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Flag shop owner touts Wright brothers’ statue at Statuary Hall

The Dayton aviation pioneers are among Ohio candidates for Statuary Hall in D.C.

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By William Hershey, Columbus Bureau Updated 10:59 PM Sunday, April 18, 2010

COLUMBUS — If you stop by Creative Banners, Flags & Poles just south of downtown Dayton these days, owner Jon Kurtz will do more than try to sell you a flag.

Kurtz also will try to sell you on making the Wright brothers — Wilbur and Orville — Ohio’s new representative in Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C. The aviation pioneers are an easy sell, Kurtz said.

“They don’t give it a second thought — ‘Give me the ballot and let me sign.’ ” Kurtz said of his customers.

Kurtz is gathering the ballots and sending them to the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus.

Voting started March 20 and will continue through June 12 to gather public input on which of 10 finalists — the Wright brothers are considered a single entity — should replace Gov. William Allen as one of Ohio’s two representatives in the hall. Allen’s pro-slavery, anti-Abraham Lincoln views caused state officials to bring his statue back to Ohio.

Ohio’s other Statuary Hall representative is President James Garfield.

Kurtz’s effort appears to be the real thing.

The Dayton Development Coalition and the National Aviation Heritage Alliance are key local promoters for the Wright brothers, though Tony Sculimbrene, executive director of the alliance, said he wasn’t aware of Kurtz’s independent effort. Sculimbrene, however, was glad to hear about it.

“This is going to be an ongoing effort,” Sculimbrene said. “This isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. We’re going to be working on it from now until the end of the voting period.”

For all candidates, May 1 will be a big day.

The Ohio Historical Center in Columbus is hosting “Who Should Stand for Ohio?” and advocates for all candidates will be on hand to talk to visitors from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission to the center will be free.

“We will have a nice presence up there,” said Sculimbrene. Amanda Wright Lane, great-grandniece of the Wright brothers plans to be there and there are plans to have a Wright Flyer flight simulator and Wright Flyer crew members dressed in period garb, he said. There also will be replicas of Wright brothers’ artifacts, he added.

Advocates for other finalists, including former U.S. Rep. William McCulloch of Piqua, also are campaigning.

Wes Edwards, an attorney for Crown Equipment in New Bremen, said information packets on McCulloch’s key role in passage of civil rights legislation, has been sent to 75 superintendents of pubic school districts and principals of private schools in the congressional district McCulloch represented. The packets include copies of “The Longest Debate,” a book by former Dayton Congressman Charles Whalen and his wife, Barbara, on the 1964 civil rights bill. McCulloch’s boosters also have set up a website, www.williammcculloch.org.

A major push also has come from the group Equal Visibility Everywhere (EVE) on behalf of the three women finalists — abolitionist and author Harriet Beecher Stowe, women’s suffrage activist Harriet Taylor Upton, and Judith Resnik, the astronaut from Akron who died on the Challenger.

In-person voting is conducted at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus and 35 other sites around the state, including the Dunbar House in Dayton and the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce. Ballots can be downloaded at www.legacyforohio.org and returned by mail or e-mail.

Other candidates include: inventor Thomas Edison; Jesse Owens, Olympic gold medal winner; James M. Ashley, Toledo congressman and abolitionist; Albert Sabin, creator of the oral polio vaccine; and Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and president.

After public voting ends, a special legislative committee in July is expected to make a final recommendation for the statute. Sen. Mark Wagoner, R-Ottawa Hills, committee chairman, has said the committee will show “due deference” to the voters.

Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@Dayton

DailyNews.com.

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