Others

The National Aviation Hall of Fame located in Dayton, Ohio enshrined five legends of Flight in their class of 2007 on July 21, 2007. They are Walter Boyne, Steve Fossett, Evelyn Johnson, Sally Ride and Frederick Smith. They join 190 legends already honored in the hall of fame. Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first to be enshrined.

Here is a brief description of each honoree:

Walter J. Boyne

Boyne, 77, joined the Air Force in 1951. He flew bombers, B-50 and B-41 in combat, later was a Nuclear Test pilot flying the B-47 and B-52. After serving in Vietnam, he retired and in 1974 joined the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. He eventually became director.

He has written more than 500 articles, 28 nonfiction books and four novels, all focusing on aviation. Several have appeared on the New York Bestseller list.

Steve Fossett

Fossett, 63, is a record setting daredevil who holds 116 records in five different sports. He has aviation records in jet and piston powered aircraft, gliders, dirigibles and balloons. He was the first to complete a solo balloon trip around the globe. Three years later he was the first person to fly a plane, the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, solo around the world without refueling.

In February 2006 he flew the longest distance, non-stop aircraft flight in the GlobalFlyer. In August 2006, Foster and co-pilot, Einar Enevoldson, set a world glider altitude record of 50,671 feet.

Evelyn Bryan Johnson

Johnson, 97, took flying lessons in 1944. Three years later she began giving flying lessons. She has trained some 60,000 pilots giving her the record for giving more Federal aviation Administration exams than any other living pilot.

She is the 20th woman in the U. S. to earn a helicopter pilot’s license.

She has been inducted into the Flight Instructor’s Hall of Fame, Women in Aviation’s International Pioneer Hall of Fame and both the Tennessee and Kentucky Hall’s of Fame.

Sally K. Ride

Ride, 56, was the first U. S. woman in space when she flew aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983. She returned to space aboard the Challenger in 1984. She was scheduled for a third mission to space but it was cancelled by the Challenger accident in January 1986. She served on the board that investigated the Challenger accident.

Ride earned a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford in 1978. Dr. Ride is the author of five books, President and CEO of Sally Ride science, and an advocate for improving and emphasizing science education for young girls.

Frederick W. Smith

Smith, 62, is CEO and Chairman of FedEx Corporation. He began flying at age 15, working as a crop duster. While attending Yale University he wrote a term paper outlining his concept for a company guaranteeing delivery of time-sensitive material overnight.

After graduation he joined the marines and served two tours in Vietnam. He flew more than 200 ground support missions, earning a Silver Star, Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts.

In 1971 at the age of 27 he formed Federal Express based on his college term paper. It is today a $32 billion, 280,000-employee business with service in more than 220 countries and territories.

The National Aviation Hall of Fame is a non-profit organization that relies solely on membership, donations, grants, and sponsorships. It was founded in 1962 and later established by Congress.

References: Heroes and Legends, Winter/Spring 2007; Dayton Daily News, July 23, 2007.

Today there are many African-American superstars who are serving as role models. In the mid-1930s there was only one international black hero and that was Jesse Owens. Jesse burst upon the scene in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics where he won four gold metals and made a mockery of Adolf Hitler’s claim that the German Aryan people were the dominant race.

Owens’s wife, Ruth, and three daughters attended the opening ceremonies of the annual Jesse Owens Track and Field Classic at the opening of the new Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium at Ohio State University.

The new track replaced the one that had circled the football field in the Ohio State football stadium known as the “horseshoe.” The horseshoe had recently been enlarged as part of a renovation project that required removal of the running track.

The original structure of the horseshoe dates back to 1922. A little known fact is that Orville Wright, along with Katharine, attended football games at Ohio State and contributed to the $1 million campaign to build the horseshoe.

The Owen’s family was involved in the important decision to move the track that Jesse had made famous.

Young Prodigy

Jesse was born in Oakville, Alabama in 1913 of poor sharecropper parents. The Owens family moved to Cleveland in 1922 to find work. It was there in Bolton Elementary school that J. C. Owens received the name Jesse. The teacher mispronounced his initials, J.C., as Jesse.

