Tag Archives: History

Memories of the Eagle

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My best guess of what I was doing exactly fifty years before the publication of this post is sleeping. I wouldn’t be sleeping much longer because it was Monday morning and I would have to wake up and go to work. And I would not have been asleep very long either. I would have stayed up way too long watching TV after a long drive home. Just having the possibility of watching TV late at night was unusual even at the very end of the 1960s. With the exception of Bob Shreve’s all-night movies on Saturday, all five Cincinnati channels went off the air around midnight. But the wee hours of July 21, 1969, were different. It was the day following the day when the Eagle had landed. There was news to be shared.

We — my wife, our son, and I — were visiting friends in Saint Louis over that weekend. Our plans were to be home at a decent hour but we were paying more attention to someone else’s travel plans than our own. While we were on our way to Saint Louis, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong were on their way to the moon. As we prepared to drive home, Buzz and Neil prepared to head for the Lunar surface. At 13:44 EDT on that Sunday afternoon, the pair separated from Michael and the command module Columbia and began their descent. At 16:17 EDT, Armstrong announced that “The Eagle has landed.”

The timestamps on my own recollections aren’t nearly as precise or reliable as NASA’s. Part of me thinks that we did not leave Saint Louis until after the Lunar Module was on the surface. Information currently available online says that a four hour rest period was planned between landing and exiting. If that was the information we had then and if we really did not depart until the Eagle landed, then I must have thought I could drive to Cincinnati in under four hours or maybe I was terribly confused by time zones. Or maybe we were counting on the astronauts sleeping for the full four hours then spending considerable time preparing to leave the lander. Whatever the reasons and reasoning, I know for certain that as we headed toward home, we believed we had a good shot at making it in time to watch man’s first step onto the moon.

There was no radio in the car. Not even AM. The vehicle’s entertainment system consisted entirely of an under-dash 8-track tape deck. That was normally not a problem since no one in their right mind would want to listen to news or the top 40 when all seven minutes of Light My Fire was available in stereo with the click of a cartridge. But this drive was not normal and we really did want to listen to news. As I recall, the Bairds, who we were visiting in Saint Louis, loaned us a portable transistor radio which we propped atop the dash and fiddled with almost constantly as signal strength ebbed and flowed.

The details were forgotten long ago, but I remember that somewhere along the way we heard that the rest period was going to be shortened and the astronauts would be stepping from the capsule earlier than once thought. Whether or not we ever actually had a legitimate chance of reaching home before that happened seems doubtful to me now. But, regardless of how likely or unlikely that had been, it now became clear that it was pretty much impossible. If we continued our drive, human beings were going to be walking on the moon while our only connection was a tiny radio with temperamental reception.

We were still somewhere west of Indianapolis when that realization struck. Like so many other details of that day, I cannot recall our thought processes as we left the expressway in search of a television. We did this near the airport and I know that at least part of the reason was that we knew there were motels in the area. There surely was no money for rented lodging in our family budget so it seems unlikely that we planned on spending the night. On the other hand, this was a truly major event so it’s possible that we were at least considering it. Checking prices may have even been on my mind when I stepped into the hotel lobby. If so, I’m sure it vanished when I saw the TV playing in the furnished lobby. I left and quickly returned with the family.

I think of it as a Holiday Inn but, in reality, it could have been any of the slightly upscale (to a 22-year-old father) motels of the time. Whatever the brand, it was upscale enough that flight crews from multiple airlines regularly overnighted there. My wife and I found seats on a sofa with 5-month-old Crispian parked in front of the TV in a little plastic carrier commonly referred to as a “pumpkin seat”. The three of us became lobby fixtures while others watched the TV for a bit on the way to their rooms.

Time moved slowly as we waited for the astronauts to step outside the capsule. Multiple flight crews arrived while we waited and each followed the same procedure. One member went to the desk to check in the entire crew while the others stood behind the sofa staring over our heads at the glowing screen. When the paperwork was completed, the unlucky person who had somehow been chosen to perform it, distributed keys and everyone rushed off to their individual accommodations and personal televisions.

At 22:56 EDT, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Lunar surface. The picture at the top of this article shows his foot hanging from the Lunar Module’s ladder just before that happened. After Buzz joined him, Neil placed the camera on a tripod to provide a more panoramic view. The black and white images were dim and blurry and sometimes flickered away. And they were beautiful.

