Mary Ann Johnson—On the Aviation Trail
"Okay, nobody is doing anything about it. This is really important to our history, so we'll take it upon ourselves to do this."
—Mary Ann Johnson
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Mary Ann Johnson’s background in economic development helped shape the thinking of many, as forgotten aviation sites were rediscovered and resurrected as tourist destinations, and eventually a whole neighborhood was given a fresh start. Rich and Mary Ann Johnson are long-time members of the Engineers Club of Dayton.
Mary Ann Johnson—On the Aviation Trail
By Mark Martel
Rich and Mary Ann Johnson have spent their careers taking information distanced by space and time and making it accessible to students and readers in the here and now. Rich helped pioneer distance learning across the media of print, telephone, TV and videotape. Mary Ann worked behind the scenes to research and promote the Dayton area’s unique aviation heritage that started with the Wright brothers’ invention of the airplane.
After raising their four children Mary Ann Johnson returned for a master’s in economics at nearby Wright State University. While there she won honorable mention in a national student essay contest. After graduation, she was employed as an economic planner for the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, where she wrote a 1977 feasibility study on the nearby Village of Riverside, and an Overall Economic Development Plan for the Miami Valley Region to qualify it for federal economic development assistance.
Her work paid off when in 1980 the Commission secured two such federal grants. The money helped support a regional economic development conference at the University of Dayton. Attendees identified Dayton’s aviation heritage as a key way to market the region, through a trail of historic sites. For most conferences that might be it. But a group of those individuals formed the nonprofit Aviation Trail, Inc., with the goals to find and preserve such historic sites, raise awareness and stimulate economic growth. Mary Ann became one of those founding members of Aviation Trail, and has served as a trustee and secretary since 1981.
So began her ever-widening involvement to research and promote significant sites in Dayton’s aviation heritage.
The first pieces of the puzzle came from a model airplane kit owned by one of Mary Ann's sons. The kit had included a paperback copy of Fred C. Kelly's authorized biography of the Wrights. Mary Ann found potential treasure at the back of the book—street addresses in the West Side Dayton neighborhood where Wilbur and Orville Wright had lived, worked and invented the airplane in 1903. By 1937 Henry Ford had bought and moved the Wright home and fifth bike shop to Greenfield Village, his historical park outside Detroit. But did any other sites still exist?
They did indeed. Kelley’s list of addresses revealed two buildings still standing, separated only by a vacant lot. One was the earliest Wright bicycle shop at 22 South Williams Street, where they first began their search for the secrets of powered flight. The other was the Hoover Block building at West Third and South Williams Streets, where the Wrights once ran a print shop. And no one seemed to be doing anything about the sites, or the run-down neighborhood.
The Aviation Trail Board developed a plan to restore the two buildings as a Wright brothers museum. They hoped the museum would then spur restoration of the deteriorating neighborhood to its earlier vibrancy when Wilbur and Orville Wright had lived there. The goal was to accomplish all this by the year 2003, when Dayton would celebrate the centennial of the Wright brothers’ first flight.
Subsequently, Aviation Trail, Inc. was able to purchase the two properties in 1982, restore the bicycle shop and open it to the public by 1988, then start restoring the Hoover Block building.
But there was a much wider problem. Dayton had already started an urban renewal project to raze the surrounding buildings for blocks in every direction, in order to redevelop the whole area with modern row-type housing. The targeted area lay between Third and Fifth Streets from the Great Miami River west to Broadway—with the Wright sites smack in the middle. Eventually, the city was persuaded to drop their original plan and adopt the restoration approach envisioned by Aviation Trail. Today, an historic neighborhood named Wright-Dunbar Village recreates the ambiance of the area, as it was when the Wright brothers lived there. (Paul Laurence Dunbar, an acquaintance of the Wrights, was the first internationally known black poet.)
Along the way the Aviation Trail properties had gained the interest of the National Park Service in 1992. Today, the Park Service owns and operates the Hoover Block and the Wright Cycle Company buildings as part of its Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park. Next door stands the newly built Aviation Trail Visitor Center.
Mary Ann’s 1996 Oral History interview tells more about this period. She also wrote a 15-year history of the organization published in 1996.
Thus, from 1980 onward Mary Ann Johnson served alongside others to accomplish the Aviation Trail’s goals. However she also made substantial writing contributions to the preservation of the Dayton area's aviation heritage.
