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Faces of Aviation
by Stan Dunn
The trajectory of aviation was shaped on a hockey field in the winter of 1886 when a high school senior playing in a pickup game was fouled by an opponent’s high stick. While the young man’s grin would eventually be re- deemed by a set of false teeth, the viciousness of the attack destroyed both his confidence and his aspira- tions for Yale. The trajectory of an Ivy Leaguer does not terminate on a godforsaken patch of sand just off the coast of North Carolina. But the most seminal moment in aviation did.
The young man who smashed Wilbur Wright’s face was named Oliver Crook Haugh. The middle name was clearly contrived in a fit of pre- cognition. Oliver Haugh would be ex- ecuted by the state of Ohio in 1907 for
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From a couple of bicycle builders to a motorcycle speed record holder to Presidents and world leaders, aviation has had an outsized impact on the history of the world.
murdering his family. Wilbur Wright’s father saved the newspaper clipping of the crime with a note to the side: “The boy who hit Wilbur.” In spec- tacular fashion, Oliver Haugh would be accused in the press of nearly 20 other murders.
Wilbur would eventually fall into several side businesses with his young- er brother, from the printing press to newspapermen, and finally bicycle shop owner. They would not be the only bicycle shop owners in the burgeoning world of aviation. Nemesis Glen Curtiss raced bicycles and owned his own shop before matriculating into motorcycles and eventually aviation. For their part, the Wright brothers quietly upended the established hierarchy in 1903 when Orville successfully completed the first powered f light in history. The
event went almost completely unre- ported at the time. Tipped off by a telegraph operator who had forwarded a message from the Wright brothers to their father regarding the accom- plishment, the Norfolk-Virginian Pilot published an account that included substantial exaggerations and outright fabrications. It got picked up by the Associated Press and dominated the more subdued attempts by Wilbur and Orville to set the record straight.
One of the most famous pictures in history was captured by John Daniels, a member of the life-saving station at Kill Devil Hills. Having wandered over to the dunes where Wilbur and Orville were attempting their seminal flight, he was enlisted to operate the camera that the brothers had bought for the occasion (predominantly for