I halfway think we stayed in that hotel lobby during all of the approximately two and a half hours of Extravehicular Activity but I’m not at all certain. I am certain that Cris saw that first step because I checked to make sure his eyes were open. Of course, any memories he has of the event are almost certainly from repeatedly being told about it rather than from what he actually saw. My great grandfather had been dead just over eight years at the time of the moon landing but he had lived to see three humans (Gargarin, Shepard, Grissom) in space. He was born in 1875 and was almost exactly the same age as the kid in the pumpkin seat when Custer’s troops were annihilated at Little Big Horn. As my son watched dim images of men nearly 240,000 miles away and I watched him, I wondered what advances he would see in his lifetime. Fifty years in, the list is impressive and growing.

A ten-day 50th anniversary celebration in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Neil Armstrong’s hometown, wraps up today. The final event is a 7:00 Wink at the Moon concert featuring the Lima Area Concert Band. Other concerts and events have filled the ten days in downtown Wapakoneta and at the Armstrong Air & Space Museum at the edge of town. I visited Tuesday, the anniversary of the rocket launch that started Neil and his buddies on their way to the moon.

Two new statues of Armstrong had been unveiled at the museum on Sunday. It’s a bit disappointing that the white clouds and low light make the moon-like dome of the museum so hard to see. I photographed the statues before the crowd started to arrive but noted later that the statue of the young dreamer was — and I’m sure will be — a very popular place for families to pose their younger members for photos. A third statue, of Armstrong in his 1969 welcome home parade, was to be unveiled downtown on Thursday.

As 9:32 approached, attention was focused on a 22-inch replica of the Saturn 5 rocket that had lifted off in Florida at that time exactly fifty tears earlier. A recording of that half-century-old countdown was played to help coordinate the launch of the model. The model was a solid fuel-powered Estes much like the ones I helped build and launch even more than fifty years ago. When the count reached zero, I was quickly reminded that the acceleration characteristics of an Estes rocket are much closer to those of a bullet than to those of a 6.5 million pound 363 foot Saturn 5.

Following the countdown and launch, the museum was opened — and filled. I waited outside for the initial rush to pass although the place was still pretty busy when I did go in. The first picture is a reminder that Armstrong’s career did not begin with the moon landing. It’s the suit he wore on Gemini 8. His partner on that flight was David Scott who made it to the moon himself on Apollo 15. The second picture is of Armstrong’s backup suit for Apollo 11. On the day I took this photo, July 16, the Smithsonian returned the suit worn on Apollo 11 to display after being out of sight for some time being repaired.

Just beyond where this piece of the moon is displayed, is a movie that runs every half hour. Many other artifacts and information panels are in that room where I spent fifteen minutes or so waiting for the next showing. It was there that I was struck by the fact that I was one of the few people in that museum who actually remembered the Apollo expeditions. Many were adolescents born decades after the moon landings, but it was clear from overheard comments and answers to youthful questions that most of the parents and even grandparents weren’t around in 1969 or were too young to have solid memories. I’ve since learned that only four of the twelve men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972 are currently living. Yeah, I guess that really was a ways back.

On the anniversary of the actual landing, I watched a movie. Apollo 11: First Steps Edition is a version of Apollo 11 created for OMNIMAX style theaters. Yesterday’s showings are the only ones planned for the theater at the Cincinnati Museum Center but I believe this is the same movie being shown elsewhere including the Air Force Museum in Dayton. Made entirely of archival footage, it gave everyone in the sold-out theater a glimpse inside the historic mission and refreshed memories for a few of us. Sometimes the images are so big or there are so many of them that it’s hard to take it all in. It was that way the first time, too.

That concert that will be happening in Wapakoneta tonight gets its name from a statement that Neil Armstrong’s family issued at his death in 2012. “… the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.” I did that last night shortly after the moon cleared the horizon. It was about the time when, fifty years earlier, Neil and Buzz’s time outside the capsule was a little more than half over. I thought of Neil and winked then winked two more times and thought of Buzz and Michael. Nicely done, fellows. Nicely done. 

Seventy-Seven Years After

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On Tuesday, Richard Eugene Cole, the last of the Doolittle Raiders, died at the age of 103. The following post first appeared on April 19, 2012, one day after the seventieth anniversary of the Doolittle Raid. That was long enough ago that Oddments, eventually made obsolete by this blog, were still a thing here. An Oddment page contains the bulk of my reporting on the seventieth reunion. There is a link to it in the blog post as well as here.

