The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright

by Crouch, Tom D.

  Using the Harper’s piece as a jumping-off point, Kelly continued to write, sending Orville long sections of manuscript for comment. Almost without realizing it, Orville agreed to let Kelly produce a book with the understanding that he would have an opportunity to go over every word.

  As one family member commented, “writing a book with Orville Wright looking over your shoulder would not be an easy task.” Kelly had to prod and beg for Orville’s response to each new section. At one point, with the manuscript half finished, Orville asked Kelly to call a halt, offering to pay him for the time spent so far. The author was silent for a moment, then asked Orville if he would have been willing to give up on the morning of December 17, 1903. Orville chuckled, and returned to work on the manuscript.15

  Determined to avoid Findley’s experience, Kelly sought to guarantee Orville’s continued cooperation and eventual permission to publish the book as an authorized biography. The answer was to put Orville in his debt. There was an obvious way to accomplish that. Kelly wrote to Charles Abbot, suggesting that he would be willing to assist in resolving the long-standing dispute with the Smithsonian by negotiating a statement that would satisfy Orville Wright.16

  Kelly knew precisely what would work—the publication of the differences between the 1903 Aerodrome and the 1914 machine flown at Hammondsport, plus a disavowal of the 1914 Zahm report. With considerable finesse, he moved Abbot toward just such a statement. It finally appeared, as Orville had demanded, in a volume of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections on October 24, 1942, preceded by a note:

  This paper has been submitted to Dr. Orville Wright, and under date of October 8, 1942, he states that the paper as now prepared will be acceptable to him if given adequate publication.17

  The long feud was over, although Orville did not say so to Abbot. Officially, he did not respond to the publication. Unofficially, however, he took the immediate steps required to ensure the eventual presentation of the 1903 machine to the Smithsonian.

  Officials of the Science Museum in London, frightened by the threat of war during the Munich crisis, had removed the airplane from exhibition for safekeeping in September 1938. It was returned to display in October once the crisis had passed, but went back into storage for good with the onset of the Blitz in July 1940.18

  On December 8, 1943, Orville wrote to inform the director of the Science Museum that he would be asking for the return of the machine once the war was over and it could be safely transported back across the Atlantic. He planned to announce his decision in the presence of President Roosevelt at the 1943 Collier Trophy dinner, to be held in Washington in honor of the fortieth anniversary of powered flight. When Roosevelt was unable to attend, Orville remained silent—and the Smithsonian was left guessing.

  The letter to the Science Museum was not made public. It did, however, fulfill the condition of Orville’s 1937 will for the return of the aircraft. To make doubly sure there would be no misunderstanding, Orville spelled out his wishes in a new will, never signed, that he was developing with the assistance of a lawyer at the time of his death:

  I give and bequeath to the U.S. National Museum of Washington, D.C., for exhibition in the National Capital only, the Wright aeroplane (now in the Science Museum, London, England) which flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on the 17th of December, 1903.19

  Fred Kelly had triumphed. Perhaps because of his assistance in settling the Smithsonian dispute, perhaps simply out of friendship, Orville finally approved the manuscript for publication. It was not what he had hoped for, but it did tell the story in relatively straightforward fashion. Released by Harcourt, Brace on May 13, 1943, The Wright Brothers: A Biography Authorized by Orville Wright has remained in print for over forty years.

  Aging, but satisfied that the Smithsonian controversy was behind him at last, Orville remained active and visible throughout World War II. The round of banquets, honors, awards, and dedications peaked as the fortieth anniversary of powered flight approached in 1943. He pursued a private bit of war work in the laboratory, laboring to develop a code machine for the armed forces. At the end of the war, President Truman honored him with the Award of Merit for distinguished service to the NACA throughout the conflict.

