Support for Wright Flyer on Great Seal of Ohio
COLUMBUS, Ohio—An Ohio House panel has taken up a new bill in the latest effort to add an image of a Wright Flyer to the Great Seal of Ohio.
On Wednesday, March 13, the House State and Local Government Committee heard testimony on House Bill 42 from several proponents, including a member of the Wright family and the National Aviation Heritage Alliance.
Several efforts to add the flyer to the state seal have been made over the past two decades. A bill similar to HB 42 passed the house by a vote of 90-3 in the last general assembly, but the session ended before the Senate voted on it.
“We simply ran out of time,” Rep. Rick Perales, R-Beavercreek, the bill’s sponsor, stated in prepared testimony. “I am confident, however, that we will be able to get this bill across the finish line.”
The brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright researched the problems of flight and built their first airplanes in their west Dayton bicycle shop. They made their first powered flights at Kitty Hawk, N. C., in 1903 and continued their experiments on Huffman Prairie in Greene County, now a unit of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park. They formed the Wright Company in 1909 and the next year built the first American airplane factory in Dayton.
Today, the aerospace and aviation industries contribute $7.4 billion to Ohio’s GDP, according to Perales’ testimony. He described the Great Seal of Ohio as the state’s “business card” to the nation and world, adding the depiction of the Wright Flyer on it would “brand Ohio as the leader in this critical industry, as well as innovation and technology.”
Amanda Wright Lane, great-grandniece of Wilbur and Orville Wright, presented testimony calling the achievement of powered flight “an accomplishment worth celebrating and claiming for all time.”
The National Aviation Heritage Alliance’s testimony noted Ohio astronaut Neil Armstrong carried small pieces of the Wright Flyer to the moon with him 50 years ago this year and urged passage of the bill as a way of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission.
Others who presented testimony in favor of HB 42 included Kyle Lewis, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association; Greg Heaton, Ohio Aviation Association; John Horack, Ph.D., The Ohio State University College of Engineering, and Petey Atkinson, an Ohio resident. No testimony against the bill was presented.
About the National Aviation Heritage Alliance
The National Aviation Heritage Alliance is a not-for-profit corporation designated by Congress as the management entity for the National Aviation Heritage Area. The Heritage Area is one of 49 U. S. National Heritage Areas under a program administered by the National Park Service and the only one dedicated to aviation heritage. It encompasses eight counties in southwestern Ohio: Montgomery, Greene, Miami, Clark, Warren, Champaign, Shelby, and Auglaize counties.