Doolittle Raiders Special DeliveryOn April 18, 1942, sixteen B-25s launched from carriers on a one-way bombing raid over Japan. The physical damage it caused might not have been all that significant but it delivered a much needed lift to moral in the United States and prompted some rethinking and altering of plans by the Japanese commanders. Four of the surviving raiders continue their week-long reunion today and tomorrow in Dayton, Ohio. On Tuesday and Wednesday, airplanes like the ones that made the raid were on hand at the reunion. I was there both days and have an Oddment entry here. Pointing to that entry and providing a place for comments are the primary reasons for this blog entry but…

…I also revisited a couple of interesting eating establishments.

Hasty TastyHasty TastyBreakfast was at the 60 year old Hasty-Tasty Pancake House just a couple of miles from the Air Force Museum. I’ve eaten here before but don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it in either a blog post of a trip journal. A wonderful Dayton eatery where the waitresses that don’t call you “Honey” call you “Sugar”.

Many of the B-25s headed back to Urbana after the flyover and so did I once the memorial service had concluded and traffic cleared a bit. Several of the planes are staying at Grimes Field for a day or two and there is a nice museum that includes a DC3 cargo plane you can climb inside. I took pictures there that could have been included in the Oddment page but I feared that would be overkill.

Crabill's Hamburgers

Crabill's HamburgersCrabill’s Hamburgers, at the west edge of Urbana, is even older than the Hasty Tasty although it has moved once. I did mention it when I stopped last summer and none other than David Crabill praised crisp hotdogs. I resolved to try one on my next visit and this was it. Andy cooked the ‘dog just right while I downed my dinner then the friendly but unnamed (Oops, sorry.) waitress obliged me by putting relish on just one half so I could taste it both ways without buying two. The Tootsie Roll is the reward everyone gets for cleaning their plate waxed paper.

Book Review
Jefferson Highway All the Way
Denny Gibson

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Too soon? What had been my most recent travelogue, A Canadian Connection, was published less than three months ago and I tend to agree with anyone thinking these paperbacks are appearing just a little too close together. But the facts are that neither the timing nor the sequence of these books was exactly arbitrary. Before I had finished writing 50 @ 70, I knew I had to produce a book covering the Canadian portion of that drive to and from Alaska, and before I had finished driving from Winnipeg to New Orleans last spring, I knew I had to produce a book covering that full-length drive of the Jefferson Highway. Then, in a manner similar to the scheduling of many road trips, I started working backward. It seemed reasonable to target release of the Jefferson Highway book ahead of the 2019 JHA conference. If there was any appetite for the book at all, it would likely peak about the time of the conference. That meant publication by early April (i.e., now). It also seemed desirable to have the tale of the Canadian portion of the Alaska trip follow the U.S. portion of the trip in 50 @ 70 without another book in between. So the sequence and overall timing was set and has come to pass. For the present, the travelogue job jar is empty.

All five existing Trip Mouse books tell stories of road trips. They are not guidebooks even though photographs and descriptions of points of interest are plentiful. All five share a common format, but the latest resembles the first a bit more closely than the others. A Decade Driving the Dixie Highway describes the many trips required to cover all of the network of roads that comprised the Dixie Highway system. Similarly, 50 @ 70 tells of multiple trips that passed through the last sixteen of fifty states. Even A Canadian Connection, which deals with a single journey, consists of northbound and southbound segments with a gap (Alaska) in between. Only By Mopar to the Golden Gate (which could have been called Lincoln Highway All the Way) and Jefferson Highway All the Way tell of a single end-to-end drive of a single historic named auto trail.

Jefferson Highway All the Way tells a little of the history of the original Jefferson Highway Association and the route it defined. It also touches on the formation of the modern JHA in 2011. But the bulk of the book concerns the events and sights (There are about 140 photos.) of that 2018 drive.

Jefferson Highway All the Way, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2019, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 154 pages, ISBN 978-1796535280.

Signed copies available through eBay. Unsigned copies available through Amazon.

Reader reviews at Amazon are appreciated and helpful and can be submitted even if you didn’t purchase the book there.

More Museum Returns

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I’m sure there was at least one occasion when Ooola pulled Alley Oop into a major cave cleaning project. Among all the other repairs and additions, something very much like that must have occurred with the popular cave attraction at the Cincinnati Museum Center. The artificial limestone cave has been touched up and cleaned while retaining the appropriate level of dim damp caveiness.

I remember when the Natural History Museum moved to Union Terminal from Gilbert Avenue and the cave went missing for a while. My memory may be in error, there is no doubt that it’s foggy, but my recollection is that the cave was different after the move. Bigger, perhaps. Improved, maybe. I believe that the cave I saw Friday was pretty much the same cave I saw before the 2016 closing. The subtle wear and tear of twenty-five years of traffic have been dealt with but the pools, stalagmites, and narrow passages visitors have become familiar with over the years are all right there. They are simply a little cleaner and fresher.

