First in Flight Page 27
When the plans for a national memorial at Kill Devil Hills were announced, Tate was spurred to action. He favored a monument sponsored by the people who had actually known and hosted the Wrights. The federal government had a head start on him, but this was to be a simpler project.
With the help of Elijah Baum—the first local citizen to welcome Wilbur Wright ashore after his ride with Israel Perry back in 1900—Tate set about raising funds. Contributors had to be Kitty Hawk residents. A good many of them were schoolchildren.
The result was a five-foot marble obelisk purchased from a monument dealer in Elizabeth City. Placed in the front yard of Bill Tate’s old home, the monument featured an engraving of a Wright glider above an inscription reading, “On this spot on Sept. 17, 1900, Wilbur Wright began assembly of the Wright Brothers first experimental glider which led to man’s conquest of the air. Erected by citizens of Kitty Hawk, N.C. 1928.”
It was the first monument to the Wrights on American soil and the second in the world, following one erected in France. It cost all of $210. The monument was unveiled by Elmer Woodard, Jr.
Of course, the Tates were no longer living in the home, having sold it to the local Methodist church for use as a parsonage when they moved to Martins Point in the early years of the century.
Sometime between the erection of the monument and 1930, the resident preacher spent an idle day cleaning up the yard, piling trash on the north side of the house, and setting fire to it. When the fickle Kitty Hawk wind changed direction, sparks blew under the home. The resulting blaze not only destroyed the house but cracked the monument as well.
Over the years, water repeatedly leaked into the crack and froze during winter. In the 1980s, local officials resolved to replace the deteriorating monument.
The original is now housed inside Kitty Hawk’s town hall. The replica can still be seen in the yard of a home on Moore Shore Drive, fifty or seventy-five feet from its original site. Few visitors to the area know it exists.
Orville Wright was still alive when the monument was created, though he did not attend its simple dedication.
His elder brother, too, would have appreciated the gift’s humbleness, the good taste it represents, and the sacrifice, the frugality, and the deep feelings that brought it into being.
Contrary to the long tradition of the Outer Banks as a place of refuge from calamity at sea, the Wright brothers were among the first persons of note to wash up from the west. Like new arrivals before them, they ate poorly, did without comforts, and endured wicked storms with little protection—and cherished their isolation and reveled in their self-sufficiency
Unlike the local people, who enjoyed the bounty of the sea but endured the poverty of the land, the Wrights had a need of the barren dunes and the sandy open spaces. The course of their experiments was sometimes as uneven as the local wind, but they found Bill Tate’s promise of “a hospitable people” to be thoroughly dependable. In fact, their success owed a great deal to the kindness of new friends.
Through much of the century, there has been a controversy of sorts over whether Dayton or Kitty Hawk has a greater claim to the Wright brothers. Had the Wrights themselves ever been asked, it seems certain they would never have let another place supplant their Ohio home. But with less success than they found on the Outer Banks, there’s a fair chance they would have eventually returned to their lives as local small businessmen, and such questions never would have been posed.
In that light, a little regional competition looks good.
Bibliography
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Index
A-2. See Adder
A-4. See Moccasin
Adder, 157, 162
Ader, Clement, 269
Aero Club of France, 269
Aerodromes, 11–12, 103
ailerons versus wing warping, 238
Albatross, 104
Alexander, Patrick, 153–54
American Institute of Architects, 264
Armstrong, Neil, 238, 312
Arnot, Matthias, 104, 105, 106, 107
Associated Press, 159, 177, 189, 192, 193, 216, 303, 304
Avery, William, 102
B. M. Van Dusen, 208
Baby Grand, 244
Baker, Charles M., 261
Ballance, Milford, 15, 30, 31
Barnes, Henson, 313
Basnight, Arvin O., 308
Baum, Carolista Fletcher, 314
Baum, Elijah, 32, 33, 319; pictured, 305, 321
Baum, Joseph, pictured, 38
Beacham, John, 176
Beacham, William T. “Tom,” 148, 175, 176; pictured, 140
Bell, Alexander Graham, 11
Belmont, August, 239
Bennett, James Gordon, 212, 244
Berges (reporter), 247
Besnier (French aeronaut), 9, 267
Best, James, pictured, 38
Bingham, Hiram, 260, 261
bird flight, 62–64, 70
Black Pelican Seafood Company, 315
Blériot, Louis, 267
Bodie Island Lifesaving Station. See Oregon Inlet Lifesaving Station
Bodie Island Lighthouse, 267
Boston Aeronautical Society, 271
Brinkley, W. C., 150, 178, 301
Brookins, Walter, 240, 244
Brown, Aycock, 304
Browning, John, 70
Burgess, W. Starling, 291