The Cutting Edge of Technology 



Then and Now 



By Jeannie Faris 



F 



Xrom 



Courtesy of Wright Brothers National Memorial 



. rom the base 

 of Wright Monu- 

 ment, the five 

 granite boulders that 

 measure off the first 

 gasps of powered 

 flight seem like a 

 toddler's tentative 

 steps across a floor. 



By today's 

 standards, they 

 were. But these first 

 flights represented 

 giant leaps in 

 technology and 

 ingenuity in their 

 time. 



The Wright 

 Brothers National 

 Memorial is an 

 astounding reminder 

 of the brothers' 

 early struggles to fly as well as the 

 leaps in progress that aviation has 

 made since then. In the span of only a 

 few generations, mankind flew to the 

 moon. That 1969 expedition traveled 

 413 miles in 59 seconds, the same 

 amount of time it took Wilbur Wright 

 to fly 852 feet on Dec. 17, 1903. 

 Today, space shuttles orbit the earth 

 and land again almost as seamlessly as 

 a commercial flight. 



And yet, the early years of flight 

 are still recent enough to live in 

 human memories. 



Roy Saunders, formerly of Nags 

 Head, remembers investing his own 

 sweat and muscle in the 1931 con- 

 struction of the monument honoring 

 the Wrights. 



A year later, Orville Wright stood 



The dedication of the Wright Monument in 1932. Orville Wright is the third man 

 standing from the left. Wilbur had died 20 years earlier. 



on the platform as the 61 -foot-tall 

 monument was dedicated. 



"I knew it was going to be 

 historic to a certain extent, " says 

 Saunders, who recently visited with 

 memorial park rangers. "But I didn't 

 stop to realize how much history was 

 being made." 



In the early 1930s, as the 

 possibilities for flight were unfold- 

 ing, the simple construction of a 

 granite pylon atop a 90-foot hill was 

 a monumental task in remote Kill 

 Devil Hills. It was a far-flung place 

 layered with fine sand but crossed by 

 few roads. 



"People go to the monument 

 today and drive all around the 

 blacktop, see the hill, vegetation and 

 the monument," Saunders writes in 



The Outer Banks 

 of Dare and 

 Currituck County. 

 "They have no 

 idea how all this 

 was done. It's just 

 beyond anyone's 

 imagination the 

 work that was 

 involved and the 

 changes that have 

 taken place." 



A young man 

 at the time, 

 Saunders and a 

 few helpers hauled 

 74 tons of cement 

 to the site. That 

 was about a fifth 

 of the 400 tons 

 used to build the 

 monument, its 

 platform and foundation. He remem- 

 bers that the mix arrived in bags on a 

 boat at the Nags Head steamboat pier. 

 The building contractor asked him to 

 lug them to the south side of Big Kill 

 Devil Hill, the largest sand dune that 

 the Wright brothers launched gliders 

 from. He agreed to the job on the 

 condition that the contractor install a 

 mat road of reeds to prevent his truck 

 from bogging down in the sand. 



Saunders' memories ring with 

 nostalgia for a simpler time, a time on 

 the cusp of change. Ironically, on this 

 day, he is in the midst of change 

 again. A planning team from the 

 National Park Service is visiting from 

 Atlanta, Ga., and the four members 

 want to climb to the top of the 

 monument that Saunders helped build. 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 7 