In addition to the reopened cave, Friday’s members only “preview” saw the return of Cincinnati in Motion, another museum favorite. This 1/64 scale model of the Queen City presents different sections in different decades from the 1900s to the 1940s. Both of the first two pictures contain the Roebling Bridge and those who look close enough might see street cars entering the Dixie Terminal Building after crossing the bridge. There’s a closer look here.

Friday’s event was just the latest in a series of reveals following the Museum Center’s two year long renovation. It has been and will continue to be a mix of old and new starting with November’s “grand reopening” which included a brand new Dinosaur Hall and the refurbished Public Landing. I’ve no doubt that more new exhibits await and the list of previously displayed items yet to be unpacked is a mile long. Unwrapping this present is going to take a while and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Cincinnati in Motion once again welcomes visitors to the history museum but there’s not yet a lot beyond it. There is a possibly temporary display of Cincinnati related vehicles called Engines of Growth with a literal bright spot in this 1951 Crosley Super Sport. As noted on a nearby plaque, the car was a gift from Michael C. Warmbier in memory of his grandson Otto Frederick Warmbeir. Otto Warmbeir was the college student who died in 2017 shortly after being released from a North Korean prison. It’s a very nice car and a very sad story. The phrase “in memory of his grandson” is heartbreaking in any context. 

Time of Pharaohs

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The renovated Cincinnati Museum Center takes another step at getting back in the swing of things by hosting the U.S. debut of Egypt: The Time of Pharaohs. The exhibit is new but the objects in it are anything but. Some of the 350+ artifacts on display are more than 4,500 years old. 4,500 years isn’t old like a colonial era cabin, or a New Mexico pueblo, or even a European castle. No, we’re talking old like a pyramid which is, of course, where some of these items come from.

I was there Friday evening for a members only event. It was a well attended members only event. Part of me was really happy to see that lots of people support the museum with their memberships and that same part was really happy to see that lots of those members also support special extra cost exhibits such as this one. Another part of me kind of wished all those people would just get out of my way.

I was smiling when I wrote that last sentence. Timed entries kept the exhibit from being overrun but attendees were not being hustled through it. The crowd simply meant I had to occasionally wait a bit to read a placard or study an artifact up close. It also meant that most photos I took had one to twenty people in them but just about every one of those people was seriously curious and that’s a very good thing.

Based mostly on Hollywood movies, my idea of Egypt includes a lot of gigantic stone things like the Sphinx and those pyramids. But, almost immediately I found a wooden jackal, a bronze cat, and a clay cup. A sign next to the cup dates it to the 1st half of the 3rd millennium BCE. The 2nd half of the 3rd millennium BCE started 4519 years ago. By comparison, the cat is almost modern. It’s from the 3rd century BCE. The jackal is from around 1000 BCE.

These bronze statues are just a few inches tall and quite detailed. That’s Amun-Ra on the left and Isis on the right with a sun disk on her head and Horus on her lap. I didn’t catch a date for the Amun-Ra statue. The Isis statue is from the 6th to 3rd centuries BCE.

My Cecil B. DeMille based ideas weren’t entirely wrong; The Egyptians did do a fair amount of stone carving. The first stele features the crocodile god Sobek. It was carved sometime between roughly 1290 and 1190 BCE during the 19th Dynasty. I screwed up and got no information on the second stele. The third picture shows a plaster cast of a carved wall of the Temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak. The plaster cast is 135 years old. Like the first pictured stele, the wall was carved during the 19th Dynasty. The casting is a solid grey. The colors are from a projector that cycles on and off to show the wall as it was originally. A replica of a 13th century BCE chariot stands in front of the wall.

Of course, you can’t have an Egyptian exhibit without a sphinx and some mummies. This limestone sphinx is a baby just a couple of feet long. It’s from the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE. The coffin is from the 14th or 15th centuries BCE. It’s a mix of wood and plaster with gold trim. The mummified cat comes from the same time period as the sphinx.

There is actually plenty of modern technology mixed in with the multi-millennium old artifacts. An audio guide is available that provides commentary keyed to specific displays. There are several interactive exhibits that help explain timelines, hieroglyphics, and more. The final display is pretty high-tech. High resolution CT scans have recorded the details of every layer of a mummy from about 750 BCE. Holography is used to project a rotating 3-dimensional image inside a clear pyramid. The image cycles through the layers as it rotates. It’s a time warp that even Doc Brown might appreciate.

