On Main Street a “Court of Honor” was being created reaching from Third Street to the river, white columns lining both sides of the street and strung with colored lights. “Everywhere is the tri-colored bunting . . . everywhere flutters the pennants and flags and banners,” the papers were saying. Soldiers, sailors, and the Fire Department would march, bands play. Some 2,500 schoolchildren dressed in red, white, and blue would be arranged as a “living-flag” on the Fair Grounds grandstand and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
In the nearly ten years that the Wright brothers had been working to achieve success with their invention, this was to be the first formal recognition by their hometown of their efforts and success and there was to be no mistaking the whole town’s enthusiasm.
While little of such elaborate fanfare appealed to the brothers, they knew that if Dayton saw fit to celebrate, if Dayton felt that was important, then it was not for them to complain or appear in any way annoyed or disapproving. Octave Chanute wrote to Wilbur to say he knew such honors could grow “oppressive” to modest men, but then they had brought it on themselves with their ingenuity and courage. It was well-meant advice, but the brothers had no need to be reminded.
On the eve of the opening of the festivities, the Dayton Daily News ran an editorial expressing much that was felt by a great many:
It is a wonderful lesson—this celebration. It comes at an auspicious time. The old world was getting tired, it seemed, and needed help to whip it into action. There was beginning a great deal of talk about man’s no longer having the opportunities he once had of achieving greatness. Too many people were beginning to believe that all of the world’s problems had been solved. . . . Money was beginning to tell in the affairs of men, and some were wondering whether a poor boy might work for himself a place in commerce or industry or science.
This celebration throws all such idle talk to the winds. It crowns anew the efforts of mankind. It crushes for another hundred years the suspicion that all of the secrets of nature have been solved or that the avenues of hope have been closed to those who would win new worlds.
It points out to the ambitious young man that he labors not in vain; that genius knows no class, no condition. . . .
The modesty of the Wright brothers is a source of a good deal of comment. . . . But above all there is a sermon in their life of endeavor which cannot be preached too often.
The following morning, Thursday, June 17, at nine o’clock every church bell and factory whistle announced the start of what was to be a two-day celebration. Thousands of people poured into the city. Business had been suspended, except for the sale of ice cream and flags and toy airships and Wright brothers postcards. That it was raining lightly the first part of the first day seemed to matter little to anyone. And the show was all that had been expected, one spectacle following another.
There were marching bands, concerts, the presentation of medals and the keys to the city. A line of eighty automobiles—all the newest model touring cars—streamed across the Main Street Bridge and down through the “Court of Honor.” The parade of historical floats, “the greatest street procession ever held in Dayton,” stretched two miles.
There were laudatory speeches in abundance, and Wilbur, Orville, Katharine, and Bishop Wright were to be seen prominently present on platforms and reviewing stands. The second day, the Bishop delivered a brief but eloquent invocation in tribute to his sons.
We have met this day to celebrate an invention—the dream of all ages—hitherto deemed impracticable. It suddenly breaks on all human vision that man, cleaving the air like a bird, can rise to immense heights and reach immeasurable distances. And we come to thee, our Father, to ask thy peace to rest on this occasion and thy benediction on every heart participating in this assembly.
Amazingly, all through both days and as very few were aware, Wilbur and Orville managed to slip deftly in and out of the picture, back and forth to their West Third Street shop, one of the few buildings in town that remained undecorated and where work went on. A correspondent for the New York Times who kept close watch on them provided a memorable chronology of how they spent the first day:
9 A.M.—Left their work in the aeroplane shop and in their shirt sleeves went out in the street to hear every whistle and bell in town blow and ring for ten minutes.
9:10 A.M.—Returned to work.
10 A.M.—Drove in a parade to the opening ceremony of the “Homecoming Celebration.”
11 A.M.—Returned to work.
Noon—Reunion at dinner with Bishop Milton Wright, the father; Miss Katharine Wright, the sister; Reuchlin Wright of Tonganoxie, Kansas, a brother; and Lorin Wright, another brother.
2:30 P.M.—Reviewed a parade given in their honor in the downtown streets.
4:00 P.M.—Worked two hours packing up parts of an aeroplane for shipment to Washington.
8:00 P.M.—Attended a public reception and shook hands with as many Daytonians as could get near them.
9:00 P.M.—Saw a pyrotechnical display on the river front in which their own portraits, 80 feet high and entwined in an American flag, were shown.
It was estimated that in the course of the fireworks, Wilbur and Orville shook hands with more than five thousand people, and according to the Daily News, only “the instinct of self preservation compelled them to cease.”
Less than forty-eight hours later, the festivities at an end, the brothers were packed and on the train to Washington to resume the trials at Fort Myer. Shipment of the plane had been taken care of. Charlie Taylor was already on the scene.
II.
It was six-thirty the extremely warm evening of June 26, as Wilbur and Orville sat waiting on the starting rail in the parade ground at Fort Myer. Beside them their white-winged machine stood ready for flight. Farther off, behind a rope at the edge of the field, some four thousand people including men of known importance to the nation, stood, according to one account, “pawing the ground” for something to happen. Hundreds of them had been there since three o’clock.
The Senate had adjourned so its members could see the flight. Others waiting included high-ranking army officers; ambassadors; the son of the president, Charlie Taft; and Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon, whose word, as said, was “open sesame to the Treasury vaults.”
Wilbur had assigned to himself full responsibility for seeing that all was in order. Given the heat, he had dispensed with his customary coat and tie. His hands and face were grimy, his work trousers grease-stained, and perspiration streamed down his face.