  With an air war being waged around the globe, reporters came in increasing numbers to ask if Orville had any regrets about the invention of the airplane. When they had put that question in 1918, he had assured them that he did not; he and his brother had always assumed that the possibility of death from the skies would deter war. He still didn’t have any regrets, but he had grown more cynical over the years. In answer to his friend Lester Gardner’s letter of congratulations on the occasion of his seventy-fourth birthday in August 1945, he wrote: “I once thought the aeroplane would end wars. Now I wonder if the aeroplane and the atomic bomb can do it.”20

  With the coming of peace, his old friend Edward Deeds involved him in a major restoration project. In 1946, Deeds, now chairman of the board of the National Cash Register Company, decided to build a park to commemorate the role the Miami Valley had played in the history of transportation. A special building devoted to the achievements of Wilbur and Orville Wright would be the centerpiece.

  He approached Orville early in 1947, outlining his plans and requesting assistance in choosing a Flyer to be included in the display. Orville first suggested that Deeds obtain a replica of the 1903 machine. The original craft had been removed from storage in England, but, at the request of the Science Museum, Orville had agreed not to demand its return officially until a new set of drawings and an accurate replica had been completed. Perhaps the English would be willing to build a second replica for the city of Dayton.

  After thinking it over for a few days, Orville contacted Deeds a second time, suggesting that an original airplane of much greater significance to Dayton—the 1905 machine flown at Huffman Prairie—might be available. Deeds was enthusiastic, and ordered Carl Beust, head of his patent department, to place the company facilities at Orville’s disposal.

  The story of the preservation and restoration of the historic 1905 Flyer begins in 1911. The old craft was abandoned in camp when the brothers left Kitty Hawk in 1908. Orville had considered bringing the pieces back with him when he returned to the camp with the new glider in 1911, but decided against it when he saw how much damage time, the elements, and souvenir hunters had done.

  Pieces of the 1905 airplane had been pulled from crates and scattered across the sand. Wild animals and vacationers had rooted through the pile and made a discouraging mess of things. When they broke camp at the end of that short season, yet another historic machine, the 1911 glider, was left behind with the tattered remnants of its 1905 predecessor.

  Soon after Orville’s return from the Outer Banks that year, the Wrights received a letter from Zenas Crane, a wealthy Massachusetts paper manufacturer, requesting that they donate one of their old machines to the Berkshire Museum, established by him in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Orville replied that nothing of the sort was available. But he added that if Crane was interested, he might be able to hire members of the Kill Devil Hills lifesaving crew to gather up the various scattered parts and ship them to Pittsfield.

  Crane followed Orville’s advice. For a $25 shipping fee, he became the proud possessor of the entire 1911 glider, and the wings, rudder, elevator, and various bits of wood and wire of the world’s first practical airplane.

  Crane had only the slightest notion which two machines he had salvaged and he knew almost nothing about Wright airplanes. Fortunately, the lifesavers who had done the packing had separated the parts of the two aircraft. Just as fortunately, Crane set his carpenters to work “reassembling” the 1911 parts first. If one machine had to be sacrificed, the world’s first soaring machine was marginally more expendable than the world’s first genuine airplane.

  Working from photographs, Crane’s workmen cut, bent, and twisted the 1911 glider parts into a rough facsimile of the 1902 glider. Orville could make no sense of the photographs
of the reconstruction that Crane provided—only when he visited the Berkshire Museum did the awful truth dawn on him. He absolutely refused to give Crane permission to exhibit the craft, which was eventually scrapped. The historic 1911 glider was gone forever.

  With a clear notion of just how valuable the remaining bits and pieces of the 1905 machine were, Crane, his relatives, and friends spent the next thirty years pleading for Orville’s assistance in mounting a restoration effort. Orville had the engine of the 1905 craft in his Dayton laboratory, along with an assortment of other parts that could be used in refurbishing the machine. And he had received a number of letters over the years from individuals requesting that he identify the parts they had found in the old Wright camp while vacationing on the Outer Banks during the period 1908–11. Those parts would be a valuable addition to a restoration effort.

  Orville held back, refusing to become involved and discouraging Crane from proceeding on his own. He was convinced that the Pittsfield workmen who had unintentionally butchered the 1911 craft should not be allowed to attempt the same thing with the 1905 machine.