Egypt: Time of the Pharaohs is at the Cincinnati Museum Center through August 18.  

The Holocaust and Humanity Center is Open

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The Cincinnati Holocaust and Humanity Center reopened in its new location last Sunday on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I had seen the space it moved into on a “hardhat tour” during the Cincinnati Museum Center’s member’s preview in November. At the time, I noted my failure to visit the center in its current location despite it being on my list and relatively near my home. I once again resolved to get there “before they start carrying stuff out” but I failed. I tried after about a week had passed, but it was already too late. The move had already begun and the operation at Rockwern Academy in Kenwood had already closed.

I would not get inside the Center today, either, but it wasn’t because I was too late. I arrived about half an hour before the 1:00 opening ceremony when the space around chairs provided for holocaust survivors and family members was wide open. I could have staked out a spot right next to them but didn’t. By the time the procession of survivors and descendants began, my best view was via the giant screens at either side of the stage. The processional was quite moving not only for those participating or watching familiar faces enter the rotunda, but for folks like me who recognized no one. Some in the procession may have been experiencing memories of when they first saw Union Terminal. This was where many people escaping Europe or recently freed from Nazi concentration camps arrived in the 1940s to begin a new life in Cincinnati. The last picture shows the center’s Executive Director Sarah Weiss cutting the ceremonial ribbon along with Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley and Nancy and David Wolf for whom the center is named.

Entry to the Holocaust and Humanity Center was free on Sunday via time stamped tickets. I doubt that people were actually being forced out of the center after fifteen minutes, which was the interval on the tickets, but it was pretty obvious that this was not the day for a leisurely stroll through the exhibits. I thought it absolutely wonderful that the opening had attracted so many people, but quickly decided to take advantage of one of the perks of being retired and come back sometime during the week.

Incidentally, the HHC opening wasn’t the only thing bringing people to the museum center on Sunday. The picture at right, taken long before the crowd appeared for the opening ceremony, shows a line of people stretched across the front of the rotunda waiting to get museum and movie tickets. There probably wasn’t a lot of overlap with the HHC crowd; Most of the groups in line included young children. I noted in my post about the theater reopening that families with school age children were flocking to the renovated Union Terminal during the holiday break, and it looks like that flocking continues on weekends. I bet it’s the dinosaurs.

I made it back on Tuesday. Entry to the Holocaust and Heritage Center is not included in Cincinnati Museum Center membership, but tickets are sold through the CMC kiosk in the rotunda and there is a discount for CMC members. These sculptures were at the front of the rotunda and usually surrounded by people on Sunday. At present, they are near the stairs leading down to the HHC. The HHC is right next to where the Cincinnati History Library and Archives was and will be. The library closed in 2016 along with the CMC and has not yet reopened.

We were given a peek at a small portion of this mural on that November “hardhat tour” and I had been looking forward to seeing the whole thing. It didn’t disappoint. The 63 foot mural covers more than one wall of the center’s lobby area. I had some time to look it over as I waited to enter the “Winds of Change” theater that separates the lobby from the museum galleries but know I have some more looking to do. I believe all of the mural’s twenty-six scenes come from stories that are told, at least partially, inside the museum. Inside the theater, holocaust survivors now living in Cincinnati tell pieces of their stories in a video. The local connection appears throughout the museum in the display of artifacts and quotations from local survivors.

The first gallery beyond the “Winds of Change” theater begins with the story of the rise of Nazism. It’s a story of relatively small steps that go from Jews being valued members of their communities to their extermination being seen as a solution to something. The HHC utilizes two types of interactive exhibits. One uses touch screens to allow selection from a small set of recorded first person accounts related to the display they are part of. The second uses sliding panels operated by push-buttons. This not only provides more surface area for images and text but involves visitors ever so slightly. At first I thought this was a little hokey but I quickly became a fan. If you don’t press the button, you will miss out on something, and when you do press it, you’re kind of committed to studying what is revealed. 

In addition to the big mural, I believe that every description of the center I have seen mentions the bullet picture and the train window. The bullet picture is an image, reproduced with empty shell casings, of Jews being gunned down in a burial pit they had been forced to dig themselves. The train window is simply a window in the museum wall that opens onto the active tracks behind the building. Only a tiny bit of passenger traffic trickles through Union Terminal but freight traffic passing through the yard is quite significant. Visualizing human beings stuffed into box cars isn’t difficult.

