Choir Notes

The Art of Making It Happen
From Music and the Spoken Word
Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell • Program 4179

In November 1899, Wilbur Wright queried the United States Weather Bureau to find a rural area with high wind conditions so he and his brother Orville could test a glider. The answer came back, “Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.” History was in the making.

For the next four years, Orville and Wilbur experimented with flight, as did renowned scientists from Germany, France, and Brazil. But these two intrepid owners of a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, were the first to fly. The date was December 17, 1903.

What distinguished them from their illustrious rivals? Perhaps it was their sheer doggedness. When they weren’t out testing a glider on the sand dunes, they were reconstructing it in the living room of their father’s home.

These self-taught engineers figured out how to fly by breaking down the task into pieces and attacking one at a time. They made hundreds of glides, slowly increasing their distances from 300 to 400 to 500 feet in the battering Atlantic winds. The flights were not spectacular, but with each one they drew closer to their goal. Wilbur wrote, “Skill comes by the constant repetition of familiar feats rather than by a few overbold attempts at feats for which the performer is yet poorly prepared.”¹

The lesson is a good one for us all. Most problems that seem big and unsolvable are really made up of several small, manageable problems that we must face patiently. Orville and Wilbur watched many a glider nosedive into the dunes, but they never lost hope.

To some, the task of conquering flight may have seemed too big for these two unlikely innovators and aviators. But Orville and Wilbur Wright, through hard work, optimism, and resilience, had perfected an art we can all master—the art of making it happen.

1 In James Tobin, “To Fly!” Smithsonian, Apr. 2003, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fly.html?c=y&page=5.