  He had not forgotten the parts stored in the basement of the museum, however. Deeds’s offer provided him with an opportunity to see that the job was finally done the right way. The first step would have to be handled with tact. After years of discouraging Zenas Crane, Orville would now have to approach the Berkshire Museum requesting that it turn the parts over to him.

  Stuart C. Henry, the new director, proved cooperative. Crane was dead, and his museum had evolved into a gallery specializing in American art, with a small natural history collection and no serious interest in airplanes. By mid-December 1947, the remains of the 1905 airplane were back in Dayton.

  Orville had already reassembled most of the parts of the 1905 engine, with the exception of the crankshaft and flywheel, which had been employed in the 1926 restoration of the 1903 airplane. Serious work on the airplane itself began early in 1947. Harvey Geyer, an experienced mechanic who had worked for the Wright Company from 1910 to 1912, volunteered to undertake the job under Orville’s supervision.

  As Deeds noted: “Mr. Wright, in characteristic fashion, spared no pains to insure authenticity in every detail.” That was an understatement—Orville leaped into the task.21

  The 1905 airplane was unveiled at Deeds Carillon Park with considerable fanfare in June 1950. Orville did not live to see that day. He suffered his first heart attack on October 10, 1947, while running up the front steps of the main NCR building to keep an appointment. Hospitalized for four days, he spent his time teasing the nurse and working out a means to improve the efficiency and comfort of the oxygen tents. He was released on October 14, after being cautioned to slow down.22

  The restoration of the 1905 Wright airplane for Deeds Park in Dayton was the last great project of Orville’s life.

  He spent the morning of January 27, 1948, fixing the doorbell at Hawthorn Hill. His second heart attack came after he had arrived at the laboratory. Miss Beck immediately summoned a physician from across the street and called Carrie Grumbach at the house. Carrie reached the laboratory before the ambulance pulled away. Orville Wright died in his bed at Miami Valley Hospital three days later, at 10:30 P.M. on January 30. He was seventy-seven years old.

  Edward Deeds took charge of the funeral arrangements. The choice of a minister to conduct the services for a national figure who had not been to church or shown the slightest interest in religion for over half a century was a problem. Orville had once remarked that there were only two clergymen in Dayton whom he admired—a black preacher from the West Side and the Reverend Charles Lyon Seasholes, pastor of the First Baptist Church. Seasholes it would be.

  Distinguished Americans flocked to Dayton for the funeral at the First Baptist Church on February 2. The leaders of the official delegation included General Carl Spaatz, Chief of Staff of the newly created U.S. Air Force; John Victory, long-time secretary of the NACA; Dr. Francis W. Reichelderfer, chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau; and Alexander Wetmore, the new secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

  Reverend Seasholes’s eulogy summed up what most Americans had always thought about Orville Wright. A genius, he was also “a man who was just one of folks like us—middle class, mid-Western American, with simple, devout parents, and simple and modest way of life.”23

  Four jet fighters circled over Dayton as the funeral cortege drove toward Woodland Cemetery that afternoon. Flags flew at half mast from coast to coast; local schools were dismissed at noon. As they laid him to rest, the four jets swooped low over the cemetery in formation, dipped their wings, and flew off. All of them—Susan, Milton, Wilbur, Katharine, and now Orville—were together again.24

  Reporters hounded the family over the next week. What was to become of the 1903 airplane? For the moment, there was no answer to that question. Officials of the Science Museum had not made Orville’s 1943 letter public, and he had not announced his intentions.

  Family and friends assumed that Orville had named Mabel Beck as his executor, and waited patiently for the secretary to produce a will. When nothing happened, Harold Miller proceeded to Orville’s bank to check on its whereabouts. Bank officials then contacted Orville’s lawyer, Charles Funkhouser, who produced the will. To everyone’s surprise, Orville had named Miller and Harold Steeper, both nephews by marriage, as his executors.

