My family and I just got back from a vacation that included an
opportunity to visit a historical site that is the very definition of
humble beginnings that later developed into something world changing.
I'm talking about the site of the Wright Brothers first airplane flight
in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
And
though the Wright Brothers story is all about getting airborne, people
with mobility disabilities should be able to follow along in the path
of the first flight like anyone, thanks to some thoughtful placement of
simple mobility assistance devices.
The Wright Brothers
National Memorial, which is run by the National Park Service,
commemorates the place where man first flew in an engine-powered plane.
There's a visitors center that includes replicas of the plane used for
the first flight and of a glider the brothers from Ohio used to test
some of the principals of flight. The large stone memorial up on the
hill is visible from far off and offers a beautiful view. But perhaps
the most inspiring part of the site is where the flights actually
happened. Marked with stone markers are the place where the lift off
happened and then the landing spots of the four flights attempted on
the fateful day of Dec. 17, 1903. The path out to the markers is
thoughtfully paved, in a way, with a 
series of rubber screens placed
over the sand. We wheeled our wheelchair using son all the way down and
back without incident. When you walk down from the first landing to the
fourth you really appreciate how quickly these men perfected what they
had done.
The walk to the memorial up on Kill Devil Hill might be more of a
challenge. We didn't take Marcus up. The paths looked like they might
be OK for a strenuous push up, but we were concerned about how much
effort it might take to come back down without having Marcus's chair
get away from us. There's no info on the NPS Web site about just what
sort of grade these paths present.
Oh yeah, the town of
Kill Devil Hills also happens to be a great vacation spot, and one our
family has been visiting for the last few summers and which I visited
often as a kid with my family. It's hallmarks are nice wide beaches and
an amount of visitors even in the high season that is much less than a
Myrtle Beach or Florida.
That's probably because, ironically, it's not particularly easy to fly to the Outer Banks. Go figure.
Photos by Darren Hillock. Top, the screened and very wheelable path along the path of the first flights. Bottom, the Wright Memorial.
