Carrie is taking good care of Orv—that is some comfort to me, at least. Heaven knows she’s as devoted to him as I am. Such a hard worker too, ever since she came to us as a little spit of a girl. Even when she comes out to Kansas City on “vacation,” it’s as much as I can manage to shoo her out of the kitchen. If I don’t keep a close eye on her, she sneaks off to make a batch of her special orange marmalade or some other dish she knows I’ll like. How she finds the time and energy to write so many letters I’ll never know—but am I ever grateful that she does! If it weren’t for her and a few other loyal friends, I would feel completely cut off from my old life. My own record as a correspondent is not what it ought to be, I fear. Writing, which used to be my delight, has become an almost forgotten art with me.
Carrie’s visit sticks out in my memory because she happened to arrive just after I had my new will drawn up. Some way it seemed right and fitting to have a friend from home by my side as I made provision for disposing of my worldly goods—such as they are. Harry has always insisted on keeping our accounts separate—he wouldn’t let me invest a penny of my savings to help buy the Star. A very safe and sensible investment it would have been too, as things turned out. But I got even with him: I left him my entire estate free and clear—apart from a few small bequests to Carrie, Lorin, and other special people. Orv will get a thousand dollars when I go to my reward. Of course, Little Brother has abundant means of his own—but I could never turn my back on him the way he has on me.
In some strange way, the work of toting up every one of my possessions, drafting my last will and testament, having it witnessed and notarized and everything—all of that made me feel less secure about facing the future instead of more. Dear, sweet, passionate Harry—sometimes I almost wish he didn’t love me quite as much as he says he does. He has already lost one beloved partner; what if something should happen to me? That scares me to think about. Love conquers all—all except death, as I know from bitter experience! “Omnia vincit amor.” How does the rest of the verse go? “Et nos cedamus amori”—“Let us give in to love.” Aye, there’s the rub! We have given in to love with our whole hearts, Harry and I—and we must both take our chances, it seems.
No sooner had we sent Carrie home than we packed up the car and set out for the Colorado mountains. Harry and Isabel used to vacation in Estes Park, until she became too ill to travel. When he proposed the trip, I jumped in with both feet. The altitude in the Rockies made me unable to climb or do much else, but we took some dandy automobile rides—and Long’s Peak Inn is nearly as nice and comfortable as the camp on Georgian Bay. All the time we were there, I couldn’t stop thinking about Orv summering on the island without me. To think that it had only been a year since we celebrated “our” birthday together with Harry at the bay. At least Orv had Griff Brewer to keep him company—and I was so glad that Griff was taking charge of the flying machine and seeing it set up at the Science Museum.
On the drive home from Colorado at the end of August, Harry and I had the surprise of our lives. He was called up at half past four in the morning, at North Platte, Nebraska, to hear that Mr. Kirkwood, the principal owner of the Star, had died unexpectedly at Saratoga, New York. By a quarter to six, we were on our way in a dense, ghastly fog, having had a good breakfast at the Union Pacific station. We drove five hundred miles that day and pulled up at the Star office at nine o’clock that night. We had a busy week, with out-of-town people coming for the funeral. We had nine to dinner one night and eleven the next—all in the hot weather too, but we survived.
Once the excitement died down, the staff had to consider the question of how to take up Mr. Kirkwood’s stock in the company. Harry and his associates had begged, borrowed, and mortgaged themselves to the limit when they bought the paper the year before. The thought of taking on still more debt was more or less paralyzing. But it all turned out very happily. Harry even had a nice surprise when his next paycheck came in. He and two other men had a very substantial increase in salaries, on the ground that they had more responsibility. It has really been a fairy story for Harry, who has worked all his life for the Star on just a moderate salary. I tell him I brought him good luck! However, we’re not spending any of the extra money. We are busy plunking it away for a rainy day.
Harry
Mr. Kirkwood’s death, coming on the heels of his wife’s, might have doomed the staff’s dream of running the show ourselves. He had invested two and a half million dollars of his personal fortune in the Star, on top of the millions the bank had loaned us to purchase the paper. Fortunately, the directors had had the foresight to take out a substantial policy on Mr. Kirkwood’s life. That enabled us to buy back his stock in the company without having to borrow to the hilt. Katharine and I received our share of the insurance money, but we never actually saw it: the bank took everything before we got our hands on it. Not that we have any reason to complain. Assuming all continues to go well, Star stock will be very valuable in a few years’ time.
I admit I had my doubts about Mr. Kirkwood’s fitness to run a great newspaper. Being the son-in-law of the founder was hardly sufficient qualification in itself. In the end, though, he did both the Star and Mr. Nelson proud. Not long before he died, he paid to have a Tiffany stained-glass window installed in the Nelsons’ honor at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral. He may have lacked the Old Man’s genius, but his heart was in the right place. When all is said and done, Mr. Kirkwood treated the staff more than fairly. How many other newspaper proprietors would have paid for my trip abroad after Isabel died? The employee stock-ownership plan was his creation, and he left the Star in a stronger financial position than it had been in for many years. It’s thanks to him that Katharine and I are our own masters now—or will be as soon as we get the mortgage paid off.