It was in gym class in junior high school, that his track story begins. Students were timed in the 60-yard dash. When Coach Charlie Riley saw the raw, yet natural talent that young Jessie had, he immediately invited him to run for the track team. Although Jessie was unable to participate in after-school practices because of work, Coach Riley offered to train him in the mornings. Jessie agreed.

By the 8th grade, Jessie was competing in junior high meets. About a year after the training began, Jessie ran the 100-yard dash in 11 seconds. Then in 1928 Jesse set his first of many innumerable records: 6 feet in the high jump and 22 feet 11¾ inches in the long jump. Both were new world marks for junior high school.

Thus began a life-long relationship between Riley and Jessie. In Jesse, Riley found the surrogate athletic son he never had. For Jesse, Riley was the first white man he ever knew. Owens later in life said, “He proved to me beyond all proof that a white man can understand and love a Negro.” “He trained me to become a man as well as an athlete.”

At Cleveland East Technical High School Jesse became a track star with a time of 9.4 seconds in the 100-yard dash, setting a world record. He won 75 of 79 races he ran in high school.

Blossoming at Ohio State

Many colleges tried to recruit Jesse. In 1933, He chose to attend Ohio State University. There, his development continued under Coach Larry Snider who also became his Olympic coach. Snyder liked to say that Jesse’s style was so smooth and light that “he never bruised the cinders.”

In 1935, Jesse had his greatest single day in track and field. At a Big Ten meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he set three world records and tied a fourth, all in a span of 70 minutes. He tied his own world record in the 100-yard dash and set new world records in the long jump, 220 and 220 hurdles.

Olympic Triumph

At the end of his sophomore year he participated in the 1936 Olympics known as the Hitler Olympics. Jesse was triumphant in the 100-meter, the 200-meter dash, and the broad jump and was a key member of the winning 400-meter relay team. The performance etched his name into history.

Hitler wasn’t pleased with his performance and never congratulated him. Unfortunately, President Franklin D. Roosevelt never did either.

Post-Olympic Setback

After the Olympics, Jesse turned professional and dropped out of school. This was not a good period in his life, as many lucrative job offers didn’t pan out. He worked a variety of jobs to support his wife and three daughters. One of the unusual things he did was race against racehorses in exhibitions and win.

He returned to Ohio State in 1940 as a student and assistant track coach but was dismissed a year later for poor grades in science and math. Unfortunately, the quality of his pre-college education was marginal. He never did graduate, but did receive an honorary doctorate from Ohio State in 1972.

Two of his three daughters also attended Ohio State. His daughter, Marlene, was the homecoming queen in 1960.

Final Triumph

Jesse became successful later in life and no longer had to scramble for lucrative opportunities. In fact his problem was just the reverse; that of deciding which offer to accept. He was a businessman and involved in many activities involving children including serving as Executive Director of the Chicago South Side Boys Club.

He was in great demand as a polished speaker. He honed his talents as a speaker while a student at Ohio State. One of the ways he made money was to speak to schools and service organizations on behalf of the school. He received $50 expense money for each speech.

In 1976, Jesse was awarded the highest honor a civilian can receive. President Gerald Ford awarded him with the Medal of Freedom. Ten years after his death his widow was presented the Congressional Gold Medal from President Bush for his humanitarian contributions to the “race for life.”

Racism was alive and well in the 1930s and Owens experienced his share of it. He overcame racism and bigotry to prove to the world that African-Americans could be successful in sports and other endeavors. He considered himself an American first and a black man second.

Jesse died on March 31, 1980 at the age of 66 in Tucson, Arizona from lung cancer.

One of the letters in the Jesse Owens’s collection came from North Carolina. A young man wrote it on March 25, 1980 as Owens was dying.

“I wish you could get better but there comes a day when you go to sleep for the last time and I will keep you in my heart the rest of my life because there probably wouldn’t be a Boys Club if you wouldn’t have been born.” Signed by “your fan, Lance C. Johnson,” Boys’ Club of Wake County, NC.

