as a publicity stunt. Meeker also received a small stipend, and journeyed in the vehicle from Washington, D.C. to Olympia. Meeker saw the use of a motor vehicle as publicizing the need for a transcontinental highway. During this trip, he lectured on the need for a national highway; before he left he met with President Woodrow Wilson and discussed the topic with him. Bernard Sun, whose grandparents were Oregon Trail pioneers in Wyoming, remembered another side of Meeker: Although World War I distracted public attention from Meeker and his activities, he used the time to plan for the future. On December 29, 1919, his 89th birthday, he began work on another book, Seventy Years of Progress in Washington, which was published to favorable reviews. In association with Dr. Howard R. Driggs, a professor of English education at the University of Utah and later at New York University, he published a revised version of his memoirs, Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail. In 1922, he fell ill for one of the few times in his life. Newspapers reported that he refused to stay in bed, and his grandson, a physician, stated that he was going to put Meeker back to bed and "I am going to keep him there—if I can. If I can." Recovered, the nonagenarian Meeker began making fresh travel plans. With the International Air Races to be held at Dayton, Ohio, in 1924, Meeker tried to get the War Department to allow him to fly there. He was successful, and flew with the Army pilot, Oakley G. Kelly. At a stop in Boise, Meeker quipped they were making better time than with his ox team, and in Dayton met aviation pioneer Orville Wright, to whom he commented, "You'd be surprised at the difference between riding in a Prairie Schooner and in an airplane." The publicity was so favorable that the Army had Kelly fly Meeker the rest of the way to Washington, D.C., where the onetime pioneer met President Calvin Coolidge in October 1924. Meeker returned to Seattle by train. Wanting the government to build a road over Naches Pass, where he had guided his father's party seventy years before, Meeker ran for the Washington House of Representatives in 1924 from the 47th district but was defeated in the Republican primary by 35 votes. In 1925, Meeker drove an ox team for several months while touring in J.C.