FOLKS
Siblings Katharine and Orville Wright (center), with others at Tempelhof Field in Germany sometime during the fall of 1909. Photo courtesy of Wright State University.
T The Flyers’ Sister By A m eli a Bolda j i
he story of how two brothers traveled from Ohio to the then-isolated and windswept beaches of Kitty Hawk in the early 1900s to conduct some of the most famous aeronautical experiments to date – and ultimately performed the first successful instances of sustained, controlled and powered flight – has been told many times. The part of the story that’s less well known, is that when it came to popularizing those achievements and that historic invention, the duo behind those innovations was actually a trio – which included a Wright sister: Katharine. The youngest of five Wright children, Katharine (also known as Kate or Katie as a child) was closest in age to Orville (she was born on his third birthday) and Wilbur, who was seven when she was born. Besides their age proximity, the three grew up taking care of each other because their two eldest brothers already had families of their own, their father was a traveling minister, and, after a prolonged eight-year battle with tuberculosis, their mother passed away when Katharine was only 14. Well before their mother’s death, much of the responsibility for managing a household of men fell on Katharine, but their father, Milton Wright, had progressive ideas about educating women for financial independence. In 1893, when Katharine was 19, Milton sent her to Oberlin College, which was located a half-day away from their home in Dayton, Ohio. This was unusual during the late 1800s for several reasons. For one, the idea that women could benefit from higher education wasn’t yet a widely accepted notion. Even more distressing to many was the debate about whether or not women should be segregated at their own colleges. As the oldest coeducational institution in the country at the time, Oberlin’s approach of providing the exact same education to both sexes was even more radical. By all accounts, Katharine’s time at Oberlin was foundational indeed. Regularly described as “vivacious” by those who knew her, Katharine excelled at her studies (especially Latin, Greek, English and history), and she developed a wide social network that, for the first time, included many deep female friendships. Her family was still a large part of her world, however – particularly her beloved brothers, Will and Orv. That bond was further strengthened due to their mutually fledgling career
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NORTH BEACH SUN SUMMER 2018
