The Wright Company: From Invention to Industry

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book began as a revision of an unsubmitted 1989 National Historic Landmark nomination for the Wright Company’s factory buildings in west Dayton;over the past few years,it has evolved into a much larger project with a variety of supporters and assistants. The National Park Foundation provided a grant that supported the acquisition of a variety of primary and secondary sources, especially from the Wright Company collection at the Museum of Flight and from Frank Russell’s papers at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center. Intern Emily Tragert diligently copied dozens of files in the Wright brothers and Grover C.Loening collections at the Library of Congress , while intern Andrew Hall conducted essential, if tedious, research in the microfilmed editions of the unindexed Dayton newspapers at the Dayton Metro Library to find coverage of the Wright Company. Nancy Horlacher, the local history librarian at the Dayton Metro Library, graciously allowed me to borrow some of the library’s extra copies of the Dayton city directories from 1909 through 1915, enabling me to page through them for Wright Company employees from the comfort of my office. Dawne Dewey and her staff at Wright State University’s Special Collections and Archives were as helpful as ever. Susan Roach, my mother, provided essential interlibrary loan resources in the early stages of the project and support throughout, as did my father, James Roach. Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, which had its boundary expanded in 2009 to include the company’s former factory buildings, provided a very supportive (if sometimes noisy) environment for the production of this book. I especially thank the park’s superintendent, Dean Alexander, and the former chiefs of education and resources management Ann Honious (1995–2009) and Noemi Ghazala (2010–12) for their support . I hope this book will serve the staff and constituency of the park and its partners in the coming years. The history departments at Moravian College and Indiana University of Pennsylvania helped build the foundation that produced this book. Juliet Burns, our level-9 Siamese Residential Agitator, made certain that proper routines were followed. Most important, Naomi Burns, a skilled copy editor, has put up with the gestation of this work and my dinner table discussions of Frank Russell and citation style. Her services and support throughout are incalculable. figure I.1. The vacant former Wright Company buildings in 2012: 1 (left, built in 1910) and 2 (right, built in 1911). Photo by author ...