An east wind was blowing in strong off the Atlantic on that Saturday morning in 1902 when Jimmie and Clara Blair first caught sight of the strange, gigantic kite that hung in the sky high over Kitty Hawk Peninsula.

"Come on, Clara!" Jimmie shouted, starting to run across the sand. "I've got to see what's going on!"

And that is how they met Wilbur and Orville Wright, a couple of young bicycle mechanics from Ohio who had a crazy dream that someday men would fly through the air.

All that summer Jimmie helped the Wright boys as they tested their odd-looking glider. He would never forget the day Orville tried out their first engine-powered model—and it stayed up!

From then on, there was no holding the Wright brothers. By the fall of 1905, they had made continuous flights of twenty miles or more. Jimmie Blair was in college by that time, preparing to become an engineer in the Wright Flying Machine Company.

Today, when Jimmie sees a jet liner hurtle across the sky, he must surely remember the day in May, 1905, when the first passenger plane flew—and he was there!

From the dust jacket