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If you think you know all about North
Jersey's pioneering role in transportation, you might get a big
surprise this weekend if you go to the place where two ancient
locomotives stand guard outside the Paterson Museum.
Yes, you knew Paterson made the
nation's first rail engines. And you knew, too, about the world's
first submarine on display inside, which was created and tested in
the Silk City.
But Sunday, on the 80th anniversary
of Charles Lindbergh's solo airplane flight across the Atlantic, you
can be treated to an additional reminder of Paterson's contribution
to the way we move around. You see, the engine that powered
Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis from New York to Paris on May 20-21,
1927, was made in Paterson -- at the Wright Aeronautics Corp.
So, starting Sunday on Market
Street, you and your kids can see a replica of this plane 30 blocks
from Getty Avenue where Wright designers and engineers built its
original Whirlwind engine.
"The Whirlwind J-5 was the engine
Lindbergh wanted, so he went to Paterson," said Ev Cassagneres,
author of "The Untold Story of the Spirit of St. Louis."
Impressed by Whirlwind flights that
took Richard Byrd over the South Pole, Lindbergh staked his life on
the engine's ability to perform what became his era's version of the
moon landing. He became a media star.
Roosevelt Field on Long Island
enjoyed decades of publicity as the origin of the flight. The
euphoria helped promote Pittsburgh, where the propeller was made. It
rubbed off on San Diego where most of the plane was built. And St.
Louis, whose businesses paid for the flight, scored a huge public
relations coup.
And Paterson?
"The movie about the flight doesn't
even mention Paterson," said event organizer Tom Evans, who got
Curtiss-Wright, the engine-maker's successor, to pay for the
tribute.
This omission ranks with other
Paterson snubs, like the downplaying of the Holland submarine and
Sam Colt's invention of the revolver that won the West, Evans said.
Museum Director Giacomo DeStephano
agrees Paterson didn't get headlines back then, "but the flight
helped make Wright the leading engine maker and a giant employer,
especially in World War II."
Millions of North Jersey families
still trace employment roots to Wright plants at four locations.
Despite sympathy for his son's kidnap-death, Lindbergh also fell
from favor. But his name lives on in places like Lindy's Lake in
West Milford. Old-timers recall the Paterson barber who cut his
hair, his Englewood home, his trips to Teterboro Airport.
"His plane spent more time at
Teterboro for tests and maintenance than its 33½ hours over the
Atlantic," Cassagneres said.
To learn more of this area's
contribution to aviation, visit the Aviation Museum and Hall of Fame
at Teterboro. Or find a plaque for Jimmy Doolittle at the Rockaway
Valley Aerodrome in Boonton. That's where the war hero made the
first instruments-only takeoffs and landings in 1928, a year before
such flights were officially recorded at Mitchell Field, New York.
As Tom Evans says: "The right place
doesn't always get credit." |
