Owners Jim Lagos and his wife, Niki (pronounced Nicky), commissioned local artist Gary Blevins to do the work after seeing Blevins’ portraits of Wilbur and Orville among those of Norman Rockwell, various Ohio State sports stars and the painting Wyeths when Blevins opened his High Street studio.
After seeing them, “I thought, this is a natural,” Mr. Lagos said.
The result is a 4-by-5-foot horizontal work that will be mounted near to the elevator, likely after a few stops elsewhere in the Miami Valley for temporary display.
“I didn’t start (work on) it immediately because it scared me to death,” Blevins said.
That habitual panic led to his habitual research into time-period elements. Most prominent are a 1903 Tapper phone, so called because the user had to tap on it reach the operator who placed the call; old law books the Clark County Law Library Association happens to be storing in the Bushnell Building during courthouse renovations; and five pages of Wright Brothers patents filed at the U.S. Patent Office that one news outlet said “withstood more than 20 years of fierce legal battles over intellectual property rights.”
The words are a reminder that in the 110 years since a New York Federal Court upheld the Wrights’ claim of patent infringement against aviation headliner Glen Curtiss, the Wrights’ place at the top of the pantheon of airplane pioneers has come to be taken for granted.
Among those who never knew how that turned out was Wilbur Wright, who died two years before the brothers’ suit against Curtiss was upheld.
In a New York Times story of May 30, 1912, reporting Wilbur’s death, Orville blamed it “on the seemingly interminable legal fight” for the patent.
The story said, “Wilbur, apparently worn out with frustration and worry over the litigation caught typhoid fever and died after a three-week illness.”
The ultimate success of the patent that solidified the Wright legacy is attributed to Toulmin’s decision to focus the patent on the combined mechanisms of the Wrights’ navigation system.
As the patent application put it: “The objects of our invention are to provide means for maintaining or restoring the equilibrium or lateral balance of the apparatus, to provide means for guiding the machine both vertically and horizontally, and to provide a structure combining lightness, strength, convenience of construction, and certain other advantages which will hereinafter appear.”
Toulmin had practiced in Springfield for more than 20 years by the time Wrights sought his counsel. His move from Washington, D.C., was encouraged by a retainer from the leading industrialists of a city that by the 1880s was then sending the agricultural machines of its design and manufacture all over the world.
Rockel’s 20th Century History of Springfield and Clark County reports that Messrs. Foos, Mast, Thomas Evans and others “recognized in him an attorney capable of defending their patent interests.”
Although Rockel reports Toulmin’s arrival in 1885 and permanent relocation in 1887, the 1878-9 City Directory has him occupying offices in Market Building that preceded the current Heritage Center and living in the Lagonda House hotel.
During his firm’s longer stay in the Bushnell Building, his list of local clients expanded to include the Springfield Malleable Iron, Rogers Fence Co. and James Leffel Co.
With added attorneys, business spread to Dayton, where Toulmin relocated in 1911 to practice with his son, Harry A. Toulmin Jr.
Toulmin Jr. himself had an extraordinary life, serving on the U.S. Army Committee that investigated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; writing widely on issues of patent law; and managing corporations.
Wittenberg College president Rees Edgar Tulloss called him “one of the most brilliant men I know,” meeting him when Toulmin Jr. entered Wittenberg at age 15.
The extended family’s wealth allowed the younger Toulmin’s estate (he died in 1965) to donate $20 million to the Dayton Foundation, its largest ever. The estate added a $60 million gift to the Georgetown University Medical School in Washington, D.C.
Harry Sr’s. civic contributions to Springfield included serving on the Board of Public Affairs during the mayorship of industrial P.P. Mast, during which he helping to develop the then recently donated land of Snyder Park.
Father and son retain a Springfield presence in a family plot in Ferncliff Cemetery.
Mr. Lagos, who said Blevins’ painting succeeded “beyond my wildest expectations,” explained that it will be part of a small shrine for Toulmin, which will include two custom-made cabinets, a display of newspaper stories and a 19th Century French mirror.
For Lagos, long influential in the city’s still identifiable Greek community, the project has a particularly sweet twist.
During the time of the Wrights dealings with Toulmin, Lagos’ grandfather, Tom, who he says was Springfield’s first Greek immigrant, had two chocolate stores in the city’s downtown.
“Apparently, the Wright Brothers had sweet tooths,” Mr. Lagos said, meaning “they probably would have visited my grandfathers’ store.”
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