Pick out a good father and mother, and begin life in Ohio (and other ways to endear yourself as a speaker)

No doubt the most captive audience Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough will ever have during his book tour touting “The Wright Brothers” is the one that flocked to a middle school in Dayton, Ohio, last night to hear him speak about The Bishop’s Boys.

After all, Wilbur and Orville were Daytonians through and through.

McCullough’s speech to the hundreds of us who jam-packed every seat in the auditorium of Kettering Middle School was pure delight.

Every chance he got, McCullough made us feel good about our hometown, which gave birth to the brothers who so desperately wanted to see man fly – and did – by inventing flight themselves.

As a speaker, McCullough had the hometown advantage. And he used it to establish a bond with his audience like no other.

He endeared himself to us, like all good speakers should.

He tapped our emotional core.

Because just like the Wright Brothers, we are Daytonians through and through.

Here are some of my favorite hometown lines from McCullough’s speech at Dayton:

• I love Ohio! I remember making an athletic trip here in high school from Pittsburgh and seeing all these white houses. Tons of white houses! No one would ever dare paint a house white in Pittsburgh.

• The first human beings to take flight in a flying machine and to take steps on the moon came from this corner of Ohio.

• Today people think a liberal arts education should be brief: something to get over with so you can get into your technical education. But these two brothers both had a superb liberal arts education. They were brought up on Hawthorn Street – and they were brought up on Nathaniel Hawthorne – all because of their father, Bishop Milton Wright.

• You always learn something by going where things happened. Standing in Huffman Prairie where it’s quiet – and then you hear those giant planes go over – you realize the importance of what happened at Huffman Prairie.

• Dayton, Ohio, as the birthplace of aviation? You bet it is the birthplace! The conflict between Ohio and North Carolina is all right – but it’s ridiculous. The building of the machine and the improvements on the machine all came with time, and it all came from here. This is the city where a miracle happened.

• What did they learn? A little adversity will take you higher. And if you get knocked down? You don’t whimper and whine. You figure out what went wrong, and you get back to work. Make no mistake: Wilbur and Orville were bona fide American heroes.

• Wilbur once said, “If I were giving a young man advice as to how he might succeed in life, I would say to him, pick out a good father and mother, and begin life in Ohio.”

What hometown advantages can you find and use to your advantage the next time you speak?