Wright brothers more Ohio than Edison, Stowe

8:07 PM Friday, March 5, 2010

Which dead Ohioans should be memorialized in statues at the U.S. Capitol building?

People bring all manner of agendas to the question. Some think there’s a dearth of women there. (There is.) Some want members of racial minorities. Some are looking for a boost for their own hometown.

A lot of people in Dayton want the Wright brothers, and, frankly, the case for Orville and Wilbur is awfully powerful.

All states have been told they may replace the people from their states who are now on display. Ohio is replacing a discredited 19th-century governor.

A committee of the Ohio legislature worked up a list of 93 Ohioans from which to choose. Now it has narrowed the list to 10, a useful service.

Each member was allowed to pick 10 and rank them. So a total ranking emerged.

But the total ranking has no formal meaning. The public will be allowed to cast votes on the 10, before the committee makes the final selection.

The ranking of the top 10 is not as useful as their selection.

Top vote-getter was Thomas Edison. True, his accomplishments and importance cannot be reasonably denigrated, compared to anybody, even the Wrights.

But he lived in Ohio only until he was seven.

Coming in second was Harriet Beecher Stowe, another worthy figure. She was the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which Abraham Lincoln may or may not have — seriously or not seriously — labeled the cause of the Civil War. She certainly brought slavery to the attention of a lot of people in the North.

For Ohioans who think the honoree should represent a clear moral cause, she has appeal.

However, like Edison, her connection to Ohio was limited. She moved to Cincinnati in her early 20s and stayed for about 20 years. She did her famous writing on the East Coast, and she lived a long life there.

Maybe one guideline in picking an honoree should be that people who might be picked by some other state, too, should be excluded.

Well, no other state could pick the Wright brothers (certainly not North Carolina).

The next three finishers on the committee list were great athlete Jesse Owens and two people most Ohioans have never heard of: women’s vote activist Harriet Taylor Upton, and abolitionist James M. Ashley.

Only then come the Wright brothers.

One explanation for their surprisingly low rank might be a certain confusion as to whether they’re even eligible.

State Sen. Teresa Fedor, D-Toledo, a committee member, said she was “heartbroken” to learn that the feds have a rule against including two people in one statue.

She said if it hadn’t been for that, she would put the brothers in her top three. As it was, she didn’t list them at all.

Others, however, think the two-people issue is still open. A certain ruling does specify only one person. However, the Congressional Research Office finds there’s precedent for two. The CRO said one existing statue has a woman and a baby, and others have the main person and additional panels featuring other people.

A good bet is that if Ohio really wants to go with the Wright brothers, a way can be found.

— Cox News Service

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