Born to Fly

My mom wrapped THIS used book for my boys for Christmas. It's taken us four months to open it, one day to read it (122 pgs w/ lots of pictures) and two weeks to make us officially obsessed with the Wright brothers. We just can't get enough. Amazon is selling this book for 28 cents (plus shipping). If you don't have a Grandma who gifts used books, you may want to look into buying one for yourself. (and you may just be able to find a new one!)
April 16th is Wilbur Wright's birthday.. (he's the one without the mustache.) We will celebrate tomorrow with an airplane-shaped birthday cake. He would have been 143 years old. It blows my mind to think it's only been 100 years since the first airplane took flight..
In 1903 The New York Times commented that a man-carrying airplane would eventually be built-- but only if mathematicians and engineers worked steadily for the next one million to ten million years. Nine days later, the Wright brothers took off on history's first successful airplane flight. They were not mathematicians or scientists.Neither got a high school diploma or attended college. They learned more by teaching themselves than from sitting in any classroom.
Milton and Susan Wright had five children, four boys and one girl. Wilbur and Orville (four years apart in age) believe they inherited their mechanical aptitude from their mother, Susan. Whenever they wanted to work on a project, they would go to their mother for help. She was known for making the most sturdy sleds for the kids in the neighborhood. Their father, a minister, was not a handy man. But he saw talent in his children and always encouraged them to work hard. He believed that with determination, they could accomplish anything. Susan died of tuberculosis at a young age, without knowing what her sons would some day accomplish. Their father lived to the age of 88, long enough to be able to take an airplane ride with his famous sons.
Wilbur and Orville claim their interest in flight began when were boys (ages 7 & 11) after their father brought home a gift, a toy cork helicopter. It had two propellers, powered by a twisted rubber band. They called it "the Bat" and played with it until it fell apart. They built several models of this toy which flew successfully. For pocket change, the boys would make and sell kites to the neighborhood kids..
The Wright brothers were very close, but very different. Wilbur once stated, "My brother and I lived together, played together, worked together, and in fact, thought together." Wilbur was the one behind the original idea of the airplane but states that Orville's enthusiasm made it a reality. Neither boys neglected the accomplishments or claimed any superiority above the other.
As teenagers, the boys got interested in print and started their own newspaper. Orville became a master typesetter. Wilbur worked as an writer/editor. Orville found scrap pieces of metal at the junk yard and built his own printing press.. using a tombstone to serve as a flat press. A veteran printer came by their shop to examine Orville's homemade press. He stood by it and eventually crawled underneath. After he had been under the machine for a while, he got up and said, "Well, it works, but I certainly don't see how." Unbelievably, it printed a thousand pages an hour.
By the time their paper went from a weekly print to daily, the brothers sold the company and joined the bicycle craze that was sweeping over the nation. The boys could fix and repair any bicycle, and quickly. Rumors spread that the Wright brothers were such talented mechanics that broken bicycles came out of their shop more functional than when purchased brand new. They opened up Wright Cycle Company across the street from their printing press. As their reputation grew, they stopped repairing bicycles and started manufacturing them. Soon, they had four shops in succession.
When winter came and the bicycling season ended, the brothers spent their time at home, adding a nice porch and shutters onto their parents home. With all the time on their hands, they became interested in cameras and built an old shed out back that was eventually converted into a darkroom, where they developed their own photos. In 1899, they came up with an idea of a lifetime. Their interest/talent in photography helped them document their adventure in flying...
In December 1903, Orville Wright took off on the first successful airplane flight. It lasted a total of 12 seconds. In 1904, the first flight lasting more than five minutes took place on November 9. The Flyer II was piloted by Wilbur Wright.. And the rest is..... history.
The impact these two brothers have had on the 20th century is beyond measure. Their hard work and dedication changed the world around them. Less than 60 years after their first flight, a cosmonaut name Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in the first spacecraft machine... and a few years after that, Armstrong landed on the moon. What fascinates me about this story is not what they did, or how much of an impact it had on the world, but their relationship with each other and the passion they had for the work they did. Orville was recorded to have said, "We could hardly wait for morning to come to get at something that interested us. That's happiness."


My wish for my children is for them to find something, anything, that makes them so excited they can hardly wait until the sun rises so they can get to work. These last few weeks, I've read hundreds of pages on the life of the Wright brothers. One quote keeps coming back to me...

"We were lucky enough to grow up in an environment where there was always much encouragement to children to pursue intellectual interests, to investigate whatever aroused curiosity," Orville recalled. "In a different kind of environment, our curiosity might have been nipped long before it could have borne fruit." I am going to print this quote out and hang it in our school room. I am also planning to buy a nice photo of one of their planes in action... I know exactly where I am going to hang it in our house, but I just can't decide which picture to choose.. maybe this one.
I've been thinking so much about children of today.. not just mine, but children of this "high-tech" generation. How are kids possibly supposed to become someone great with television, video games and computers taking up their day? What would have become of Wilbur and Orville had they wasted their childhood on useless media? Or heaven forbid, spent their time sitting in a classroom? I don't believe we need to instill passion or curiosity in our children, that comes naturally. We need to allow them (and give them the time necessary) to pursue what they find interesting.. give them an environment to flourish and an opportunity to live out their dreams. Right now, some of our kids might think they are "passionate" about video games, but as parents, we need to steer them in the right direction. And we can't steer them by telling them what's important, we have to SHOW them by example.

Which brings me to Susan Wright. I have read as much as I can about this special mother. Everything I read inspires me. She didn't live long enough to see the miraculous discovery her boys were able to uncover.. I wonder where the world would be today had she been too busy to sit down with her kids and build a sled. I wonder if she got frustrated with the MESS they created while making kites for their classmates. Was she too busy making dinner to explain how and why things worked? From what I read, it doesn't sound like it.

Maybe this is TOO INTENSE for some of you... but I wanted to write a little bit about the thoughts going through my head these last few weeks. I am so grateful for the opportunity I've had to learn at home with my children. Homeschooling isn't for everyone- I never said it was. But summer is just around the corner, and we all need to be more passionate about parenting (myself included.) These early years with our kids are so.very.important. Our influence will most definitely shape the futures of our children, which could very well change the world.

And just so you know, as I am typing this very minute, my four year old is BEGGING to play Lego Star Wars. It's 7 AM. He doesn't want to eat breakfast. He doesn't care if the spends the entire day in his pajamas.. All he can think about is that cool computer game that we checked out from the library yesterday. Something's gotta change....