A Lifelong Storyteller

Tri-Cities Native Pens Wright Brothers Serial Story For Newspapers

Growing up in Johnson City, Tenn., Mary Maden found herself telling stories.
“I’ve just been a writer since I was 8, so I’ve written all my life,” Maden said during a telephone interview from her home in Kitty Hawk, N.C.
Once a student at David Crockett High School in Jonesborough, Tenn., Maden attended East Tennessee State University in the early 1970s, then left the Tri-Cities to move to Mallorca, Spain, with the aspiration of becoming a novelist.
Years later, Maden found herself married to her husband, Eric Schroeder, and moving to Kitty Hawk in 1984, after years of living in Dayton, Ohio.
Soon after, while adjusting to life on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Maden became addicted to local history.
Here, she found, Kitty Hawk was the site of the first successful airplane flight of the Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur, in 1903.
Along the way, Maden developed her skills as a writer, crafting her first serial story for newspapers, “Ghosts From the Past: Mystery of the Latham House.”
To date, Maden has had 11 books published by Dog and Pony Publishing, including a series of children’s books focused on local history.
This year, in Friday editions through May 8, the Bristol Herald Courier is publishing one of Maden’s newspaper serials, “Dreams Come True: The Story of the Wright Brothers’ First Flight.”
For research, Maden interviewed Outer Banks historian David Stick.
She also used quotes from letters and actual diary entries from the Wright Brothers.
Maden also met many of Kitty Hawk’s oldest residents.
And, she said, “I actually got to talk to people who knew the Wright Brothers.”

ON THE WEB
http://www.marymaden.com