On January 15, 2003, Owen’s daughters Marlene Rankine and Gloria Owens Hemphill unveiled the Wheaties box featuring their father in a ceremony at Ohio State University. Ohio State President, Karen Holbrook, said, “I am thrilled in honoring one of our most renowned athletes of all time, somebody who has inspired people for years and has literally changed the world. The legend of Jesse Owens is known and admired everywhere.”

Where are Jesse’s Oak Trees?

Each gold medallist at the 1936 Olympics was given an oak sapling from the Black Forest as the living reminder of their achievement. Jesse received four.

Jeff Nagy of Columbus, Ohio has researched what has happened to these trees. The tree Jesse was awarded for winning the long jump was planted at his mother’s house in Cleveland, Ohio. It died.

The tree awarded for winning the 4×100-meter dash, Jessie gave to two of his teammates – Foy Draper and Frank Wykoff, both of USC. The tree died of root rot in 2002. A replacement was planted in April 2005 in Associates Park at an USC-UCLA track meet.

The tree awarded for winning the 200-meter dash still is alive near the Cleveland Rhodes High School near its football stadium. Jesse practiced and participated in track at this location because his high school didn’t have a track.

The fourth tree was awarded for winning the 100-meter dash. No one knows for sure what happened to this tree. All that is known is that Jesse intended to plant the sapling on the Ohio State University campus.

Various teammates and classmates of Jesse believe an oak tree adjacent to the south side of the main library is Jesse’s tree. Their opinion is given credibility by an urban forester that lives in the Columbus area. Steven R. Cothrel wrote in a report in 1988 that the suspect tree is 52 or 53 years old which would place its planting as 1936.

Jeff Nagy asked Owen’s daughter, Marlene Rankin, about it. She told Nagy, “The question of whether the oak tree on campus, is it the oak tree? I don’t know. I guess it just depends on if you want it to be it or not. If it can be traced back to 1936, then that’s good enough for me.”

In the picture I’m standing next to the 100-inch base diameter, 50-foot tall tree. There is no plague or marker that identifies the significance of the tree.

A number of students walked by while the picture was taken. They appeared to wonder why I was having my picture taken besides this particular tree.

References: Jesse Owens by William J. Baker, 1986; Buckeye Sports Bulletin by Darrell Dawson, May 14

An Article by Albert S. Levino in Harpers Weekly, 1912 (with some modifications)

By 1912 aviation had some great inventors and many daring aviators, but had yet to produce a great commercial mind. Mechanically, the airplane had made swift strides in its brief tenure of life more than any other means of transportation did in twice the time. Commercially, the American airplane industry is not one bit better off today than it was three years ago.

This is the conclusion of a feature article in Harper’s Weekly.

The article postulates several causes for this state of affairs:

Too much exhibition business, which has over exploited the airplane and failed to establish its practical value.
Too much publicity, with too many promises impossible of fulfillment.
The obsessing desire for quick profits rather than steady, normal returns.
Failure to develop cheap but efficient and reliable power plants.
Too many airplane manufacturers.
No development of markets.

Crowds flock to the most dangerous turns of an auto race. Attention is always riveted on the “dip of death” in a circus rather than on a cleverly trained animal.

Robert Fulton’s Clermont once crowed the Hudson’s banks and Stevenson’s Rocket brought thousands to stare, deprecate, or wonder.

Only ten years have passed since a feature of Buffalo Bill’s show was a “horseless carriage.”

We are all looking for thrills. But, once this appetite is satisfied it is almost impossible to arouse scientific or commercial interest in the thriller unless its performances have demonstrated the practicability of the device, and unless they have created a demand for it and made it an urgent necessity.

Airplane exhibitions once provided remunerative thrills. But people quickly learned that as the number of airmen increased, the number of accidents increased; that manufacturers were exploiting merely the novelty and not the usefulness of the product; and they could witness flights from outside the fence quite as well as if they paid a dollar to enter the aerodrome.

