Recreating a moment from Charles Lindbergh’s past, grandson finally gets the Wright family mansion photo

Famed aviator visited Dayton a month after 1927 solo transatlantic flight

Last year, Erik Lindbergh, the grandson of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, made a visit to Hawthorn Hill, the historic Wright family mansion.

Lindbergh, a pilot, entrepreneur and artist, visited several area aviation heritage sites during a tour arranged by the National Aviation Heritage Alliance.

During the visit to the historic Oakwood mansion, Lindbergh re-enacted a moment from his grandfather’s past. On June 22, 1927 Charles Lindbergh visited Orville Wright at the mansion a month after setting a record for a solo flight from New York to Paris.

» RELATED: How Dayton came to a standstill to honor the 1948 death of Orville Wright

Credit: HANDOUT

Credit: HANDOUT

During the visit a crowd gathered on the lawn outside. Lindbergh briefly stepped out onto a balcony to greet the crowd. The only known photograph of the event, taken by William Preston Mayfield, captures the crowd waving toward the balcony. But the angle the photo is taken from does now reveal Lindbergh himself.

“Sometimes I feel like the legacy is so intense and poignant that all we can do is look back at that history and celebrate it and leverage it to move forward and create a brilliant future for our kids and our children’s children,” said Erik Lindbergh after posing for photos on the balcony with Stephen Wright, great-grandnephew of the Wright brothers.

“So to the extent that we can preserve this history and look at it and really use it to take that next step so that we can thrive and survive into the future that’s the most important thing we can do with our lives.”

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