Katharine and I are fortunate in so many ways. We have every reason to feel optimistic about the future. If only the past didn’t weigh her down so heavily. Orville will never relent, I fear, and she can never let him go.
Orville
Kate wrote to me any number of times after she moved away. There was no mistaking the handwriting on the envelopes—the script neat and round and carefully formed, just like when she was learning her letters as a little girl. But the Kansas City postmark struck me like a slap in the face. I never could bring myself to open the letters, let alone answer them. Call me hard-hearted or what you will—as far as I’m concerned, Kate as good as died the day she walked out of this house. Carrie spent a couple of weeks in Kansas City that first summer. She keeps up a regular correspondence with Swes, as do Griff, Anne, and Stef. Between them, they tell me everything I want to know about her married life.
It’s not as if I don’t miss her, God knows. When Colonel Lindbergh was here and the house was overrun with gawkers and reporters, I’d have given my eyeteeth to have her back. Kate would have sent those hooligans packing in two minutes flat. Under the circumstances, I had no choice but to ask our honored guest to appeal to the trespassers to leave. He did it with good grace, I’ll say that for Mr. Lindbergh. And he has always had the common courtesy to acknowledge that he is riding on the Wright brothers’ coattails—which is evidently more than can be expected from the Smithsonian outfit. But I suppose the Wright brothers are ancient history now to most people. Watching Mr. Lindbergh fly over the city that day in the Spirit of St. Louis, I could hardly believe that twenty-three years had passed since Will and I made our first practice flights over Huffman Prairie.
Colonel Lindbergh was born and bred to take center stage. The public can’t get its fill of him, and neither can the reporters. Well, he can have his “Lindbergh-mania,” and much good may it do him. Will and I tired of “Wright-mania” fast enough, I reckon. Those interminable ticker-tape parades, luncheons, dinners, speeches, ceremonies—they were just a sideshow, an annoying distraction. Our work was the main thing. We never went in for self-advertising. We never sought fame or wealth. All we ever wanted was our just deserts. I ask you, is it right that the whole c
ountry was going gaga over Lindbergh at the very moment I was packing up the original Wright flyer to be shipped to England? Is it right that I should still be fighting for Will’s and my work to be recognized, while those who profited from it are showered with accolades?
Katharine
Poor Orv! No matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to stay out of the headlines. Harry and I had to laugh when we read about the dedication of Wright Field a year or so ago. Bubbo looked fit to be tied in the newspaper photos, as if he were performing an unpleasant duty—which was undoubtedly true! The US Army has finally done the boys proud, and I for one am grateful for it. But goodness me, how Orv does hate making a spectacle of himself! It must have been like pulling teeth for him to watch President Coolidge present the Hubbard Medal to Colonel Lindbergh. I can just see him on that stage at the Washington Auditorium, sitting as quiet as a church mouse and hoping no one would notice him for all the other dignitaries.
Harry and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary in November of 1927—a milestone! I remember thinking that it had been a happy year on the whole, but all the time I’d had a cloud over me. Harry still doesn’t know, I hope, how much I worry over Orv. It does no good, but I can’t forget him and I don’t want to forget him. Dear Little Brother! There is no use to write to him. He returned my last letter unopened. It was a long time before I could tell Harry about it, and I have told no one else but Griff. It is so incredible. To think that we used to shun reporters like the plague, and now I depend on them for news of my own brother!
Lulu is the only member of the family we see on a more or less regular basis out here. Poor Lou—she has been almost a vagabond since Reuch died and hardly calls Kansas City home any longer, I believe. She is unsettled and doesn’t know just what to do with herself. We still get together for Christmas with her and her children and their families. There are several small children in the outfit, and we all enjoy their enthusiasm over the Christmas tree. When I was a girl, I resented Lou for taking Reuch away from home—but she was lovely to me when I told her about Harry’s proposal of marriage. I know she would have been pleased to accompany Ivonette at the wedding, if I had asked her to. Lou is a real musician. I used to keep the Steinway piano in the living room tuned for her—she plays such fine music always and makes no virtue of it at all!
Kansas City would feel much more like home if only Reuch were still here to keep me company. Harry includes me in everything, of course, but the newspaper is a man’s world, and I don’t have much to contribute to it anyway—though he does try to share it with me and always asks my opinion on whatever topic he happens to be writing about. But I do so miss my family and friends—women friends especially. I like women awfully well, in spite of some of our shortcomings! If circumstances were different, I wouldn’t think twice about taking part in an interesting, worthwhile organization like the Association of University Women—only I fear it would be like rubbing salt in the wound for Orv to see my name in print.
For all my disappointments, I find life here interesting, and all the Star connections are likewise. Harry is pure gold. I never saw such unselfishness and consideration for other people, and he is always cheerful and good-natured. I was afraid I would find it quiet and dull out here after all the excitement we have had in our family for years. Not a bit of it! What with our trying to own the Star on a shoestring and the owner of the rival newspaper suing to upset the sale, it hasn’t been boring for a minute. After what I went through with Pop and the boys, it feels like second nature to be caught up in another lawsuit—and we are having a picnic seeing how much money we can save, to put into the Star. It is a wonderful thing for Harry. In just a year or two, he will be independent—unless the Star loses the lawsuit or business blows up entirely.