They began to look elsewhere than to the airplane for their amusement. Airplanes became too common to lead people even to turn their heads to look at them, let alone pay to see them.

The price of passenger flights fell in twelve short months from $500 to $25, $10, and even $5. Satiety had overtaken curiosity. The wonder of one year had become the commonplace of the next.

Unfortunately for the honest manufacturer, he soon had to cope with a factor even more discouraging than public apathy. The dishonest element that attaches itself to every new industry did not fail to grasp the opportunity presented by the art of flying.

Soon aviation was crowded with this irresponsible, get-rich-quick-gentry. Exhibition flyers frequently left the ground only when they cared to and then for such short flights as they cared to make.

Alleged self-styled aviators, incompetent in every respect, and with machines so badly constructed as to be dangerous to the spectators, cut to one-half the prices asked by good flyers.

Outrageous promises, that ranged from the agreement to land from any building in a city to the free carrying of passengers in machines which later proved unable to leave the ground with only the pilot aboard, were frequent.

President W. Linford Smith of the Pittsburg Aero Club was driven to comment:

“I favored disarmament with the coming of airplanes until I heard and saw at Brunot Island just how much trouble a capful of wind makes for these flying-machines. I now suggest that the only defense needed by war-vessels from air-fleets will be electric fans.”

Undoubtedly the reader, as he opened his morning paper, has read from time to time the announcement that “John Jones, the famous aviator, will today fly over the city” or “will start on a record breaking cross-country journey” or “will fly to shore from the Hamburg-American liner Potsdam, leaving the vessel’s deck after she has passed forty miles out to sea.”

Thereafter nothing more has been heard of John Jones’s promised flight. This has happened so frequently, there has been such a discrepancy between promise and performance by an all-too-numerous type of aviator, that nowadays the public is placing aviation statements on the same level as the “wolf, wolf” cry of the fabled shepherd.

It has been the marvel of many who know the care with which newspapers are edited that space is so forthcoming for almost any kind of statement so long as it was the magic word “aviation” in it.

The most nonsensical utterances of half-crazy inventors whose actions showed they had not the first idea of even the rudiments of human flight; lengthy descriptions of revolutionary machines which turned out to be abortive copies of standard types built by some chauffeur or street cleaner or shoemaker in a barn, hayloft, or cellar. Manifestly puerile statements are made regarding the future of the airplane, and how it will drive both railroad train and steamship out of business.

For these and similar absurdities, there seems to be a 365-days long silly season against which not even the sanest city editor appears immune.

Conceive any normal man swallowing the yarn that the Pennsylvania railroad had a new locomotive that would haul a twelve-car train without stopping from Chicago to New York in ten hours!

Yet is that half as stupid as the widely statement made a few months ago by a well known British airman, that an airplane with a 2,000-hp motor carrying 4,000 people will cross the Atlantic in 15-hours.

Maybe someday a man will go to bed in New York and awaken in London; also, there may come a time when a man will retire on earth and dress on Mars, but newspapers do not print serious articles in anticipation of the events.

Frank Coffyn, The Wright pilot who has carried more passengers that any other aviator in the world recently commented on the statement of a prominent cross-country flyer that he was going to start across the Atlantic next August in a hydro-biplane with himself and a mechanic as passengers and operators.

“He said he’s going to take 2000 gallons of gasoline with him,” said Mr. Coffyn. “There’s a weight of 1,400 pounds to start with in fuel alone, not making mention of lubricant, food, etc. and Breguet, who managed last October to lift a total weight of about 1,400 pounds beside his machine stayed aloft for only 5-minutes!

Is it possible to cross the Atlantic in an airplane very soon? Why, it’s possible now — but only Heaven knows when it will be accomplished!”

It is on such publicity that many aviation stock companies are formed. Generous promoters have dropped mines and covered carpet-tacks for the more lucrative airplane. Today the market is fairly flooded with $1, $5, and $10 shares of aviation shares of aviation stock, whose promoters offer anything from 7 to 50 percent dividends. Rich as is the future of the flying machine, the airplane industry can no more support get-rich-quick parasites than can any other business.

