Devotion

Katharine

What I remember best about that winter in Pau is the bitter cold. If you ask me, all that talk of "sunny southern France" is a delusion and a snare. Orv and I practically froze in our beds! Will had sworn up and down that the Gassion was the best hotel in town, but I never was so uncomfortable in my whole life, not even in the icy grip of an Ohio winter — and that is no picnic, I assure you! Luckily, I came prepared for the worst. When Will took me up in the flying machine for the first time, I was all trussed up like a turkey, with my overcoat bound snug around my ankles and a long scarf looped over my hat to keep it tethered down.

Sure enough, as soon as we got up in the air, my chills and aches vanished in a trice. It was one thing to listen to the boys talk about airplanes — back home in Dayton I used to complain that we didn't hear anything but "flying machine" from morning till night — and something else again to go up in one myself. All those years I had stood on the ground watching Will and Orv make their practice flights over Huffman Prairie and fancied how it would feel to "do the bird act," as Orv put it. Now at last I knew, and I was so proud of them I could have burst wide open.

It was Orv who was grounded that day for a change. Only a few weeks had passed since he had his terrific smashup at Fort Myer while he was demonstrating the Wright flyer for the US Army. I'll never forget how his chin trembled and tears filled his eyes when I came into the hospital room and saw how badly he had been hurt. Dear, brave Little Brother! Wild horses couldn't have kept me from rushing to his bedside in Virginia. Then Will's letter arrived, inviting — no, summoning — us to come join him in France. That was just what the doctor ordered. Orv was still hobbling around on crutches, but Will needed our help getting the machines ready for the exhibition races in the spring, and we had never let him down yet.

The four months I spent in Europe with the boys in 1909 were a fairy tale from start to finish. My very own first flight lasted about seven minutes — but it might have been a lifetime for all I knew. The whole thing was like a dream that words can hardly begin to describe. All I could think to write to Pop the next day was, "Them is fine!" Pau sure is a beautiful place when the weather is nice. Will and I could make out the snowcapped peaks of the Pyrenees glimmering in the distance as we swooped and soared above the farm fields. Never in all my thirty-four years on earth had I seen such a heart-stopping sight. And not until I fell in love, many years later, would I feel like such a giddy young thing again.

"Omnia vincit amor," the Roman poet says — "Love conquers all." The ancients knew a thing or two when they gave the god of love his wings, the better to sweep us mortals off our feet! As nervy as I was up there in Will's flying machine that day at Pau, I knew in my heart of hearts that he would bring me back down to earth safe and sound. I always had perfect confidence in Will and Orv, ever since we were little children. Come to think of it, I always felt perfectly safe with Harry too.

We met up with him in Washington in the summer of '09, not long after we got back from Europe. The reporters were all hounding the boys for interviews, and it was my thankless job to keep them at bay. Ha ha! When Harry sent up his card, though, I insisted on making an exception. I had watched him come up in the world since our college days, from editor of the Oberlin Review to Washington correspondent of the Kansas City Star. There always was something special about Harry. His mind soaked up everything like a sponge, and his character was as solid as a rock. Even at Oberlin, I recognized the strength and dependability that came out so strongly when there was a call for them. It pleased me to see that he had become exactly the kind of man I thought he would.

Even so, when he presented himself that day at our hotel room, I had to pinch myself to make sure I was awake. He looked as if he had stepped straight out of his college yearbook photograph. To think that he was not only a husband and father but also a member in good standing of the Washington press corps. I felt easy with Harry on the spot, but Will and Orv could be as prickly as porcupines. Newspapermen had a way of setting them on edge. One of the national magazines had just published a story claiming that since neither of the boys had a college education, sister Kate had had to step in and help with the mathematical calculations for the flying machine.

It was sheer bosh and nonsense, of course, and no one who knew me would have credited it for a moment. I got good marks in math in school, but when it comes to higher mathematics, I have no head for figures — not one speck! Those reporters were simply determined to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Why, the American Magazine even offered me seven hundred and fifty dollars — half of my teacher's salary at the high school — for a series of articles to be called "The Sister's Story." I had a good mind to take the money and run — until I woke up and came to my senses. Not that it kept me from ribbing the boys about it, mind you. It did no harm to let them know they weren't the only pebbles on the beach!

All that bunk about my mathematical ability got under Orv's skin, right enough. He may not be a natural-born scholar, as Will was, or have a bona fide college degree, like me. But he is no slouch at engineering, trigonometry, geometry, and other subjects that make my head swim. I could see how het up he was over those tall tales the newspapermen had been spinning. So the minute Harry stepped through the door, I popped right up out of my chair and exclaimed, "We read that piece in Hampton's on the train last night, and I told the boys there was at least one person outside the family who would know it wasn't so!"

Harry

It seems just yesterday that the Wrights invited me up to their rooms in the old Raleigh Hotel. It was 1909, as I recall, the end of June. The Star had sent me to Washington six months earlier, and already I was beginning to feel like an old hand on the capital beat. I must have interviewed dozens of important people for the paper, but the Wright brothers were in a class by themselves. Orville's crash at Fort Myer and the death of Lieutenant Self-ridge had been front-page news around the world. And Wilbur's daring demonstration flights in Europe had made him an international hero. L'homme oiseau, the French dubbed him — "the bird man."

As keen as I was to meet the world's most famous aviators, the prospect of renewing my friendship with their charming sister was an even bigger draw. A few weeks earlier I had stood in the crowd in the East Room of the White House watching President Taft give Wilbur and Orville their gold medals from the Aero Club of America. I was near enough to touch Katharine, almost, but they whisked her away, and I couldn't even...