![Transcription Center logo](/themes/custom/tc_theme/assets/image/logo.png)
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
like it, but Sunday was the only time we could make any money-. So when I was called on the carpet, I showed Wilbur checks for about $45,000 from Sunday shows in Los Angeles and San Francisco. He forgot his anger, but again forbade Sunday flying." By mid-1911, however, the exhibition business began to taper off for the Wright team as promoters began to book independent flyers. Knabenshue was credited by Charles Edward Taylor, the Wright Brothers' machinist and mechanic, with saving for posterity the Wright Brothers' first successful airplane, flown at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. According to Taylor, "If it hadn't been for Knabenshue, there might not have been the historic relic to exhibit (in the National Air Museum). Roy tells how he approached Wilbur early in 1912 and asked him what he was going to do with the "Kitty Hawk," and Wilbur told him, 'Oh, I guess we'll burn it; it's worthless.' Roy argued it was historic and finally talked him out of destroying the plane." Knabenshue, moving back to Los Angeles, now turned to booking promising independent flyers. One of these was young Glenn Luther Martin of Santa Ana, California, who had secretly built his own airplane in an abandoned church in 1909 with the help of his mother and learned to fly it himself. In late 1911, Knabenshue booked Martin for exhibitions from California to Texas, then north through Kansas and Iowa. The Martin plane was shipped by rail from town to town and a sentimental stop was even made at Salina, Kansas, Martin's home town, where he put on quite a show. The tour netted Martin over $12,000--every cent of which 24