There is general recognition that the heart of the airplane is its motor. Yet, though the United States gave the flying machine to the world and today manufactures more automobiles than all countries put together, no American airplane motor has yet been developed that compares in efficiency with a French engine.

That foreign motor today holds every world’s record, excepting only Loridan’s duration flight. But its cost, particularly with 45 percent import duty added, practically prohibits its general use in this country.

What a field there is here for our automobile manufacturers! There is an Aladdin fortune awaiting the man who delivers a dependable efficient, economical 50-horsepower airplane engine, weighing not over 3-pounds per horsepower, for $1,000, or even $1,500. For the very best flying machine built today can be produced for $500 except for its power plant. And it is in the manufacture and sale of a reliable airplane retailing at about $3,000 that the biggest dividends will be found.

There are now in the United States six airplane-manufacturing firms. All six companies sold fewer than 20 airplanes in this country in 1911. The Wright, Farman, Bleriot, Nieuport, Breguet, and Deperdussin firms are the only manufacturers who earned $25,000 clear last year.

Suppose that the Wrights in this country or the Farmans in France – both tremendously wealthy firms – were to cut the price of their machines to $3,000. What would happen to the builders? The airplane has out stripped the industry. Its mechanism is far ahead of its commercial development.

I asked several men prominently identified with American aviation to give Harper’s Weekly their ideas as to what was the matter commercially. Here is what they said:

Wilbur Wright: “What my brother and I want to do is to conserve the business. What the average man, neither daredevil nor simpleton, can safely do with the airplane is the problem with which we are concerned. There is a splendid future for the flying machine, but conservative and sound business methods must be invoked to develop and sustain the industry. To my mind miscellaneous exhibitions and too much of the wrong kind of publicity are the chief troubles of aviation. No other industry would stand for these features. Aviation cannot.”

Ernest L Jones, editor of Aeronautics, oldest American periodical in its field: “There are too many fakers in the business. The stock-selling crowd has scared away the conservative rich man who might back a well-run firm. There has been too little commercial development of the airplane and too much hip-hip-hurrah business.”

“Including airplanes and accessories, not more than four American firms are doing business on a sound scale and basis. The others have been too busy getting the easy money and letting future development take care of itself.”

Frank Coffyn, leading passenger-carrying aviator: “Almost every ill to which aviation in this country has fallen heir to is due to the exhibition circuit end of the game and to faking that has been done there and in publicity. It is curious, too, how much more national governments are bent on testing the merits of airplanes for war purposes than for trade or travel. Surely if flying machines meet the exacting demands of military authorities as machines of destruction, they are certain to be a great deal more useful and far more numerous in the occupations of peace.”

Hugo Gibson, propeller manufacturer: “The support aviation gets today is on the basis of unreasonable profits from spectacular and death-invoking antics. Aviation is a science and requires an army of scientific workers, not nerveless incompetents or high-strung scatterbrains. Businessmen are needed in aviation, even more than engineers.”

“There is no finer or more exhilarating sport than flying. And in the hands of careful, conservative pilots, knowing the exact capacity of their machines, the present-day airplane is considerably safer than the public has been led to believe it is. But trying to loop-the-loop, ego-born steep dives and the Dutch roll, excessive banking, spiral end-on turns, racing around one, or even 5-mile tracks, etc., are not the functions of the flying machine. Performing any or all of these “stunts” avails nothing in giving us the commercial airplane which may be relied upon as the automobile is today for pleasure and for trade.”

The airplane has a future that neither expert nor lay mind can define. The serious, practical side of flying is an almost an unknown quantity because aviation has so far been mostly circus “stunts.” Shorn of these features and the end of exhibitions and meets are fortunately now in sight. The airplane will come into its own.

Did the Wright Brothers have girly pictures hanging on the wall of their bicycle shop? That is the interesting question that a photograph taken in 1893 presents.

The picture shows four men in a bicycle shop. The two young men in the center display a resemblance to Orville and Wilbur. On the wall in the background are a number of partially clad girls. Written on the back of the picture is the caption, “Wright Brothers Bicycle Shop-1893, Dayton, Ohio.”

