empty inner tube box, a ball of twine and a stick topped with counter-rotating
propellers – on a table before an audience.
In an instant, he transforms into his alter ego, Orville Wright, summoning
forth that moment in 1878 when he and his brother, Wilbur, first turned their
thoughts to flight: Their father, Milton Wright, brought home a Penaud toy
helicopter, powered by rubber bands, releasing it as he entered their room.
Wilbur, 11, and Orville, 7, were amazed that it did not fall to the floor,
but with a buzzing sound, rose to the ceiling. Little did their father (a
bishop with the United Brethren Church) know that that moment would inspire
his sons to change the world.
And so begins the story that Orville Wright re-enactor Jim Spence brings to
children and adults around the country. He has been busy lately, in this the
100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight. The other day Spence
found himself standing before students sitting cross-legged on the floor of
South Frederick Elementary School and wondering if he really had the Wright
stuff.
He has the look of the past, dressed in a three-piece suit and a bowler hat
that can’t keep a shock of gray hair from poking out. Still, some seem
skeptical that he will hold their attention.
“Ms. Bowers, is that the guy who’s faking like Orville Wright?” asks
seemingly unimpressed fourth-grader Nakiya Harrison, who is 9.
But when he speaks of the Penaud, grabs the stick propeller from the table,
spins it with the palms of his hands and watches it float overhead, he wins a
collective “Whoooooa!” from the more than 70 fourth- and fifth-graders.
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“Can you do it again?” they cry out. They’re hooked.
It’s the kind of reaction Spence has provoked for the past 14 years
impersonating one-half of the famous pair of brothers from Dayton, billing
himself as the only professional living historian in the country who portrays
Orville Wright. No one does Wilbur, Spence says, partly because the older
brother died in 1912 at the age of 45 from typhoid fever and did not live long
enough to see the evolution of flight. Orville lived into the jet age.
The motivational speaker-turned-re-enactor uses the “First Man to Fly”
persona to inspire audiences with a story of invention, dispelling the image
of the duo as tinkering bicycle mechanics who solved the age-old riddle of
human flight by luck. His message is this: You can do anything you set your
mind to, just like the Wrights.
This particular visit is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Carroll Creek,
commemorating the 100th anniversary of the first flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.
Orville made the world’s first powered, sustained and controlled flight of
a heavier-than-air machine on Dec. 17, 1903, when, lying belly-toward-earth in
the cradle of the brothers’ Flyer, he lifted into the air for a 120-foot,
12-second flight over the sands of Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk. Wilbur
flew 852 feet in 59 seconds on the fourth and last flight that day before a
gust of wind damaged the plane.
Holding kids’ attention
Now, “living historians” are re-enacting such events, bringing the sights
and sounds of the past to life. It’s the ultimate interactive anecdote to the
fickle attention span of a generation growing up in the Information Age,
distracted by video games, multiplex theaters and shopping malls.
“Nowadays that’s how people are going to learn more: by seeing it live,”
says William J. Beausay, 72, a living historian in Columbus, Ohio, the mentor
of Spence, 62. “More books are being published, but we don’t read. If you can
take what’s been written and personify it, that’s the ultimate form of
communication. You can be an active spectator, you can question. You can’t do
that with the Internet.”
This class gives Spence its rapt attention – with the exception of a
restless few – as he details the highs and lows he and Wilbur endured as they
labored to invent the world’s first successful airplane, the 1903 Flyer. He
mimics a plane by spreading his arms. He twists a rectangular inner tube box
like a helix before their eyes to demonstrate the brothers’ wing-warping
invention, which made powered flight possible by allowing control of an
aircraft’s roll.
He gives them a visual sense of the Wrights’ evolutionary designs by
calling a student from the audience to help him unravel a ball of twine with
little red bows tied to it – the first bow ending at 17 feet; the last one, a
little more than 40 feet – illustrating the increasing wingspans of the
brothers’ first glider and Flyer, respectively.
Then come the questions:
How did you prepare your food on the airplane?
“The flight was only 12 seconds, so we didn’t have much time to cook.”
Did your plane ever get struck by lightning?
“No, but it was flooded while in storage in Dayton.”
When did you die?
“1948.” (Orville had a heart attack at the age of 76.)
With national attention on the centennial of flight, business has been
brisk for Spence. He has appeared as Orville in 11 states since February and
has had double the number of annual engagements. He is so convincing in the
role that letters occasionally arrive in the mailbox of the modest two-story
home in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, that he shares with his wife, Judy, addressed to
“Orville Wright.”
His home answering machine greets callers with “Jim Spence also known as
Orville Wright.” The silver-gray Saturn parked in his driveway has vanity
plates that read: ORVRGHT.
Spence says he’s not a Wright fanatic.
“I don’t care if I was doing Orville Wright or Frank Lloyd Wright, I would
be telling the way things actually were,” says Spence, founder of Ohio-based
ViREnt Broadcasting Co., which provides videoconferencing of living historians
to schools across the country.
A native of Columbus, Ohio, Spence had been working as a controller for a
wholesale distribution company in 1987 when he sought a way to bring in extra
income. He realized he missed entertaining crowds, something he had grown
accustomed to during 11 years in the Navy as a music instructor and performer.
He began promoting himself as a motivational speaker with a presentation
titled “You Can’t Do It and Other Lies” that used the story of his teen-age
triumph over disease to inspire audiences to pursue their dreams.
Facing own adversity
His own dream nearly slipped away on his 13th birthday when he was stricken
with polio. Doctors told him that he would never walk, use his right arm or
stand up straight again.
It was distressing news to a youngster who had fallen in love with flight
at the age of 7 after his first airplane ride aboard his uncle’s Piper Cub.
(He will never forget it: He got to pilot the plane for nearly 30 seconds.) He
had aspired to become a licensed pilot by 15; suddenly the goal was out of
reach.
Or so he thought. After his release from the hospital, his mother worked
with him for 18 months to overcome physical limitations. Spence went on to do
everything his doctors told him he couldn’t. He played football, ran track,
climbed mountains, went skiing and scuba diving.
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In his 20s, he still longed to be a pilot, but physical and eye ailments
wouldn’t allow it. So, he took up sky diving, then gliding.
“You can do anything you want,” he says.
Spence had no idea that the persona of Orville was right for him until 1989
when a gray-haired man – whom he recalled was 6 feet, 6 inches tall and looked
like “a linebacker for the Cleveland Browns” – approached him after a
presentation and left his card: “William J. Beausay, psychologist.” Spence was
taken aback. He didn’t think his speeches indicated a person in need of
therapy.
He called and later met with Beausay, who had one simple question: Would
Spence consider portraying Orville Wright for his speakers’ bureau? Beausay
told Spence that he had a striking resemblance to the Dayton inventor.
“Well, I thought about Christopher Columbus,” Spence told him. “But I don’t
look like him.”
“That’s good,” Beausay said, “because I do Christopher Columbus.”
After a month of reading and research, Spence agreed to take on the role of
Orville and – after an exhaustive hunt for the perfect bowler hat – made his
debut in a 20-minute presentation in front of the Dayton/Montgomery County
Convention & Visitors Bureau board of directors. They were impressed.
He has been in demand ever since.