Two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio changed the world... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3beVhDiyio
I can add to this thread. Jim, that was a great video find. And I believe Jim has seen this photo on my FaceBook page.... That photo was taken in Dayton, Ohio in 1944. The fellow in the back seat (r) is Orville Wright. The gentleman in the front seat foreground (black suit) is my great Uncle, Frank Krebs, the mayor of Dayton at the time. This fellow is my uncle, MGEN Peter W. Odgers (USAF-R). He had a long distinguished career including combat missions and base commands at Edwards AFB and Andrews AFB. He also was instrumental in the development and design of the the B1-B . But what he does now, at the age of 76, is fly an exact replica of the Wright Flyer at air shows. He sits up there just like you see in the movies, powerd by a hyped up small engine ( around 100 HP ) and flies that thing at 3000 ft and a top speed of about 80mph. About five years ago he was up there and his lawnmower engine stopped. He was trying to make it to the Miami River ( in Dayton ) but ended up crashing it short in a vacant field. He walked away, more upset than anything. I will be seeing him over New Years in Dayton, drinking his beer!
I can add a tad to this thread meself. (re: the picture) The governor of Ohio in 1944 was John W. Bricker. My wife's late mother was married to a fellow named Bob Bricker, who was his son. He was an artist who used to drink a lot and tell wild stories about people he knew like Ronald Reagan and of course, growing up in Ohio politics when his dad was a kingpin there. Nobody ever listened to his drunken rants......but me. http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000820
Good stuff. I had a lot of history teachers in my time but most just ranted facts and figures. Only one, in high school, actually was passionate. He would role play historical figures , sometimes going as far as costuming and changing his voice. I LOVED his class. As a youngster in Dayton I used to spend a lot time sitting on elderly people's front porches in the neighborhood and listening for hours about history from their perspectives. Priceless. Not to get off the track but I feel that we are in no small part in the shape we are in today as a nation because most people have no concept of the ir own history or our collective history. Things we see today would have never flown back in the day...
You're quite right. I had many liberal history profs in college who taught that America is an evil country run by greedy white men who oppress everyone else. In grad school, I even had a prof who told us that if we had just one white boy in our class, we were supposed to inform him that he and his father were responsible for every bad thing that ever happened and all the other students were victims of their oppression. No kidding. That's word for word... I learned history and politics hanging out at my American grandmother's house, which was located in a walnut grove, when I was a boy. It was a wonderful place; heated only with a Franklin stove; entire rooms had magazines going back to the 1920's stacked up to the ceiling; a victrola which had to be hand cranked to play old 78rpm recordings and a short wave radio... My granny lived to be 103 and she was an incredible woman who seemed to know everything. She had been born in Wyoming Territory in 1883 and she was a great observer of human behavior. Among the stories that she told me: - The first time that she saw an airplane... - The time the former heavyweight champion of the world (John L. Sullivan) made a pass at her on a train. She also informed me that the real Gentleman Jim Corbett didn't look anything like Erroll Flynn. - The first time she got to vote...at age 37. - Many stories about how much she hated her mother, who was an early feminist, suffragette and inventor of the modern, adjustable hospital bed. She abandoned my grandmother (Polly) and her sister (Cozy) to travel the country and do political work. As a result, my grandmother also worshipped her father, whom I have never even seen a picture of... Granny lived with her son, Uncle Buddy, who was a very sharp operator, con-artist and criminal. He spent his final years at her house hiding from all the people (including law enforcement in both Mexico and the United States) who were trying to arrest/kill him. He NEVER went outside, but lived indoors his last 16 years. They had fantastic political discussions that went on all day, with me right in the middle. I was probably the only little kid (ages 6-10) in America who actually knew what the Army-McCarthy Hearings were about. Their rightwing beliefs were quite a contrast with the political discussions that my Irish parents had. As an example: my parents had a picture of Saint Franklin D. Roosevelt hanging on the living room wall. Granny and Buddy said that Roosevelt was a Communist who should have been jailed along with the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss and all the other traitors. This contrast left me wondering about a great many things... There aren't many modern kids who're exposed to stuff like that. Sometimes I think that every kid should be forced to spend some time with their grandparents in order to give them a different perspective... ........JO'Co