Mary Ann's initial research of the Wright brothers sites in Dayton's West Side evolved into an Aviation Trail brochure in 1981, that gave a self-guided tour of the region’s most interesting sites where aviation history was made. She has updated the brochure several times; the current edition covers 13 sites in Montgomery, Greene and Miami counties. A bicycle Aviation Trail brochure describes nine Wright brothers sites along the Great Miami River bicycle trail from West Carrollton to downtown Dayton and back.
After the first brochure, Mary Ann agreed to write about an expanded list of aviation-related sites and the stories behind them. The first edition of A Field Guide to Flight: On the Aviation Trail in Dayton, Ohio, published in 1986, included stories, photos and maps describing 45 sites. A 1996 revised edition ten years later covered 47 sites. The book can serve as an armchair tour or as a guide to in-person visits.
Mary Ann later focused her research on a single Dayton site. After the Wright brothers’ heyday, McCook Field became the country’s first military aviation research and development center in 1917. All US land-based aircraft that saw active service in World War I were being built around Dayton, and nearby McCook Field was established to design and test major innovations.
Johnson’s book, McCook Field 1917-1927: The Force Behind America’s Golden Age of Flight, tells the history of the Field and the pioneering projects that dubbed it the “Cradle of Aviation.” In ten brief years McCook improved nearly every key part of the airplane—propeller, engine, instruments, radio, and even methods for night flying. Early parachute work also earned McCook the title "Birthplace of the Freefall Parachute,” celebrated at the Aviation Trail Parachute Museum also in the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center.
Mary Ann met her biggest deadline, publishing her McCook volume in 2002, in time to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight in 2003. Mary Ann’s brochures and books continue to help a new generation rediscover aviation’s formative years in Dayton, and to help Dayton rediscover itself.
Mary Ann Johnson’s background in economic development helped shape the thinking of many as forgotten aviation sites were rediscovered and resurrected as tourist destinations, and eventually a whole neighborhood was given a fresh start.
For her nearly 30 years of efforts, Mary Ann was honored with the 2008 Trailblazer award from Aviation Trail, Inc. She also won the Wilson Charbonneaux Award from the Engineers Club of Dayton for her significant contributions to the public’s understanding of science and technology.
Thus Rich and Mary Ann Johnson have each found innovative ways to educate and influence people in the Miami Valley and around the world about history, engineering, science and technology. They made history themselves, celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary in 2009.
Rich and Mary Ann Johnson have spent their careers taking information distanced by space and time and making it accessible to students and readers in the here and now. Rich helped pioneer distance learning across the media of print, telephone, TV and videotape. Mary Ann worked behind the scenes to research and promote the Dayton area’s unique aviation heritage that started with the Wright brothers’ invention of the airplane.
After raising their four children Mary Ann Johnson returned for a master’s in economics at nearby Wright State University. While there she won honorable mention in a national student essay contest. After graduation, she was employed as an economic planner for the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission, where she wrote a 1977 feasibility study on the nearby Village of Riverside, and an Overall Economic Development Plan for the Miami Valley Region to qualify it for federal economic development assistance.
Her work paid off when in 1980 the Commission secured two such federal grants. The money helped support a regional economic development conference at the University of Dayton. Attendees identified Dayton’s aviation heritage as a key way to market the region, through a trail of historic sites. For most conferences that might be it. But a group of those individuals formed the nonprofit Aviation Trail, Inc., with the goals to find and preserve such historic sites, raise awareness and stimulate economic growth. Mary Ann became one of those founding members of Aviation Trail, and has served as a trustee and secretary since 1981.
So began her ever-widening involvement to research and promote significant sites in Dayton’s aviation heritage.
The first pieces of the puzzle came from a model airplane kit owned by one of Mary Ann's sons. The kit had included a paperback copy of Fred C. Kelly's authorized biography of the Wrights. Mary Ann found potential treasure at the back of the book—street addresses in the West Side Dayton neighborhood where Wilbur and Orville Wright had lived, worked and invented the airplane in 1903. By 1937 Henry Ford had bought and moved the Wright home and fifth bike shop to Greenfield Village, his historical park outside Detroit. But did any other sites still exist?
They did indeed. Kelley’s list of addresses revealed two buildings still standing, separated only by a vacant lot. One was the earliest Wright bicycle shop at 22 South Williams Street, where they first began their search for the secrets of powered flight. The other was the Hoover Block building at West Third and South Williams Streets, where the Wrights once ran a print shop. And no one seemed to be doing anything about the sites, or the run-down neighborhood.
