“It’s midnight now and I am very tired,” she wrote at last. “Orville is still sleeping. The night nurse has gone down to get a sandwich and some tea for me.”
Meanwhile, the army’s Aeronautical Board had begun a formal investigation to determine the cause of the crash. “Orville thinks that the propeller caught in one of the wires connecting the tail to the main part,” Katharine wrote. “That also gave a pull on the wings and upset the machine.”
As would eventually be determined, Orville was correct. One of the blades of the right propeller had cracked; the propeller began to vibrate; the vibration tore loose a stay wire, which wrapped around the blade, and the broken blade had flown off into the air. Because the stay wire had served to brace the rear rudders, they began swerving this way and that and the machine went out of control.
Until now both of the Wright brothers had had close scrapes with death. Wilbur had crashed two times with slight injuries, Orville four times, twice at Kitty Hawk and twice at Huffman Prairie. But as Wilbur wrote to their father, this was “the only time anything has broken on any of our machines while in flight, in nine years experience.” Nor had either of them ever plunged “head foremost” straight to the ground from an elevation of about 75 feet.
For Katharine especially, the one member of the family there at Orville’s side seeing the condition he was in, it was truly a miracle he had escaped with his life.
Charlie Taylor and Charlie Furnas—“the two Charlies” as they had become known at Fort Myer—came to the hospital to show Orville the piece of the propeller blade that had broken away. The wreckage of the machine, they assured him, was secure in the shed, where the windows and doors had been nailed shut, and a guard stationed. They were packing the plane’s engine and transmission parts that were undamaged to be shipped home. That accomplished, they, too, would be on their way.
On September 23, Alexander Graham Bell and two members of his Aerial Experiment Association came to the hospital to see Orville, but learned he was not yet ready for visitors. The group then crossed the parade field toward Arlington Cemetery to view Lieutenant Selfridge’s casket still awaiting burial. On the way they stopped at the shed. Charlie Taylor, who had not as yet shipped the wreckage of the Flyer back to Dayton, had taken a break for lunch. The only one on duty was the guard, who agreed to let the visitors into the building where the crate containing the Flyer stood open, the wreckage on display. Bell took a tape measure from his pocket and made at least one measurement of the width of a wing.
Word of this was not to reach Katharine or Orville for another week, but when it did they were extremely annoyed. Katharine asked Octave Chanute for his view on the matter and after talking to the soldier who had witnessed the incident, Chanute felt it was not something to be overly concerned about.
When Charlie Taylor, on his return to Dayton, told Bishop Wright what had happened, the Bishop, in a letter to Katharine, allowed it was “very cheeky” of Bell, but “a very little piece of business anyway.” No more was said of the matter and exactly what Bell’s intentions were was never made clear.
Everyone at the hospital continued to be extremely kind and helpful to Katharine, and while she did not find the military hospital quite up to standards, no other hospital would have permitted her to stay there and without a single restriction. The doctors and the day nurse were “splendid.” But having learned that the night duty nurse looked in on Orville only once every half hour and that he was stationed on the floor below, she felt she had to be on hand for Orville. She stayed day and night, which Orville greatly preferred. Often he was delirious at night and could not be left alone.
The strain on Katharine was taking a toll. “Brother has been suffering so much . . . and I am so dead tired when morning comes that I can’t hold a pen,” she wrote to Wilbur in explanation of why he had heard so little from her.
She fended off reporters and received visitors who were denied access to Orville. She continued to answer mail and telegrams, and it was she who represented Orville at the funeral ceremony on September 25 when Lieutenant Selfridge was laid to rest in Arlington Cemetery with full military honors.
The role she had taken upon herself did not go unnoticed or unappreciated. Some of the press concluded she had to be a nurse and so described her. “Your sister has been devotion itself,” wrote Octave Chanute to Wilbur. Most important by far, Orville told her he never could have gotten through the ordeal were it not for her.