quality:corruption
Orville

Orville succeeded to the presidency of the Wright Company upon Wilbur's death. He won the prestigious Collier Trophy in 1914 for development of his automatic stabilizer on the brothers' Wright Model E. Sharing Wilbur's distaste for business but not his brother's executive skills, Orville sold the company in 1915. The Wright Company then became part of Wright-Martin in 1916.

After 42 years living at their residence on 7 Hawthorn Street, Orville, Katharine, and their father, Milton, moved to Hawthorn Hill in spring 1914. Milton died in his sleep on April 3, 1917, at age 88. Up until his death, Milton had been very active, preoccupied with reading, writing articles for religious publications and enjoying his morning walks. He had also marched in a Dayton Woman's Suffrage Parade, along with Orville and Katharine.

Orville made his last flight as a pilot in 1918 in a 1911 Model B. He retired from business and became an elder statesman of aviation, serving on various official boards and committees, including the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce (ACCA).

Katharine married Henry Haskell of Kansas City, a former Oberlin classmate, in 1926. Orville was furious and inconsolable, feeling he had been betrayed by his sister Katharine. He refused to attend the wedding or even communicate with her. He finally agreed to see her, apparently at Lorin's insistence, just before she died of pneumonia on March 3, 1929.

Orville Wright served in the NACA for 28 years. In 1930, he received the first Daniel Guggenheim Medal established in 1928 by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. In 1936, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued a presidential proclamation which designated the anniversary of Orville's birthday as National Aviation Day, a national observation that celebrates the development of aviation.

On April 19, 1944, the second production Lockheed Constellation, piloted by Howard Hughes and TWA president Jack Frye, flew from Burbank, California, to Washington, D.C., in 6 hours and 57 minutes (2,300 mi, 330.9 mph). On the return trip, the airliner stopped at Wright Field to give Orville Wright his last airplane flight, more than 40 years after his historic first flight. He may even have briefly handled the controls. He commented that the wingspan of the Constellation was longer than the distance of his first flight.

Orville's last major project was supervising the reclamation and preservation of the 1905 Wright Flyer III, which historians describe as the first practical airplane.

Orville expressed sadness in an interview years later about the death and destruction brought about by the bombers of World War II:

We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth. But we were wrong... No, I don't have any regrets about my part in the invention of the airplane, though no one could deplore more than I do the destruction it has caused. I feel about the airplane much the same as I do in regard to fire. That is, I regret all the terrible damage caused by fire, but I think it is good for the human race that someone discovered how to start fires and that we have learned how to put fire to thousands of important uses.

Orville died at age 76 on January 30, 1948, over 35 years after his brother, following his second heart attack, having lived from the horse-and-buggy age to the dawn of supersonic flight. Both brothers are buried in the family plot at Woodland Cemetery, Dayton, Ohio. John T. Daniels, the Coast Guardsman who took their famous first flight photo, died the day after Orville.