The brothers had invited the Aeroplane Club of Dayton, as well as friends, neighbors, anyone interested, to come to Huffman Prairie to see Orville fly, and the crowd that came numbered two or three thousand. The interurban was jammed. Automobiles lined the roadway by the field where ice cream and sandwich vendors had set up for business.
As later reported, Orville performed with his machine in such manner as to keep the spectators on tiptoe the whole time. “One minute he would be grazing the ground and the next shooting up in the air like an arrow.” He did figure eights, twists and turns all in the most “remarkable manner.” Most astonishing of all, he flew to an unbelievable height of 2,720 feet. And all the Wrights—the Bishop, Wilbur, Katharine, Reuchlin, Lorin and his wife and children—were on hand to see such proof of the genius of the brothers’ achievements performed there on home ground before a home crowd.
In all the years they had been working together Wilbur and Orville had never once flown together, so if something were to go wrong and one of them should be killed, the other would live to carry on with the work. But on this day at Huffman Prairie, where they had developed the first practical flying machine ever, the two of them, seated side by side, took off into the air with Orville at the controls.
To many then and later, it seemed their way of saying they had accomplished all they had set out to do and so at last saw no reason to postpone any longer enjoying together the thrill of flight.
Of the immediate family of 7 Hawthorn Street, only Bishop Wright had yet to fly. Nor had anyone of his age ever flown anywhere on earth. He had been with the brothers from the start, helping in every way he could, never losing faith in them or their aspirations. Now, at eighty-two, with the crowd cheering, he walked out to the starting point, where Orville, without hesitation, asked him to climb aboard.
They took off, soaring over Huffman Prairie at about 350 feet for a good six minutes, during which the Bishop’s only words were, “Higher, Orville, higher!”
EPILOGUE
Except for one brief training flight he gave a German pilot in Berlin in June of 1911, Wilbur Wright was not to fly ever again, so taken up was he with business matters and acrimonious lawsuits. The Wright Company, from the start, demanded a great deal of time and attention. But it was the interminable patent infringement suits that put the most strain on both brothers. “When we think what we might have accomplished if we had been able to devote this time to experiments,” Wilbur wrote to a friend in France, “we feel very sad, but it is always easier to deal with things than with men, and no one can direct his life entirely as he would choose.”
Of far the greatest importance to both—more than the money at stake—was to secure just and enduring credit for having invented the airplane. It was their reputation at stake and that mattered most. Their pride of achievement, quite understandably, was great. Eventually nine suits were brought by them, three brought against them. Over time they won every case in the American courts.
Octave Chanute, who had not returned from his trip to Europe until October of 1910, died at his home on November 23, at age seventy-eight, before he and Wilbur had had an opportunity to see one another again. On hearing the news, Wilbur boarded a train to Chicago to attend the funeral and later wrote a long tribute to Chanute published in Aeronautics, leaving no doubt of how he felt.
His writings were so lucid as to provide an intelligent understanding of the nature of the problems of flight to a vast number of persons who would probably never have given the matter study otherwise. . . . In patience and goodness of heart he has rarely been surpassed. Few men were more universally respected and loved.
In 1911 Wilbur spent a full six months in Europe attending to business and legal matters. Otherwise, he was either on the move back and forth to New York or Washington, or tied down at board meetings in Dayton. And it all began to tell on him. In Orville’s words, he would “come home white.”
Meanwhile, the family had decided to build a new and far grander house, very like an antebellum Old South mansion in the suburb of Oakwood, just southeast of Dayton. Virtually all the planning with the architect was overseen by Orville and Katharine during Wilbur’s time in Europe. Wilbur’s one known expression of interest in the project was to request a room and bathroom of his own.
In the first week of May 1912, thoroughly worn down in body and spirit, Wilbur took ill, running a high fever day after day. It proved once again to be the dreaded typhoid fever. Conscious of the condition he was in, he sent for a lawyer and dictated his will.
One or another of the family were faithfully at his bedside. “Wilbur is no better,” recorded Bishop Wright on May 18. Wilbur was “sinking,” he wrote May 28.
Wilbur Wright died in his room at home at 7 Hawthorn Street at 3:15 in the morning, Thursday, May 30, 1912. He was forty-five years old.