The aftermath of the holocaust is also examined. I was on the leading edge of the Baby Boomer generation. The war was over and the death camps liberated before I was born. Some of the war crimes trials occurred in my lifetime but I certainly don’t remember them. However, I do remember seeing the movie Judgement at Nuremberg in a theater during its first run and same day TV coverage of the Eichmann trial. This was in 1961 when the events they dealt with were less than twenty years in the past. The holocaust was just outside of my own memory but was rather fresh in the memories of the adults in my world.

The “Points of Light” theater marks the end of the Holocaust Gallery and the beginning of the Humanity Gallery. From here on out, the exhibits deal more with today’s world. People called “upstanders” are identified and their stories of resisting hate or doing something else to improve their part of the world are told. The last picture is of the “Make Your Mark Wall”. Visitors can leave their thoughts and impressions via the touch screens and add their selfie to the wall if desired. On the day I was there, a portion of one of the large screens was blacked out, but I’m guessing that was just from someone leaving their coffee in front of a projector or something similar.

The Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanities Center is an impressive and welcome addition to the Cincinnati Museum Center. I entered the “Winds of Change” theater by myself, but took my time going through the galleries, and found myself in the presence of several other visitors by the time I exited the museum. Even so, I know I need to go back. It is really impossible not to see similarities between the increasing hatred seen in some corners today and some of the events described in the center. The centers’ creators were certainly aware of these similarities, and I don’t doubt helped make them more apparent here and there. That sure doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me.

Got the Hanger Before the Plane

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The title is my questionable attempt to make an aeronautical version of that saying about getting the cart before the horse. I started on a trip yesterday that is aimed at having me at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, for the 115th anniversary of the Wright brother’s first flight on Monday. In anticipation of that, I recently revisited some Wright related sites in nearby Dayton, Ohio. This was actually the main reason I was in Dayton when I made the Carillon Historical Park visit that yielded last week’s Christmas themed post. There’s been a bit of a squabble between Ohio and North Carolina over where this flying business got started, but my title is not a reference to that. I’m just acknowledging the fact that this blog post about the Wright brothers in Dayton is going up before my trip journal entries about the brothers in North Carolina. Dayton was the Wright brothers’ home and there are quite a few locations associated with them. Probably the most important single location tied to the Wrights and their development of human flight is Huffman Prairie Flying Field where a replica of their 1905 airplane hangar stands. A placard in the hangar is here.

Official input to the squabble included North Carolina putting “First in Flight” on their license plates in 1982 and Ohio following with “Birthplace of Aviation” in 1997. In theory, the argument officially came to an end in 2003 when the U.S. Congress recognized Ohio as “the birthplace of aviation” while acknowledging that the first flights occurred in North Carolina. The text associated with that recognition is here. It’s easy and maybe somewhat natural to think that Ohio got the nod because the Wrights lived there but that the actual “birthing” happened in NC. The fact is that the brothers did a lot more than live in Ohio. Tremendous amounts of research and experimentation occurred in Dayton both before and after the trips to NC, and almost all of it that took place after December 17, 1903, took place at this field near what is now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Both of those slogans are correct. The first flight — actually the first four flights — happened in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina; Aviation was born in Dayton, Ohio.

The reason for the Wrights’ trips to North Carolina was the strong and steady winds there. They had proven that their machine could fly, but further development was required. The brothers naturally wanted to avoid the time and money consuming trips to the coast but Ohio winds are weak and fickle. They might lay out as much as 240 feet of rail only to be forced to move it when the wind shifted. The catapult near the hangar is a replica of the one they used to shorten takeoff distance to 60 feet with less need for a headwind. The brothers improved on the machine they flew in NC and eventually learned to control the craft to the point of flying around the perimeter of the field. Their flight path is kept mowed and may be walked.

Not far from Huffman Prairie Flying Field, a Wright Brothers Memorial stands atop a hill that bears their name. The area containing the field is included in the view from the overlook behind the monument. There is a small museum and interpretative center across the road from the monument.

What I think is one of the coolest sculptures around stands in the median of Main Street in downtown Dayton. Called “Flyover”, it is a full scale representation of that first flight in Kitty Hawk. The sculpture’s length matches the 120 feet covered by that first flight. Each of the flight’s 12 seconds is marked by a set of wings showing the craft’s climb and descent. It’s really eye-opening to walk the length of the sculpture and realize just how short that first giant hop for mankind was. Another full scale sculpture stand just a few blocks away, on Monument Street. The plane depicted is the 1905 Wright Flyer III in which the Wright brothers improved their design and skills at Huffman Prairie. The real thing shows up in a couple of paragraphs.

