The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough

Few took any interest in the matter or in the two brothers who were to become Dayton’s greatest heroes ever. Even those riding the interurban line seem to have paid little or no attention to what could occasionally be seen in passing, or to the brothers themselves as they traveled back and forth from town on the same trolley looking little different from other commuters. An exception was Luther Beard, managing editor of the Dayton Journal, who, because of a class he taught occasionally at a school near Huffman Prairie, rode the interurban as far as Simms Station. “I used to chat with them in a friendly way and was always polite to them,” Beard would recall, “because I sort of felt sorry for them. They seemed like well-meaning, decent enough young men. Yet there they were, neglecting their business to waste their time day after day on that ridiculous flying machine.”