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"Celebrating A Century of Wings"
When the citizens of the distant future look back on the 20th century,
they will surely remember it as the time when human beings took to the
sky. Images of flight already dominate our memory of the century past.
In the fall of 1999, USA Today and the Newseum, an Arlington, Va.,
museum devoted to the history of news gathering, announced the results
of a year-long poll in which 36,000 newspaper readers and a substantial
number of journalists were asked to select the top 100 news stories of
the century. The atomic bombing of Japan led the public list, followed
by the attack on Pearl Harbor, the landing on the moon and the invention
of the airplane. The journalists choose precisely the same top four
stories, although they did reverse the moon landing and the attack on
Pearl Harbor.
Was flight really so important in a century marked by war and
revolution, hope and despair, and the rise and fall of nations,
ideologies and empires? Certainly the results of the poll did not
surprise the professional historians who were consulted by the
newspaper. Douglas Brinkley of the University of New Orleans commented
that Hiroshima was the "correct choice" for the top story. Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr., countered that the moon walk is what people will
remember in 500 years. My personal response was to call attention to
the fact that the first three events could not have occurred without the
fourth.
While caution and concern regarding the long term impact of technology
were hallmarks of the late 20th century, most citizens of the aerospace
age seem to have preserved their enthusiasm for flight and admiration
for those who fly. I can be fairly regarded as something of an
authority on public attitudes toward the history of flight. For three
decades, exactly half my lifetime, I have been employed at the most
significant shrine of the aerospace age.
In an average year, nine million people will walk through the doors of
the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) -- 14 million in our best year.
We welcome more visitors than the British Museum, the American Museum
of Natural History, the Metropolitan or the Louvre. It is the most
visited museum in the world. When NASM opened to the public on July 1,
1976, the staff was confident of success, but no one expected the
enormous number of visitors who arrived that first summer, or the wave
of media enthusiasm that washed over the building. President Gerald
Ford commented that the museum was "our bicentennial birthday present to
ourselves." In fact, those of us who planned the museum could take only
limited credit for its success.
The quality of the NASM collection is a far more important factor. What
other museum in the world, covering any subject, can offer such riches?
Visitors to the NASM can see the world's first airplane; the world's
first military airplane; the first airplane to fly around the world; the
Spirit of St. Louis; the Lockheed Vega that Amelia Earhart flew across
the Atlantic; Wiley Post's Winnie Mae; Howard Hughes' classic H-1 racing
aircraft; the B-29 Enola Gay; the Bell X-1 that Capt. Charles Yeager, he
of the right stuff, first flew faster than sound; the world's fastest
airplane; the first airplane to fly around the world non-stop and
un-refueled; the first balloon to circumnavigate the globe; the first
helicopter to fly around the world; the world's oldest liquid propellant
rocket; the spacecraft that carried the first American into orbit; and
the Apollo 11 Command Module that brought the first human beings to walk
on the surface of another world home again. And that is only the tip of
our iceberg.
But the core of the museum's appeal runs deeper even than the
opportunity to see the actual aircraft and spacecraft in which intrepid
men and women wrote the history of the 20th century in the sky. However
one assesses the immediate consequences of aviation, flight remains one
of the most stunning and magnificent of human achievements. People
flock to the NASM from around the world because this is a museum that
makes them feel proud to be human, members of a species that has
achieved these wonders.
Surely, a century of wings is something worth celebrating. That was the
thought animating a diverse group of people across the nation who
initiated planning for the Centennial of Flight a decade ago. From the
outset, there was universal agreement that this would be a grassroots
celebration, in which interested folks, from national aviation
organizations to local communities, would craft their own unique events.
The U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission and the First Flight
Centennial Federal Advisory Board, which emerged in their final form
from the Congress in 1999, were charged with coordinating all of those
activities, and providing the visibility and cohesion required for a
truly national commemoration.
It was an approach that succeeded. The centennial year was filled with
a wide range of activities that gave millions of Americans an
opportunity to participate in the celebration. The U.S. Centennial of
Flight Commission's online calendar listed a total of 545 events from
January 1, 2003 to December 17, 2003. There were art exhibitions,
museum displays, lecture series, symposia, air shows, flight academies,
professional conferences, kite contests, air races, fly ins, and
celebrations and festivals of every stripe. They ranged from the purely
local, like the special flight focus given to the 54th annual Coconino
County Fair in Flagstaff, Ariz., to events like Rockefeller Center's
salute to the Centennial, which attracted hundreds of thousands of
visitors and national media attention.
The events that are the highpoints of every aviation year, such as the
annual Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) AirVenture Convention and
the Dayton Air Show, were dedicated to the anniversary. Professional
aerospace organizations, from the American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics (AIAA) to the Aerospace Medical Association and the
International Symposium on Air Breathing Engines, built their annual
meetings around the centennial theme. Non-aviation organizations,
including the International Association of Science Teachers, added
centennial sessions to their annual gatherings.
