The Airplane - Jay Spenser [10]
The traditional view of the Wrights is of sober midwesterners who worked in self-imposed isolation far from inquiring eyes. Being sons of a Protestant bishop who believed showmanship and public spectacle were unseemly, they shunned publicity and instead focused on the task at hand.
While there is some truth to the above, the actual story is far richer.
Born in 1867 and 1871, respectively, Wilbur and Orville grew up in Dayton, Ohio, amid a close-knit family that included two older brothers and a younger sister. Between them, there had also been a set of twins who died in infancy.
Young Wilbur and Orville shared interests. Although very different, they sought each other out and could usually be found in each other’s company. They played, explored, and discussed their world with a closeness rare among siblings.
These discussions could become heated—the boys called it “scrapping”—when they found themselves arguing different sides of an issue or idea. The intellectual rigor they summoned to make their respective cases was a wellspring of creativity that contributed to their later success.
Theirs was a changing world. Industrialization had America in its throes; steam power was transforming the landscape, scientific discoveries were announced almost daily, and the far corners of the globe were being explored. Newfangled inventions such as electric lights and horseless carriages loomed intriguingly on the horizon.
For Ohioans in the aftermath of the Civil War, it was an exciting time to grow up. That shattering conflict had ended just two years before Wilbur came along. In its receding wake there arose a heady sense that anything was possible if people just applied themselves with sufficient intelligence and alacrity.
Fortunately for the boys, they grew up in a nurturing environment that encouraged playing with ideas and learning all one could about the physical world. Milton and Susan Wright both came from families with traditions of intellectual curiosity, and both were highly accomplished in their own right.
A stern patriarch, Milton Wright was also an influential writer and a social reformer. He had taken holy orders not out of religious fervor but rather because of his church’s forward-looking stance on the moral and political issues of the day. Milton’s pragmatic focus was on the here and now of contemporary American society, not arcane theological musings. The elder Wright had been an outspoken abolitionist until the Civil War ended the horror of slavery in North America. Believing in equal opportunity for all, he later supported women’s suffrage, temperance, and other progressive causes of his day. His intellect and persuasive powers saw him rise rapidly through the church hierarchy until he became a bishop when Wilbur and Orville were still small.
Of English descent, Milton Wright grew up in Indiana when it was a frontier at the western fringe of American society. The rigors of his pioneer upbringing had imbued him with a hardy self-reliance characteristic of nineteenth-century American settlers. In turn, he instilled in his children a sense of the value of discipline, hard work, and integrity. Above all, he gave them his abiding belief that learning is the path to self-betterment.
Susan Catherine Koerner Wright played no less important a role in her children’s formative years. Born in Virginia, she had loved as a small girl to linger in the workshop of her father, John Koerner, a German immigrant and master craftsman who built fine carriages. It became apparent that she had inherited his mechanical aptitude, and under his tutelage she became proficient in the use of a broad array of tools.
Relocating westward in pursuit of greater opportunity, the Koerners settled in Indiana. There Susan attended college, a rare event for American women in the nineteenth century.