Netherlands kicks off flight centennial celebration with Wright Flyer sculpture

Wright descendent takes part in dedication ceremony

DAYTON, Ohio, June 18, 2009 – The Netherlands kicked off its own first flight centennial celebration today by dedicating a full size, stainless-steel sculpture of a Wright Flyer, AviationDayton.com reported.

The actual date of the first Dutch flight was June 27, 1909, but today’s dedication began a series of national celebrations that continues through the anniversary date.

The sculpture is “fantastic. It’s huge. It’s really beautiful,” Amanda Wright Lane, great-grand niece of the Wright brothers, told AviationDayton.com by phone from Etten-Leur, the Dutch city where the historic flight took place.

Lane, of Cincinnati, represented the Wright family at the event.

Wilbur and Orville Wright invented the airplane in Dayton and made the world’s first successful powered flights in North Carolina on Dec. 17, 1903. Wilbur wowed Europe with their first public exhibition flights at Le Mans in August 1908 and established the first flying school at Pau, in southern France, in January 1909.

A wealthy Dutch businessman commissioned one of Wilbur’s first students, Charles count de Lambert, to make the first flight on Dutch soil.

The sculpture dedication “continues to show me what a world story this is. Sometimes we think about it s a (U.S.) national story, but it’s absolutely a world story,” Lane said.

Claas Borgers, president of the Dutch commission that organized the celebration, told AviationDayton.com that planning for the anniversary began between four and five years ago. The sculpture itself took a year to build, he said.

A series of aviation and social events are scheduled, beginning with a national air show this weekend and culminating in a mass flyover of the Needle, the Netherlands’ national monument, on June 27.

The Dayton region’s connection with Dutch aviation isn’t only in its heritage. The Ohio Air National Guard’s 178th Fighter Wing at Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport trains Royal Netherlands Air Force pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets.

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