Who's in the pilot seat is First Flight's plight.

• Position: Brief Article

Melvin Daniels is forthcoming about his time as chairman of the First Flight Centennial Commission -- up to a point. "I think mistakes were made," he says.

Exactly who made them, he's not saying. But they ended up costing the state that proclaims itself "First in Flight" the lead role in planning the main celebration for the 100th anniversary of the Wright brother's 1903 flight.

The commission was formed by the General Assembly in 1994 to plan activities to commemorate the flight. It expected to be the National Park Service's primary partner in planning the events of Dec. 17, 2003, at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.

In 1995, commission members set up a nonprofit foundation to raise money for improvements to the memorial. That made it easier for donors to write off contributions, and the foundation could sidestep clumsy state bid rules. "Somehow, we were not careful enough in our creation of the foundation, and we ended up with the tail wagging the dog," says Daniels, a former state senator from Elizabeth City and the commission chairman until 1997.

Daniels and others thought the commission would still call the shots. The foundation's first board was made up entirely of commission members, including Daniels and Vice Chairman Dick Howard, president of the foundation and chairman of Howard Management Group, a Greensboro-based heavy-construction company.

But it wasn't...