories of aerodynamics which, with their invention of aileron control, enabled them in 1903 to build and fly, at Kitty Hawk, the first power-driven, man-carrying aeroplane capable of flight.
Their further development of the aeroplane gave it a capacity for service which established aviation as one of the great forward steps in human progress.
As scientists, Wilbur and Orville Wright discovered the secret of flight. As inventors, builders and flyers, they brought aviation to the world.
Their courage, perseverance and ability are comparable only to the magnitude of their achievement. The aeroplane will stand for all time as one of those few truly great inventions which have shaped the life and destiny of man.
CARILLON PARK
DAYTON, OHIO
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