Lyon County, Kansas

Students Raise Money For Copter

Hope to get others involved in project

OLPE — Olpe’s seventh- and eighth-graders have taken on a project they hope will spread to schools throughout the area.

The students were in Michelle Barnhart’s English class, preparing entries for the annual Veterans Day Poster and Essay Contest, when talk turned to a story about the Vietnam-era helicopter that went on display in May at the Veterans Memorial in Emporia.

Three crew members who served on the helicopter have begun a drive to raise money to paint the chopper and close off the cockpit so birds no longer can nest in it. After discussion, the youngsters decided they wanted to help. And at Olpe, when one group starts a charity project, other groups chip in to help. Pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students have decided to participate.

Juniors at Olpe High School set out a tip jar for the project when they worked the concession stand recently.

“The band was in charge the first night when they got the tip jar going,” said Barnhart. “I told the kids that it’s amazing how one small effort can grow with enthusiasm.”

The classes will find other ways to make giving simple and painless. The two tip-jar nights brought in $21.56. An eighth-grader was invited to write an article about the project for the school newspaper, which is mailed to the entire Olpe community.

“I was really excited to hear that our newspaper advisor, Mrs. Marilyn Stueve, was eager to help us promote the project,” Barnhart said. “I can already feel the enthusiasm building with the students.”

Last week, seventh- and eighth-graders planned to create a letter to send to other schools, inviting them to join the drive and try to raise more money than Olpe.

“They want to contact schools where their cousins went, or friends, or whatever go,” Barnhart said. “We’re going to go right up to Veterans Day and I’m pretty sure that by the time we get this rolling, it’ll be just about a month.”

The project also brought unexpected information to light as the classes did their preliminary background work before beginning.

“I did not realize how many of my students had relatives serving in Iraq right now,” Barnhart said.
(Emporia Gazette ~ 9 October 2007)

HELICOPTER PAINTING PROJECT TO BE MODIFIED

Unanticipated obstacles are causing a change of plans for painting the Vietnam-era helicopter erected in the Veterans Memorial Park.

“As it stands now, we haven’t had any luck at organizing or getting it painted off-site,” said Ron Whitney of the local Vietnam Veterans group.

The helicopter’s three crew members, who were in Emporia when the helicopter was dedicated on Memorial Day 2007, in September had initiated a project to clear the Huey of a build-up of bird droppings and repaint it according to its original specifications. Much of the work, such as disassembling the helicopter — moving it by crane to a trailer, and hauling it to and from a hangar at the municipal airport — was to be done by volunteers.

One of the men, Ed Venable of Merritt Island, Fla., said in September that the three vets were trying to gain support from state and federal lawmakers to gain funds for the project.

Venable and the other crew members, Jim Williams and Gary Hennessey, originally had estimated the cost for a full restoration at $50,000. With volunteer labor and equipment, that cost was reduced to between $15,000 to $20,000.

Olpe school children conducted numerous fundraisers and raised about $450 toward financing the project, and one check was received from a private individual. The money is being kept in a specially earmarked fund by the veterans’ group until the problem is resolved.

The project, however, apparently will need to be modified, in part because of Environmental Protection Agency rules and the sheer magnitude of the effort.

“We’ve looked at all avenues on trying to put everything together to move this helicopter to a site that is capable of doing the paint, per the specs, and we have not been able to do that,” said Ron Whitney of the local Vietnam Veterans group. “From everything we’ve learned around here, there’s just no place to paint it that has the size or the capability or the space or the EPA requirements ... to do it here in Emporia.”

Whitney said that transportation is a major issue.

“You can imagine just how much is involved in trying to pick this helicopter up with a crane and set it on a trailer and so forth,” he said. The same problem would arise, in reverse, in trying to get the helicopter back to the memorial and re-seated.

“So, our Plan B is to try to determine whether we can paint it on site,” Whitney said. “... In the meantime, though, we do have plans in place on taking high-pressure washing equipment down there and scrubbing the helicopter down and getting the bird stuff off of it.”

Whitney and the local group will talk with the helicopter’s crew about the situation when the trio return to Emporia for Memorial Day activities this month.

“The paint job is not a dead issue, but moving it off-site to paint it does not look like that’s going to be a reality. Maybe painting it on-site could be,” Whitney said.

“No matter whether we get fresh paint or not, we’re still going to look into some things that we can do to reduce some birds from roosting on it.”
(Emporia Gazette ~ Saturday ~ 17 May 2008)

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