Photos by Steve Crowley -
Thom Taylor, points out all the sewing involved with the project.
Elk Grove resident Thom Taylor has spent the last two years immersing himself in the workings and architecture of vintage gliders.
As reported in the Citizen in 2011, the longtime woodworker picked up the hobby of building revolutionary aircrafts after purchasing a technical book about the construction of the gliders.
Taylor and a friend soon built a smaller replica of the Wright brothers’ 1902 glider in his garage.
Recently, Taylor has expanded his fascination with the construction and mechanisms of classic airplanes by embarking on a new project: Building Bay Area aviator and professor John Joseph Montgomery’s first glider.
Taylor’s new venture has also placed him in the position of being one of the consultants for the forthcoming feature film, Correcting History, which will focus on the life of Montgomery. Inspired by the book, Quest for Flight: John J. Montgomery and the Dawn of Aviation in the West by Craig Harwood, the great-great nephew of Montgomery, the movie will focus on the life of the aircraft trailblazer.
While it has been said that Wilbur and Orville Wright were the inventors of the flying machine, it was actually Montgomery who pioneered the first aircraft.
A struggling businessman at the time, Montgomery built and flew his first glider at the age of 26, almost two decades before the Wright Brothers produced theirs.
“After I gave my Wright Brothers glider to a museum the curator asked me, ‘What will you build next?’” Taylor said. “I really had no idea what to do for my next project…but I knew that I wanted to build something that was full-sized.”
Staff at the museum advised Taylor to build Montgomery’s first glider, the Gull.
But Taylor did not know about the aviator or his groundbreaking work at the time.
“Since I’d never heard of him I went back to my computer and did some research…I found out that Montgomery flew a monowing plane in San Diego back in 1884; almost 20 years before the Wrights,” Taylor said.
The more Taylor read about Montgomery the more he wondered why the innovator’s story had never been told.
“Everybody knows about the Wright Brothers, but not so many people know about this guy…he really got a raw deal in history,” he said.
Taylor spent 2011 studying Montgomery’s history and the technical aspects of the Gull; he soon purchased the necessary materials to build it and began to do so in his garage.
“I told myself I was going to build a working Montgomery aircraft and was going to fly it,” he said. “There weren’t many diagrams available to study, so I pretty much had to get old photographs and reverse engineer everything.”
In the midst of his research, Taylor noticed information online about Correcting History, as the film’s producer and executive producer - John Giddings and Veronica Craven, respectively – set up a Kickstarter website to raise money for the movie.
Taylor contacted the Bay Area film producers about his project and they visited him at his Elk Grove home on Jan. 16.
“We’re really excited that Thom’s helping to bring Montgomery’s story to life,” said Giddings, an entrepreneur, jockey pilot, and professor at Santa Clara University who also recently found a fascination with Montgomery’s story. “Children should know Montgomery as an innovative role model.”
Montgomery was also a professor at Santa Clara University, and Giddings learned about his history through information he’d found on campus.
Captivated by what he’d learned, Giddings believed that a full-length film would better tell the rich story of this little known pioneer.
The producers describe Correcting History as a feature theatrical film akin to The Right Stuff meets The Da Vinci Code.
Giddings, Craven, and Taylor engaged in conversation about their common newfound interest, as the producers are gathering as much research, advice, and education as they can during the film’s pre-production phase.
“Montgomery wasn’t someone who told his story over and over, so his history sort of fell through the cracks,” Giddings said. “But it turns out that he did many huge public demonstrations where thousands of people saw what his glider could do…he had perfect control over the aircraft.”
Craven further explained the educational value of the film.
“History is usually told in a word-of-mouth fashion,” she said. “It’s campfire tales, or your grandmother telling hours of stories…that’s how you learned your history.”
Craven mentioned that since the school system does not have such luxuries, many points of historic interest are often quickly simplified or simply left out.
“This movie is filled with history, as well as Montgomery’s unknown intricacies and complexities,” she said.
Correcting History will be filmed in the Bay Area this year; its planned release is December. Actors will be scouted in northern California, including the Sacramento area.
In the meantime, “the year of Montgomery” - as Craven refers to it - rolls on.
Taylor gave up his other woodworking projects to solely dedicate his time to working on the groundbreaking glider.
Using wood, wax coated thread lashed to reinforce the wood, and metal braces to build the aircraft, he’s aiming to have it finished and ready for flight in about a year.
There will be several flight tests performed on the aircraft by pilot, Gil Wright, prior to having someone fly it.
“After it’s all put together we’re going to take it to a hangar and suspend it from the ceiling,” Taylor said. “Gil will bounce on the glider to get its wings flexing…if anything will fail, it will fail right then. If so, we’d go back to the drawing board and rebuild it.”
Taylor said that he would also like to test the glider at a location near Monterey where Montgomery flew his aircraft.
“We’ll put two holes in the ground, let the wind come up, and suspend the glider in the middle,” he said. “Someone will get on it and see if the wind coming up from the ocean will provide enough lift for the plane.”
Taylor welcomes any questions you may have concerning his project. You can contact him directly by email at Pilot1022@aol.com.
Story and Photo: http://www.egcitizen.com
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