  He left an estate slightly in excess of $1 million. For the most part, the executors’ duties were simple enough. There was a large $300,000 bequest to Oberlin, Katharine’s alma mater; the remainder of the estate was broken up into bequests for members of the family, old friends, and employees.

  The treatment of the historic materials that were part of the estate presented far greater problems. What was to become of the vast collection of letters, notebooks, scrapbooks, and photographs chronicling the invention of the airplane? The will charged the executors with the disposition of those materials.

  So long as Albert Zahm had served on the staff of the Library of Congress, that repository of the papers of great Americans had been out of the question. Soon after Zahm’s retirement in 1945, however, Orville had opened discussions with Archibald McLeish, the distinguished poet who was serving as Librarian of Congress.25

  Immediately after the funeral, Miller and Steeper received word from the Library that the papers ought to be regarded as a national treasure. The Library of Congress it would be—with one stipulation. Some means would have to be found to publish sections of the papers.

  Marvin W. McFarland, a young scholar fresh from wartime service with the Army Air Forces, was placed in charge of the program. The original plan called for the publication of pamphlets containing items from the collection on special topics—a booklet on propeller research, another on the wind-tunnel tests, and so on. What finally evolved was far more useful—an edited set of the most important materials from the collection that would enable the brothers to tell the complete story of the invention of the airplane in their own words. Initially planned as a three-volume set, later reduced to two, The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright were published by McGraw-Hill in 1953. They remain today as one of the finest sets of published American historical papers—a monument to the scholarship of McFarland and his colleagues.

  The Library of Congress had decided to take only those materials relating to the history of flight. As a result, a wealth of purely family items—letters, papers, photos, and documents tracing the history of the Wrights back to their roots in seventeenth-century New England—remained in Ivonette and Harold Miller’s basement in Dayton for another quarter of a century. On May 2, 1974, the Millers and the other surviving heirs of the Orville Wright estate donated this second major collection to a local facility named, appropriately enough, The Wright State University.

  Determining the most appropriate home for the world’s first airplane was more complex. When Miller and Steeper studied the 1937 will, they discovered the passage deeding the machine to the Science Museum, unless Orville had re
voked that clause with a letter indicating a new disposition. Judge Love of the Montgomery County Probate Court ordered Harold Miller to look for such a document. He began in the most obvious place—with Mabel Beck.

  Miss Beck admitted that such a letter existed, but refused to produce it. Miller left the office at once and called Earl Findley in Washington, who, in turn, called Miss Beck, reminding her of her obligation to respect Orville’s wishes. She turned the letter over to Miller at a meeting in Edward Deeds’s office the following day. The news that Orville Wright had relented and asked that the world’s first airplane be sent to the Smithsonian was announced the same afternoon.26

  There was jubilation at the Smithsonian. When the new secretary, Alexander Wetmore, had first been informed of the stipulation regarding the airplane in the 1937 will, he had remarked to General “Hap” Arnold that, “So far as I know, no such instrument [a letter calling the machine back to the U.S.] was ever issued.”27 Believing that the airplane would stay in England, Wetmore planned to have a full-scale replica of the 1903 Wright Flyer constructed for the museum.

  Once the executors announced the existence of the letter, Wetmore immediately opened discussions with the heirs, and with the British government, to arrange the return as expeditiously as possible. Problems still remained to be solved. The executors and the lawyer for the estate insisted on steps to ensure that the Wright heirs would not be liable for an enormous inheritance tax on the priceless relic.

  The final arrangement, approved by the Internal Revenue Service, called for the executors to sue the heirs for possession of the machine. This clarification of ownership was required to ensure that no heir would be able to return to the executors with a claim that he or she had been cheated out of a share of money that might have been made from the sale of the airplane to the highest bidder, or through exhibition fees. The executors stated in open court that, as the aircraft was beyond price, it would be sold to the United States National Museum for the sum of one dollar, thus freeing the estate of any potential tax obligation for the artifact. The people of the United States were the ultimate beneficiaries.28