The Wright Brothers National Museum is inside Carillon Historical Park. It’s been there since the park opened in 1950 but just received the “National” designation in August. More Wright brothers artifacts are displayed here than anywhere else. The bicycle in the second picture is one of five Wright brand bicycles known to exist and one of two on display in this building. The Wrights eventually built a wind tunnel and other devices for more accurate measurements, but some of their earliest testing involved mounting variously shaped surfaces on the horizontal wheel then peddling into the wind to see how they reacted. This may not be the most famous camera in the world but it is responsible for taking one of the most famous photographs in the world. Orville set up the camera before climbing aboard the flyer, Wilbur handed off the bulb so he could help steady the craft during takeoff,  and John T. Daniels pressed that bulb at the right time to head off the “pictures or it didn’t happen” crowd back in Dayton.

The story of how this display happened is almost as cool as the display itself. In the 1940s, when Colonel Edward Deeds was putting this park together, he had a chat with his good friend Orville Wright about making a replica of the first Wright Flyer. Orville had a better idea. Why not rebuild the real Wright Flyer III? This was the first truly practical flyer and the brothers considered it their most important aircraft. It had served its builders well in their 1905 developments at Huffman Prairie, then had been shipped to Kitty Hawk for U.S. Army trials in 1908. Following the trials it had been more or less abandoned although there were some pieces in various locations around the country. Orville knew where those pieces were and of course he knew everything there was to know about the original plane. What followed has been called “The first pilot’s last project”. Not only did Orville contribute to rebuilding the airplane, it was his idea to display it in a sort of pit so that visitors could get good views of the whole thing. It is believed that approximately 85% of the original machine was recovered and 60% to 80% was used in the reconstruction. Many of the original pieces that were not made part of the plane were used in making replacements. Some of these are displayed nearby. A placard with the plane’s specifications stands by one of its wings. 

Kitty Hawk Holidays

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The Outer Banks and the Wright Brothers’ first flight are firmly joined in my mind. Although I’ve no problem remembering the year (1903), the month and date weren’t as easily recalled. I quickly looked it up the instant I first started thinking of the Outer Banks as a target for this year’s Christmas Escape and was very happy to learn it was December 17; Barely a week before Christmas Day, four days before the Winter Soltice, and five days before a full moon.

I’m beginning the trip with a dash to the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kitty Hawk to celebrate the 115th anniversary of the flight. I’ll stay on the Outer Banks for a few days so may be in the area for those other holidays too. If not, I’ll be somewhere along the route home. That route is not yet determined although I’m leaning toward picking up US-64 at its eastern terminus and following it all the way through North Carolina. Then all I’ll have to do to get home is turn right.

This entry is to let blog only subscribers know about the trip and to provide a place for comments. The journal is here.

Carillon Christmas

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For the fourth time, the giant bell tower that gives Dayton’s Carillon Historical Park its name has been turned into a tree of light rising 200 feet above the park. The tree is quite visible from I-75, and I’ve seen it every year as I drove through the city, but this is the first time I’ve stopped for a closer look. The 20,000 bulb tree is merely the biggest feature of a month long celebration involving the entire park.

I obviously knew about the big tree but I encountered the rest of the party more or less by accident. I entered the park to enjoy some of its historical aspects and took a few pictures during regular hours. Regular hours means before 5:00 PM when the park normally closes.

I finished up my daytime stroll a little after 4:00 and headed to Carillon Brewing for some ale made the old fashioned way and one of the biggest mettwursts I’ve ever seen. When I entered the brewery, the crowd was sparse. When I left, the place was completely full with a line at the door. The parking lot, which had been nearly empty at 4:30, was packed an hour later. Sunset was at 5:14. The Christmas related activities begin and all the lights go on at 5:00. I took the picture at the start of this article just before I reentered the park roughly half an hour after sunset.

During my daytime walkabout, I’d noticed smoke coming from the kitchen behind the bakery, and paused to visit with the lady stirring up gingerbread cookie batter. I now stopped in to wash down one of the  cookies baked in the wood heated brick oven with cider heated over an open fire.

Every building, bridge, and other structure in the park was decorated for the occasion. A small train took passengers, including me, on a tour of the large open and decorated area behind the buildings. This tiny engine pulled over a dozen passengers, more than half of whom were full sized adults, through the arches and past the trees without even a hint of struggle. I was impressed.

