Casey Huegel, who graduated from Wright State in 2013 with a master's degree in public history is publishing two new articles: “The Wright Brothers’ Early Photography: A Research Note,” will be published in Ohio History. The second is an article about Cal Rodgers, the first aviator to cross the United States in an airplane (1911), forthcoming in American National Biography Online, an biographical encyclopedia produced by Oxford University Press. Both articles stemmed from museum exhibits he developed at the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.
The article on the Wright brothers photographs explores how early photography can help fill some surprisingly significant gaps in Wright scholarship. Huegel does so by exmaining the people, places, and events documented in largely unidentified Wright photographs taken from 1897-1900. They tell of the Wrights’ lives, their hometown of Dayton, and their astute curiosity before they seriously considered exploring human flight. In his work at the Heritage Park, Huegel also gained extensive knowlege of the fascinating, and brief, life of Cal Rodgers, an early pilot of the Wright Company airplanes. The American National Biography Online was pleased to have Huegel prodcue and entry on Rodgers and fill in a gap in their publication.
Huegel has served as museum technician at Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park for more than three years, where he has worked on exhibits, archives, and oral history projects, along with the day-to-day care of our museum collection. The broad scope of projects keeps things interesting, along with the diverse content. The biggest challenge he faces is keeping up to speed on the wide variety of material. Huegel fins his job to be very rewarding, particularly with the support of management at the Historical Park.