The Aviation Trail Board developed a plan to restore the two buildings as a Wright brothers museum. They hoped the museum would then spur restoration of the deteriorating neighborhood to its earlier vibrancy when Wilbur and Orville Wright had lived there. The goal was to accomplish all this by the year 2003, when Dayton would celebrate the centennial of the Wright brothers’ first flight.
Subsequently, Aviation Trail, Inc. was able to purchase the two properties in 1982, restore the bicycle shop and open it to the public by 1988, then start restoring the Hoover Block building.
But there was a much wider problem. Dayton had already started an urban renewal project to raze the surrounding buildings for blocks in every direction, in order to redevelop the whole area with modern row-type housing. The targeted area lay between Third and Fifth Streets from the Great Miami River west to Broadway—with the Wright sites smack in the middle. Eventually, the city was persuaded to drop their original plan and adopt the restoration approach envisioned by Aviation Trail. Today, an historic neighborhood named Wright-Dunbar Village recreates the ambiance of the area, as it was when the Wright brothers lived there. (Paul Laurence Dunbar, an acquaintance of the Wrights, was the first internationally known black poet.)
Along the way the Aviation Trail properties had gained the interest of the National Park Service in 1992. Today, the Park Service owns and operates the Hoover Block and the Wright Cycle Company buildings as part of its Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park. Next door stands the newly built Aviation Trail Visitor Center.
Mary Ann’s 1996 Oral History interview tells more about this period. She also wrote a 15-year history of the organization published in 1996.
Thus, from 1980 onward Mary Ann Johnson served alongside others to accomplish the Aviation Trail’s goals. However she also made substantial writing contributions to the preservation of the Dayton area's aviation heritage.
Mary Ann's initial research of the Wright brothers sites in Dayton's West Side evolved into an Aviation Trail brochure in 1981, that gave a self-guided tour of the region’s most interesting sites where aviation history was made. She has updated the brochure several times; the current edition covers 13 sites in Montgomery, Greene and Miami counties. A bicycle Aviation Trail brochure describes nine Wright brothers sites along the Great Miami River bicycle trail from West Carrollton to downtown Dayton and back.
After the first brochure, Mary Ann agreed to write about an expanded list of aviation-related sites and the stories behind them. The first edition of A Field Guide to Flight: On the Aviation Trail in Dayton, Ohio, published in 1986, included stories, photos and maps describing 45 sites. A 1996 revised edition ten years later covered 47 sites. The book can serve as an armchair tour or as a guide to in-person visits.
Mary Ann later focused her research on a single Dayton site. After the Wright brothers’ heyday, McCook Field became the country’s first military aviation research and development center in 1917. All US land-based aircraft that saw active service in World War I were being built around Dayton, and nearby McCook Field was established to design and test major innovations.
Johnson’s book, McCook Field 1917-1927: The Force Behind America’s Golden Age of Flight, tells the history of the Field and the pioneering projects that dubbed it the “Cradle of Aviation.” In ten brief years McCook improved nearly every key part of the airplane—propeller, engine, instruments, radio, and even methods for night flying. Early parachute work also earned McCook the title "Birthplace of the Freefall Parachute,” celebrated at the Aviation Trail Parachute Museum also in the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center.
Mary Ann met her biggest deadline, publishing her McCook volume in 2002, in time to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight in 2003. Mary Ann’s brochures and books continue to help a new generation rediscover aviation’s formative years in Dayton, and to help Dayton rediscover itself.
Mary Ann Johnson’s background in economic development helped shape the thinking of many as forgotten aviation sites were rediscovered and resurrected as tourist destinations, and eventually a whole neighborhood was given a fresh start.
For her nearly 30 years of efforts, Mary Ann was honored with the 2008 Trailblazer award from Aviation Trail, Inc. She also won the Wilson Charbonneaux Award from the Engineers Club of Dayton for her significant contributions to the public’s understanding of science and technology.
Thus Rich and Mary Ann Johnson have each found innovative ways to educate and influence people in the Miami Valley and around the world about history, engineering, science and technology. They made history themselves, celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary in 2009.
Related to Mary Ann Johnson and Aviation Trail
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Dayton Innovation Legacy is a multimedia website and educational resource about Engineers Club of Dayton members who represent a living history of innovation for over 100 years. Dayton Innovation Legacy was made possible in part by the Ohio Humanities Council, a State affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. |
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