Out in West Dayton live the Wrights—Orville, his father, Bishop Wright, and Miss Katherine Wright, the sister, in a small, unpretentious frame house. Orville Wright and his father and sister were in the old homestead when the flood swept in.
The aged father was placed in a boat, but instead of conveying him to a place of safety, the boatman carried him to a house nearby where he was marooned until the waters subsided three days later. Orville Wright and his sister escaped to safety on an auto truck, being carried through four feet of water.
In fleeing, however, the inventor of the aeroplane was compelled to abandon the small factory adjoining the homestead in which were stored all of the originals from which the plans for the air craft were perfected. Had these gone, there would have remained nothing of the priceless data save what exists in the brain of Orville Wright.
At the height of the flood a house adjoining the factory took fire. There were no means to fight the flames. For several hours the factory was in peril, but a special providence protected it and it came out of both flood and fire unscathed.
"We were lucky," said Orville Wright, whimsically, on Monday. "It is the irony of fate that at the critical moment I was not able to get away with my folks on one of my own machines. However, we came through all right and there doesn't seem to be anything more to be said."
Just one week after the coming of the deluge Governor Cox entered his home city for the first time, accompanied by several of the members of the Ohio Flood Relief Committee.
Governor Cox praised Mr. Patterson for his invaluable part in the relief work. "Mr. Patterson is the one man who is in the eye of America more than any one other man," said the Governor.
Mr. Patterson, after he returned Tuesday night in company with H. E. Talbott, chief engineer, from a tour of sections of Dayton that were swept by the flood, issued a statement in which he said:
"Dayton is facing one of the gravest problems that any city of the world ever faced and we want the world to know we need money and food for our stricken people."
In speaking of a tentative plan to ask the Federal Government for a loan of from $20,000,000 to $40,000,000 to be used in reconstruction work, Mr. Patterson said: