The Bishop's Boys (83 page)

In spite of the changes, Orville’s disgust with the book was deep and unrelenting. Soon after publication he received a copy from a distant relative asking him to autograph it as a souvenir for her daughter. He refused, keeping the book and sending an autographed photo of the first flight instead, along with an impassioned letter on the evils of John McMahon and his book.

Lindbergh eventually gave up on Orville and the autobiography. He encouraged Findley to give his manuscript to a library where it could remain sealed until the principals were dead.

Fred C. Kelly was not so easily discouraged. Like Findley, he had first met Orville as a young reporter a quarter of a century before.
Kelly had actually been working as a newsman in Xenia at the time of the flights at Huffman Prairie in 1904–05, although he did not then know the Wrights. A free-lance writer and columnist, he published his first interview with Orville, “Flying Machines and the War,” in the July 5, 1915, issue of
Collier’s
.

Kelly’s sense of humor and way with words impressed Orville, and the two became fast friends. Over the years, Kelly would publish one article after another, many of them humorous, based on interviews and comments from the inventor of the airplane.

The idea of writing a biography of the Wrights emerged slowly. By 1939, Kelly was determined to move ahead, aware that handling Orville would be a difficult and delicate task. He first convinced his friend to cooperate in preparing a long article, “How the Wright Brothers Began,” for a 1939 issue of
Harper’s
.

As Kelly had feared, Orville was demanding, and never fully satisfied with the finished product. As with Findley’s manuscript, he found it too personal and not sufficiently technical. Kelly persevered, arguing that while he might not be able to describe the technical details of invention, he could give the world an accurate depiction of the life and times of the brothers.

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.
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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:

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.
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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:

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.”
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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.
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