#3 The Wright Stuff: Visiting the Wright Brothers National Memorial
After reading the wonderful book The Wright Brothers in which David McCullough makes their story come to life, my husband and I went to visit Kitty Hawk and the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, NC. A few thoughts come to mind during and after our visit.
Did we really have to plant grass all over the dunes (ruin them) to preserve them?
The granite memorial planned to honor the Wright Brothers, started in 1927 and finished in 1932, was so heavy that the Kitty Hawk dune started to erode. The engineers shored up the dune so that the massive memorial could be placed where it currently sits. To prevent erosion, plants and grass were planted all over the site to prevent erosion. It looks like a soccer pitch. It now looks NOTHING like the windy dune area which Orville and Wilbur sought out to begin their aeronautical experiments. The Wright Brothers shlepped their equipment without motorized trucks or ferries from Dayton Ohio to the Outer Banks of North Carolina so that they would have the sustained winds and isolation to conduct their experiments.
We know exactly what the area looked like during the Wright Brothers era because they documented their surroundings and experiments extensively with photographs (more below). If one wants to see today what the area once looked like, one can enter Jockey’s Ridge State Park just south of the monument in Nag’s Head, NC, which includes the tallest active sand dune system in the eastern United States.
In my opinion, the size and spirit of the monument misses the mark. Visitors must climb the path to the massive structure and there are beautiful views of the first flight area, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Roanoke Sound.
The visitor’s center, renovated in 2018, is a rousing success. Constructed in 1959, the Wright Brothers National Memorial Visitor Center is a significant example of the Philadelphia School of Modernism and a prominent contribution of the Mission 66 National Park Service construction effort. It houses a life-size replica of the flyer and a museum including many original artifacts from the brothers. From the windows, one can see where the original flights took off and markers denote how far the machines flew in the air before they came down. The boulder pictured below contains the plaque with the story.
On another topic, neither Orville and Wilbur finished high school. One of the exhibits shows a reproduction of Wilbur’s report card. Wilbur’s elementary school teacher commented on his report card, “He’s shy, quiet, and a little rumply.” Thankfully, Wilbur did not let the critical words of his teacher hold him back. Nor did the brothers allow their lack of formal training or advanced degrees deter them from accomplishing their lofty goal.
The only one of the Wright family children to get a college degree was sister Katherine. She attended Oberlin College and graduated in 1898. She taught in a Dayton, Ohio, high school for ten years. She gave up her teaching career to help support the brothers during their quest to build, fly and later sell airplanes. She took care of other family members when they were sick or injured. She became the Executive Secretary of the Wright Company and became its charming representative when the very shy and awkward brothers could not do so. Orville reportedly shunned her when she got married after Wilbur’s death in 1912. Orville reportedly wrote, “When the world speaks of the Wrights, it must include our sister. Much of our effort has been inspired by her.”
In the book and in the museum, we learn that the brothers, with no formal training, used curiosity and perseverance to try, fail, try, fail, and eventually succeed. One exhibit about the development of propellers highlights this approach. From the exhibit come this quote from Orville in 1913, “We worked out a theory of our own on the subject, and soon discovered, as we usually do, that all propellers built heretofore are all wrong, and then built a pair of propellers… based on our theory, which are all right!” Fortunately, the brothers learned to fail forward and explore matters with their own intellect and inquisitiveness. The brothers also believed in practice. In 1902 they made over nearly 1000 glides to prepare for their flight.
The other most remarkable aspect of the Wright Brother’s endeavor, was their thorough documentation with Orville’s camera. As the kids say, “pics or it didn’t happen.” The Library of Congress website contains a fascinating article about how the Wright Brothers learned to use photography to document their experiments. “Among the materials acquired by the Library of Congress in 1949 from the estate of Orville Wright were 303 negative photographic plates. Nearly all these glass plate negatives were taken and developed by the Wrights themselves between 1898 and 1911.” Even when their local Ohio newspaper would not cover the story, the brothers had the pics.
The picture of Orville’s first flight was taken by bystander John Daniels, who had never before even taken a picture. Orville focused the heavy camera, sitting on a large tripod, on the spot that he believed the machine would become airborne. Daniels was instructed to squeeze the air bulb of the shutter if anything interesting happened. Reportedly the gentleman was so excited to witness the 12 second, 120 feet flight, that he forgot if he actually took the picture. Well thankfully, he did and it became “the most famous photo in the world.”
If you are ever in the region of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the memorial and museum are well worth a visit. As a bonus, the beaches are beautiful and well-chosen restaurants serve fresh, delicious seafood. I recommend the Kill Devil Grill.
Another post will come on our visit to Roanoke Island.