But, is it really Wilbur and Orville Wright? That is the question debated in an article that appears in the August-September 1987 issue of “Timeline” magazine, a publication of the Ohio Historical Society. Two experts on the Wright Brothers, Tom D. Crouch and Gerald S. Sharkey, wrote the article.

Differing Opinions

Jerry Sharkey, founder of Aviation Trail, Inc. in Dayton, was given the picture as a Christmas gift in 1985. He believes the picture is authentic.

Tom Crouch, Senior Curator of Division of Aeronautics, National Air and Space Museum and author of the best seller “Bishop’s Boys,” doesn’t agree.

The Wright family also doesn’t agree and backs up Crouch. Of course, one could argue that that perspective is not surprising since they have a family reputation to protect.

Wilbur and Orville were sons of a church Bishop and a mother who viewed her fulltime duty as raising her children into healthy, strong adults with moral fiber and model Christian citizens. The brothers didn’t smoke, drink liquor or use swear words and never worked or flew their airplane on Sundays. Moral ambiguity was not a characteristic of their behavior.

The following are some of the arguments pro and con about the authenticity of the picture.

Crouch is not convinced that the person who took the photo wrote the caption. He finds it peculiar that the four people featured in the photo are not named; instead the shop is identified.

Sharkey counters that as simple as it sounds, the inscription on the back of the photo is persuasive evidence. In 1893, the Wrights were famous and there would be no reason to mislabel the photo.

Crouch believes the shop looks too well equipped for this early date in their bicycle career. Their first two shops corresponding to the time frame of 1893 were occupied for a short time. Initially, they repaired bicycles and sold bicycles built by others.

They were not building bicycles of their own brand until three years later in 1896. By then they were occupying their third shop There is nothing in the record to indicate that they had a well-equipped shop with tools driven by an overhead line shaft until then.

There were fourteen bicycle shops in Dayton during that time period. Possibly, the shop in the photo could be one of those, not the Wright Brothers’ shop.

Sharkey counters that it is not difficult to imagine that the shop was well equipped with tools and gadgets of every sort because they were tinkerers that collected such things over the years. The shop looks very cramped, which is consistent with their need to find larger quarters. Everything in the shop is neat. Bottles and boxes are lined up carefully on the shelves, a characteristic that is consistent with their almost compulsive need for neatness and preciseness.

Crouch doesn’t think the young men in the photo look like Wilbur and Orville. He claims that Orville (right of center in the photo) didn’t part his hair on the side shown in the photo. (Click image for larger version). He also doesn’t think that Orville’s nose looks right.

Wilbur shows some hair peeking out from his hat. Crouch says that this couldn’t be possible if it were Wilbur because he had lost most of his hair on his forehead while still in high school.

Wilbur is shown dressed in a sporty light suit. Crouch assets that in reality Wilbur was a conservative dresser. Also, his clothing doesn’t look like he is one of the workers in the shop.

Sharkey responds that the two young men in the center of the photo are about the same age as the Wrights would be and about the same build. It is difficult to compare facial features because there are no known pictures of them during that time period.

Wilbur is possibly wearing a hat to conceal his high forehead. Wilbur is wearing a suit but it appears rumpled and carelessly worn, as he was likely to do. Orville in turn is wearing a fancy tie and vest that is consistence with his reputation of being somewhat of a dude.

The most compelling physical evidence of all, asserts Sharkey, is the absence of earlobes on Wilbur. The real Wilbur had this rare characteristic.

Another question that one might ask is what would their father, the Bishop and their sister think about the pictures. Their mother died in 1889. It happens that during this period of time their father was away from home traveling on church business most of the time and their sister Katharine was in college.

No Conclusive Answer

Crouch asked the FBI to examine the photo and compare it with other Wright Brothers’ pictures. Because they had no scars or birthmarks, they were undecided. The mystery will have to go unsolved because there is no unassailable truth one way or the other. What do you think? Send me an e-mail with your thoughts.