DATE: Tuesday, July 22, 1997                TAG: 9707220204

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   68 lines

DISNEY GOT IT WRONG ABOUT THE WRIGHTS, OHIO MAN INSISTS FLYING BROTHERS' HOME WAS IN DAYTON; FAME GAINED IN N.C.

Ohioans are demanding that Disney World get its Wright history right.

Since a story in the Dayton Daily News Friday detailed a local resident's protest about a ride narration that says the Wright brothers were from North Carolina, Buckeyes have responded with a flurry of letters, e-mail and phone calls.

``They're right behind me,'' said Tom Bush, a 35-year-old native Daytonian. ``Everybody has been real supportive.''

Bush spent an hour Monday morning telling listeners of WGTZ-FM radio that a Disney correction didn't go far enough. He said two petitions are asking for Disney World to correctly identify Dayton as the home of Orville and Wilbur Wright.

``The only reason they went to North Carolina was because of the constant winds,'' Bush said. ``So obviously, everything else was done here.''

Bush went to Disney World in the spring with his family. While at the Carousel of Progress in the Magic Kingdom, he said he was shocked when he heard the robotic mannequin tell about ``two brothers from North Carolina who are working on some kind of flying contraption.''

After returning home, Bush tried to persuade higher-ups at Disney World to correct the mistake. They wrote Bush a letter in May promising that the remark would be changed to reflect the aviators' Dayton hometown, Bush said.

Then corporate spokesman David Fisher was quoted saying in the Friday story that Disney World decided ``the cost was too prohibitive to correct a mistake that only people from Ohio would notice.''

Dayton didn't appreciate the comment.

``Can you believe that?,'' Bush said in a telephone interview Monday. ``They're saying that nobody else in the world would know.''

Rather than change the narration to say the brothers were from Dayton, or even to say that they had tested their aircraft in North Carolina in 1903, the park had digitally altered the word ``from'' to ``in,'' Fisher said in the story.

``Saying, `Two brothers in North Carolina' is not good enough,'' Bush insisted.

Fisher was unavailable for comment, but Disney spokesman Bill Warren said Monday that Fisher did not intend to be offensive.

``We never meant to slight anyone,'' Warren said. ``Someone told us about an inaccuracy in the script, and we were willing to change it.''

Warren said he was unfamiliar with any promises Disney had made to Bush to be more specific about where the Wrights lived. He said any information besides the one-word switch - made after Bush informed them of the error - would make the script too long.

``It's only a two-line reference in the entire script,'' he said. ``To make it longer would make it a much bigger change - it would've been a very big change.''

With the centennial anniversary of the first powered flight fast approaching, Ohio and North Carolina are possessive about the Wright brothers.

Ohioans grumbled when North Carolina adopted the ``First in Flight'' motto on its license plate. They point out that the famous plane was built and tested in Ohio - not to mention that both brothers lived virtually their entire lives in Dayton.

Residents of the Tar Heel state say that North Carolina deserves the honor in aviation history because it is the site of the Wrights' first successful flight.

The Wright Brothers National Memorial is in Kill Devil Hills, where the historic 12-second flight took place. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

DISNEY VISIT

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]

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