Wings of Opportunity: The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama, 1910

By Julie Hedgepeth Williams
Publisher: NewSouth Books
ISBN-13: 978-1588381682
When stepping aboard an aircraft these days, few passengers spare a thought to the many visionary people who have made the wonder of safe and affordable air travel possible. Even giants like Orville and Wilbur Wright are fading in people’s memories.
Stretching the matter a bit further, even student pilots will be hard pressed if asked when, where and by whom the first flight school was established in the United States?
Readers of Roger-Wilco will of course fare much better. Our recent post in the Anniversaries section gave tribute to the Wright brothers for setting up the first US flight school a hundred years ago in February 1910, in Montgomery, Alabama.
Now comes a must-have book commemorating the centennial, entitled “Wings of Opportunity: The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama, 1910”.
Published by NewSouth Books, the 176 page volume describes how the Wrights had set up shop on a cotton field a few miles from Montgomery in their search for a climate more hospitable to their flying than snowy Dayton, Ohio.
Forward-thinking Montgomerians welcomed the Wrights and heralded the school as a way to rise above the shadow of the Civil War. Local businessmen offered timber, vehicles, land, hotel rooms and even water to help the State’s effort to entice the aircraft pioneers to settle there.

Author Julie Hedgepeth Williams chronicles the short life of this flight school as seen mainly through the eyes of the Alabama press, whose reporting and sometimes misreporting “reflected the misconceptions, hopes, dreams, and fears about aviation in 1910, painting a picture of a time when flight was untested, unsteady, and unavailable to most people.”
Julie Hedgepeth Williams is a journalism professor at Samford University. She received a BA in English and history from Prinicpia College in Elsah, Illinois, and a master’s in journalism and a PhD in mass communications from the University of Alabama. An enthusiastic researcher of everything to do with the Wrights, she lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
If you are interested in the lesser known details of the saga of powered flight, this slim volume is a gem that you should not miss reading.
Order your copy here.