The Wright Brothers
Updated: Aug 8
In April, we took our first trip to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. We stayed in a cottage in Kill Devil Hills, just a few blocks from the Wright Brothers National Memorial. Perhaps like most, my knowledge of Wilbur and Orville Wright was pretty superficial. I knew they were from Dayton, Ohio, opened a bicycle shop at the dawn of the two-wheeled craze, became fascinated with man’s attempts to fly, set off for Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to try their own hand at flight, and became the first to successfully man sustained, powered flights in a heavier-than-air machine.
Set atop Kill Devil Hill, the once-shifting sand dune from which the brothers made many of their glider tests, the Memorial Tower at Wright Brothers National Memorial is both beautiful and impressive. While the Tower was dedicated in 1932, the Visitor Center wasn’t constructed until the late 1950s. Breaking with the Park Service’s earlier, more traditional buildings, it is a wonderful specimen of mid-century modern design. Even more wonderful, however, is what’s housed inside. Brimming with artifacts, models, actual tools, a reproduction of the wind tunnel the brothers built to test wing shapes, a portion of the engine used in the first flight, full-scale replicas of the 1902 glider and the history-making 1903 Wright Flyer (the original is on display at the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., which I’ve also been to), and an abundance of photographs and educational panels that bring their story to life.
As you might expect, the Visitor Center couldn’t possibly tell the whole story, but as a primer on the Wright Brothers it did its job perfectly. I was keen to learn more. Luckily, while browsing at The Bird Store, a wildlife gallery in the Outer Banks (where I also bought a beautiful wood carving of a long-billed curlew), I came across a used hardback copy of David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers. I’d never read McCullough before, though I knew he’d written Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies on Harry S. Truman and John Adams, and that the latter was turned into an HBO miniseries that I thoroughly enjoyed. So, reputation fully preceding him, I dove into his account of Wilbur and Orville Wright.
As pure story—from bicycles to gliders to aeroplanes; from Dayton to Kitty Hawk and back, and back, and back once more; from tests and trials well out of public view to exhibitions in France, Italy, Germany, Washington, D.C., and New York City where they amazed and delighted the public, silenced their skeptics, and took the world by storm with their feats of flight—The Wright Brothers is a spirited page-turner. As a biography, McCullough shows his considerable skill, weaving narrative, family correspondence, and written records with his own deep understanding of the country and the era. As subject matter, however, the brothers themselves fall a bit short. True, they were driven, steadfast, indefatigable, and, in many ways, genius. But they were also old-fashioned, reticent, and, at least as painted here, largely one-dimensional. So single-minded were they in their pursuit (Wilbur’s love of the Louvre a rare outlier) that even their significant setbacks—life-threatening illness, failed experiments, and near-fatal crashes—don’t manage to create much in the way of drama.
And maybe that’s okay. After all, their story, their success, has an air of inevitability. Theirs is the story of America, of Manifest Destiny, writ small, fully conceived in two plain, hardworking, virtuous Midwesterners. What Wilbur and Orville Wright may have lacked in personality or well-rounded interests, they made up for a hundredfold with their achievements. Perhaps the real lesson the brothers have to teach us is this: if they could do it—without formal training, without high school diplomas, and with little more than curiosity, gumption, and can-do attitude—you can, too. What are you waiting for?
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