The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Seattle's Museum of
Flight and the Franklin Institute all opened major exhibitions on the
Wright brothers and American aviation. Other museums and universities
across the nation marked the centennial with film festivals, special
lectures, and educational programs related to flight.
Federal agencies with a special interest in flight also stepped forward.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) provided the
U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission staff, office space and
administrative support. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
administered the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission funding and
provided procurement support. Both NASA and the FAA focused their
considerable education resources on the centennial, and supported many
local events with personnel and traveling exhibits. The U.S. Air Force
created a Centennial Office, which not only operated its own programs
but also provided broad support to local and national events and
projects.
Then there were the major special events. Fayetteville, N.C., invited
the state and the nation to attend its Festival of Flight. Across the
country, Americans were thrilled when 29 beautifully restored historic
aircraft came to town with the National Air Tour. Both the AIAA and the
EAA organized full-scale national tours of replica Wright airplanes. No
attendee will ever forget sharing an evening with the heroes of the air
age at the National Aviation Hall of Fame event in the Dayton Convention
Center, or gathering in the shadow of Kill Devil Hill to applaud 100
heroes of aviation named from the stage. President Bush helped to kick
off the festivities in Dayton in July and braved the elements like
everyone else who was at Wright Brothers National Memorial on December
17.
Education was a focal point for many Centennial Partners. Dayton's
Inventing Flight produced a professionally-developed, multi-media
curriculum package that used the story of the Wright brothers to spark
the interest of 6th, 7th and 8th graders in science and math.
Correlated to educational standards, the program was distributed to
schools across the state and the nation. Ohio and the AIAA sponsored
Class of 2003 programs that exposed students scheduled to graduate from
high school in the centennial year to a variety of behind-the-scenes
experiences and insight into aerospace careers. The AIAA also
established a special program of graduate fellowships, while the EAA
flew one million young Americans as part of its Young Eagles program.
Web sites were the keystones of centennial education programs. The U.S.
Centennial of Flight Commission's Web site, a rich source of accurate
information and educational materials, attracted a total of 3.7 million
hits in December 2003 alone.
Thanks in large measure to the efforts of Carter Ryley Thomas Public
Relations and Marketing Counsel, the U.S. Centennial of Flight
Commission's public relations planners, the centennial was an
unqualified media success. Television, newspapers and magazines
promoted centennial events and spread the message of the centennial Ð
that Wilbur and Orville Wright had changed the world forever. Indeed,
as the anniversary approached, it seemed that there was scarcely an
evening when one cable channel or another was not offering centennial
programming. The efforts of various groups and individuals across the
nation to replicate the first flight captured the imagination of film
makers and television viewers alike.
Many of us hoped that when the fireworks and the hoopla had faded, the
centennial would leave a legacy. We were not disappointed. The
National Park Service currently is conducting a detailed survey of
historic sites that played a role in the history of flight. The
resulting report will serve as the foundation for a generation of
preservation efforts. The North Carolina First Flight Centennial
Foundation funded improvements to the landscaping at Wright Brothers
National Memorial; added a pilot facility at the nearby First Flight
airstrip; and completely restored the great monument on Kill Devil Hill
to its original appearance, complete with a rotating aircraft beacon.
Finally, the Foundation funded a pair of temporary exhibition pavilions
to supplement the visitor center.
Dayton Aviation Heritage National Park (DAHNP) is one of the most
important legacies of the centennial era. The approaching anniversary
helped to build broad support for a new park that would preserve and
interpret the West Dayton neighborhood and other local sites where the
Wrights had lived and worked. DAHNP includes the only original Wright
bicycle shop that still stands on its original site and two new visitor
centers. The effort involved upgrading related local historical
attractions, including the home of Paul Laurence Dunbar, a high school
classmate of Orville who became a famous African American poet; the 1905
Flyer, the world's first practical airplane; and Huffman Prairie, where
the brothers completed the process of inventing the airplane in 1904 and
1905.
Could some things have gone better? Sure. But those disappointments
are more than overshadowed by the unforgettable memories of a successful
commemoration. December 17, 2003, provided a final set of memories.
The weather and the wind did not cooperate. The Wright Experience crew
had flown its replica of the 1903 airplane a few days before, but could
not coax it aloft on the anniversary day. That did not seem to
dishearten the 40,000 people who braved the elements to be at the spot
where history had been made a century before. I stood with Ranger
Darrell Collins looking up at the thousands of people, clad in colorful
rain ponchos and jackets, spread like a crazy quilt over the slope of
the big hill. Both of us realized that we would never again see that
many people surrounding the great monument. Wilbur and Orville would
surely have liked that. It was the perfect end to a great year.
Dr. Tom D. Crouch
Senior Curator, Aeronautics
National Air and Space Museum
Chairman, First Flight Centennial Federal Advisory Board
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