Wright, Jack Morris

Born July 9, 1898, in New York City. Son of Charles Lennox and Sarah Greene Wright. Educated l'Ecole Alsacienne, Paris, and Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Class of 1917. Joined American Field Service, April 28, 1917; attached Transport Section 526 to August 16, 1917; Enlisted U. S. Aviation Service. Trained at Issoudun. Commissioned First Lieutenant. Killed January 24, 1918, in aeroplane accident at Issoudun. Buried Military Cemetery, Issoudun, Indre.

"One glorious hour of crowded life,
Is worth an age without a name."

JACK WRIGHT, First Lieutenant in aviation, was only nineteen when killed in training. His little hour was so fleeting, but oh, so gloriously full. Any tribute of words to his memory seems pitifully inadequate. His life, his death, his letters, now compiled in a volume, "A Poet of the Air," and the inspiration of his philosophy, constitute a memorial which outshines any amplification of this writing.

For Jack Wright was not an ordinary individual. He was an artist,---a genius, who lived above and beyond the commonplace. By temperament he was well fitted for service in the air. His nature was naturally ecstatic, soaring, reaching out, and above. The wonder and glory of flying was always fresh to him. "It became akin to some divine privilege."

This poet felt a call and sacred duty to write of flying.

"So far there has been a soldier poet, a poet of the woods, a poet of all," he wrote, "but as yet there has been no poet of the air,---the wonderlands unknown, unfelt, unseen, but ever worshiped as God's own ground, or as the symbols of the highest soarings of men."

It is difficult to reconcile a genius and artistry such as his with war. Yet it was just such exalted vision and living idealism, contagious to a high degree, which redeemed the war, with all its cruelty. With his death, Jack Wright ceases to become an individual. He becomes a symbol,---a symbol of all the youth, and hope, enthusiasm, and idealism, which poured itself out in the blood and deeds of every man who sacrificed his all in the past war. He becomes man's ideal of his truest self, realized.

The following was written in explanation to his mother, while he was still in the Camion Service, waiting to be transferred to the Aviation, for which he had just passed his examinations.

"There are many reasons for my new action . . . . . The choice between America and Peace, or France and War ; the desire to be 'one of them' over here, and to feel worthy of France's beauty and her people's sympathy; the desire to be able to say with pride that I had done something real in the greatest of all struggles; the horror of shirking when boys like me are dying; the thousand and one other minor reasons, that turn by turn assail me more strongly ever day."

In another letter we sense that which actuated all his life: "If I could give my life to make a bit of idealism perfect itself, and live immortal on a mortal world, it would be the highest hope I could attain and the greatest happiness I could enjoy. If I were to live lukewarmly and die weakly, it would be the greatest tragedy I or any human could suffer."

Jack Wright was an American boy of nineteen. He was born in New York City. When a small child he was taken to France, where he remained until the outbreak of the war. He was educated in French schools. His playmates were the children of the artists and poets of France. When he left America with the ambulance unit he had spent three years in Andover, and was about to enter Harvard.

He spent six months at the front as driver of a camion, and three months learning to fly in the First American Aviation School in France. He had just received his commission as First Lieutenant, and would undoubtedly have been sent to the front in a few weeks time,--- the goal of his ambition, when his plane met with an accident while in the air, which ended his short hour.

• Tribute from Memorial Volume of the American Field Service, 1921