Other activities included a puppet show, Christmas cards being printed on a 1930s era press, a place to write and mail letters to Santa Claus, and a place to talk to the jolly gent in person. I paused inside the main building to warm up and listen to these talented carolers before leaving the park.

I snapped the first of these three pictures when I arrived at the park around 2:30. The second one was taken about a quarter hour after sunset at 5:38. I didn’t actually see it, but my understanding is that those 20,000 white lights came on at approximately 5:00. The sun had been gone a long time when I took the third picture about 7:15. The carillon rang out Christmas songs throughout the evening. It had been completed in 1942 and the first official concert took place on Easter Sunday of that year. That was not, however, the first time the bells were heard. Although work remained, construction of the carillon was nearly complete by the winter of 1941 and Dayton was treated to an impromptu concert on Christmas Eve 1941; Just 17 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

A Carillon Christmas continues through December 30. 5:00 to 9:00 Sun-Thu, 5:00 to 10:00 Fri-Sat.

National Veterans Memorial and Museum

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Ohio has a new museum. The National Veterans Memorial and Museum opened on October 27. I visited on November 30 and confess to being drawn more by the building than anything else. Pictures I’d seen made the circular structure look both beautiful and unusual. I was also intrigued by what might be inside. I’d skimmed pieces of the Museum’s website and noted what I thought was a slogan. “A national museum where veterans, not war, come first,” turned out to be the headline of a CNN report on the museum rather than a slogan. Before I read the report and while I thought the phrase a slogan, I wondered just how much could veterans be separated from war?.

Before I went inside to answer my question, I explored a bit of the museum’s exterior. The Allied Works Architecture designed building sits on the banks of the Scioto River near downtown Columbus. Despite its nearness to the city’s tallest buildings, it is surrounded by open space nicely landscaped by OLIN. Columbus has done a nice job of keeping the river banks open and green. Directly across the river from the museum is the field where I watched fireworks in July. The Rooftop Sanctuary is accessed by a ramp curving along the side of the building and offering views of the city and river. After soaking up the views from the top, I headed back down the ramp to the main entrance.

When the subject is military veterans, avoiding war references is impossible. The museum does not push details of our various wars, but those wars are major markers in our historic timeline. The focus is on people. One of the displays encountered early on talks about taking the oath that separates a person’s civilian existence from the military one. An oath signed by Alexander Hamilton in 1778 is featured in the display on evolving oaths.

There are several interactive exhibits in the museum and here’s one I found a little troubling. The touchscreen allows a slider to be moved from 1950, when the U.S. military was present in 74 countries, to 2018, when that number is 154. The Peace Corp is currently active in 65 countries.

There are several videos as well. Some are “on demand” while others, like this one about coming home, run continuously. The first picture is a screenshot showing a celebration at the end of World War II. The second is a much more recent scene of soldiers returning from the middle east. In between are images of many other homecomings including Vietnam where a soldier tells of leaving his uniform in an airport restroom to avoid “greetings” from protesters. A friend of mine tells an identical story. As we continue to get involved in wars even less popular and more poorly justified, we have at least learned to distinguish those promoting war from those caught up in it. I am not a veteran myself and have no homecoming experience of my own. Of the two veterans closest to me, I missed out on my Dad getting home from World War II but I was there when my son got home from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Many of the stories presented at the museum involve the struggles and accomplishments of veterans after their discharge. Some, like Tammy Duckworth and John McCain, are well known but there are plenty of unknowns who overcame just as much and made equally valuable contributions to society.

I was somewhat conflicted about this museum from the moment I first heard of it. Part of that was due to the obvious difficulty in celebrating the warrior without celebrating the war. That has been handled fairly well. Another part came from questioning the appropriateness of spending large amounts of money on the building when so many of the people it sets out to honor are in need of shelter, food, counseling, and more. The museum does promote various veteran organizations and its conference rooms and Rooftop Sanctuary will no doubt host many discussions and gatherings, but whether or not that was the best use of the money remains a valid question. I’m also not entirely comfortable with this sign on the wall of the museum’s third level. There’s not a whole lot there other than some space for contemplation, and I’m sure it’s tough to organize anything related to the military without someone bringing up the lives that have been lost, but many Americans seem to have a really tough time distinguishing between Memorial Day and Veterans Day and this probably won’t help.

I began this post by noting that it was primarily the stunning building that attracted me. I think I like it even more after seeing it in person. The building and grounds are a beautiful addition to downtown Columbus. The museum may also turn out to be a beautiful addition to the lives of veterans. Time will tell.