{"id":162702,"date":"2025-11-13T16:18:44","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=162702"},"modified":"2025-11-14T08:51:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T13:51:04","slug":"wright-state-archivist-featured-in-ohio-public-radio-story-on-katharine-wright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2025\/11\/13\/wright-state-archivist-featured-in-ohio-public-radio-story-on-katharine-wright\/","title":{"rendered":"Wright State archivist featured in Ohio public radio story on Katharine Wright"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Katharine and Orville Wright, along with others, walking across Tempelhof Field in Germany in 1909. (Photo courtesy of Wright State University’s Special Collections and Archives)<\/p><\/div>\n

The often-overlooked story of Katharine Wright \u2014 the sister who kept her famous brothers soaring \u2014 was spotlighted on The Ohio Newsroom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Toni Vanden Bos, head of Special Collections and Archives at Wright State University, shared how Katharine Wright\u2019s determination and leadership were essential to Wilbur and Orville\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was the unsung hero, really, of the story,\u201d Vanden Bos told The Ohio Newsroom.<\/p>\n

When the Wrights\u2019 mother died, a 15-year-old Katharine stepped in to run the household \u2014 cooking, cleaning and caring for her brothers so they could focus on their experiments in flight. Later, she gave up her own teaching career to nurse Orville back to health after a crash during a demonstration flight.<\/p>\n

Once her brothers took to the skies, Katharine traveled with them to Europe, helping to sell the Wright Flyer to investors, charming reporters and connecting with the public \u2014 work her shy brothers couldn\u2019t have done alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe took all that anxiety of the social demands of selling a flyer, making those networks with people. She took all of that off from Wilbur and Orville, which was significant,\u201d Vanden Bos said.<\/p>\n

Alongside her brothers, she was awarded the Legion of Honor, France\u2019s highest merit, for her contributions to aviation.<\/p>\n

Katharine\u2019s role, however, was largely forgotten as flight moved into the mainstream.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t miss her in the photographs and so forth, but she didn\u2019t get as much acclaim in the history books,\u201d Vanden Bos said.<\/p>\n

Listen to the story at ideastream.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The often-overlooked story of Katharine Wright \u2014 the sister who kept her famous brothers soaring \u2014 was spotlighted on The Ohio Newsroom. Toni Vanden Bos, head of Special Collections and Archives at Wright State University, shared how Katharine Wright\u2019s determination … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":162706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[730],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wright-state-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162702"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162761,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162702\/revisions\/162761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}