I always seem to be in the thick of something, and I don’t really mind if life is unpredictable. I would find it awfully dull if everything ran along in a groove. Harry and pretty much everybody else think I am happy in Kansas City—and I am happy—I am—I am! And yet—part of me will always be back home in Dayton, wishing I never had left and searching in vain for Little Brother. That sadness casts a shadow over me every waking hour, whatever I do and wherever I go. It just goes to show that you can never step into another person’s shoes. It’s as Jessie Rittenhouse says in my favorite poem:
I looked through others’ windows
On an enchanted earth,
But out of my own window—
Solitude and dearth.
And yet there is a mystery
I cannot understand—
That others through my window
See an enchanted land.
Orville
A year or so ago, Anne McCormick came marching into the house to have it out with me. She wanted to discuss Kate and thought she knew me well enough to talk me around to her point of view. Nothing doing. I told her the same thing I told Harry when he informed me of their engagement: it was on account of Kate that I refrained from getting married thirty years ago. If she had not made it as plain as day that she didn’t want Ullam and me to run off and leave her, and insisted on staying home and looking after us, I would have gone out with the girls like any other fellow my age. Anne just laughed and said that was about as flimsy an excuse as she had ever heard. She said I was simply making myself unhappy and hurting Katharine without any real reason. Hurting Katharine, for pity’s sake! As if I was the one who skipped out on her and not the other way around.
I am well aware of how the situation looks to other people, most particularly members of my own family. What not a single one of them seems to understand, or even care to understand, is how it feels to me—how Kate’s betrayal gnaws away at me day after day, how it turns my heart to stone and makes me never want to trust a living soul again. Swes wasn’t just my sister, she was my friend, my partner, my protector, my better half. Only Kate knew everything I had been through—the accident, Will’s death, the patent suits, the sciatica, the battle with the Smithsonian, the relentless pressure to write the book and prove what never should have needed to be proved. Only Kate understood how much it has cost me all these years to stay the course and stand on principle. Now it seems principles are all I have left to stand on.
A few weeks after my set-to with Anne, Miss Beck and I finally got the flyer packed up and shipped it off to London. It took the two of us working together the greater part of a year to make it ready to be displayed in public. Griff sent newspaper clippings about the opening of the new exhibition galleries in South Kensington last spring, with King George and Queen Mary and the cream of the British aviation world in attendance. From all reports it was an impressive show, but I have no regrets about staying home. In fact, now that machine is finally off my hands, I feel like a man who has been released from prison after serving a long sentence at hard labor. I have even dismantled the laboratory so I can no longer put in time playing there. Who knows, I may yet get down to writing the history of the development of the aeroplane. If I have to do it without Katharine’s help, so be it. The Wright flyer may be a museum piece, but Orville Wright is not ready to put himself on the shelf—oh no, not quite!
Katharine
Anne McCormick came straight to us from speaking with Orv. To hear her tell it, she did her level best to talk sense into him, but it was no use. His defenses flew up at the first sign of trouble ahead and she didn’t get anywhere at all. Ordinarily, Little Brother is the most reasonable of men—except when he decides to be unreasonable. There isn’t a blessed thing that anyone can do when he once makes up his mind on a course of action—or inaction either. I’ve battered my head against that particular wall so long that it’s more or less permanently black and blue! I saw no point in pursuing the topic any further, so instead Anne and I got to work rearranging the furniture in our living room. Shifting tables and chairs around is a whole lot easier than getting Bubbo to budge.
Griff sent us photos of the flying machine hanging in its new home in the Science Museum, looking as good
as new—and correctly labeled at long last! It almost hurts me to admit it, but maybe it’s for the best the flyer left the country after all. The fight with the Smithsonian has been a wearing, wearying, heartbreaking thing to go through for all these years, and I am glad for Orv’s sake that the ordeal is over. As a matter of fact, I have quit worrying about the Smithsonian. I don’t imagine they will correct their past misconduct, but if their attitude changes and the machine can come back home, all right. The main reason I want it back is because I think it made Orv feel very depressed to send it away. Several friends who visited him about the time it was ready to go said that he was depressed—noticeably so.
I could have put the whole wretched business out of my mind long ago without batting an eye if it hadn’t been for Mr. McMahon pestering me about the series of articles he’s been writing on the boys for Popular Science Monthly. Orv won’t like that one bit. He always complained that McMahon’s approach was too personal and chatty—he said so in as many words, in fact, the first time we rejected his book many years ago. But Mr. McMahon seems incapable of taking no for an answer, and I was too much of a lady—or maybe too much of a coward—to turn him away. Anyhow, he spent a couple of weeks at our house in Kansas City gathering material for his new manuscript. He was evidently under the impression that I could—or ever would—persuade Little Brother to change his mind. Ha!
Maiden Flight Page 17