Continued
New Museum: while the Waterfront
Festival planning and execution absorbed our efforts
for the last three months, the event was an opportunity to promote the existing Museum
and put the concept of a new Museum before the public. The architects who have been
working with us, Peter Sollogub of Chermayeff,
Sollogub, and Poole, Inc., and George Holback of
Cho Benn Holback and Associates helped prepare an extensive exhibit describing our plans.
Displayed at the Festival, the exhibit was then used with the Essex-Middle River UDAT
project as well as in future County, State, and
donor meetings. With festival demands behind us,
we will now pursue the private funding as well as County and State support necessary to
conduct formal market, feasibility, and preliminary
design studies.
Maryland Room: The Maryland Room
is complete, with the first exhibit open for
public viewing. The room is designed to allow
easily changing displays so visitors see fresh exhibits.
The current exhibit covers Robert Goddard, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, its
space and earth science programs, and NASA astronaut Tom Jones: each a "Maryland
in space" topic. The exhibits were produced by
Fred Fahdt and Al LaPorte, who deserve great
credit for producing this excellent exhibit in
collaboration with NASA and Tom Jones. Calvin Clark
and Stan Piet completed the room's construction. Harvey Hodgin helped fund some of
the upgrades, including the light fixtures.
Speakers program:This monthly
program continues throughout 2004, and has gotten outstanding reviews from attendees, County
and community organizations, the media , and area
museums. To us, this is just our
monthly membership meeting, but in the overall
scheme of things, it is a first-class aviation and
space speaker series. Our own Stan Piet had the first full house earlier this year,
approximately 175 attendees. The program will
continue throughout 2005, and we are lining up
another strong set of presentations, including
speakers from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
Plant 2 Storage: the aircraft committee
has done a heroic job organizing and cleaning up the parts of the collection stored in the GSA
depot at Plant 2. On the downside, we recently
learned the GSA is preparing the facility for sale and
we will have to vacate the location by late 2005.
We also need new storage space for our Grumman Cougar and Martin Seamaster airframes.
Our challenge is to find new storage space. If
anyone knows of a storage facility that might be
available please let us know. Special credits here go
to Jack Brothers, Will Gibson, Lou Puls,and Gary High.
Newsletter: This newsletter marks
the transition to a new editor, Fred Fahdt, who
did so much to help put the Maryland Room exhibits together. Gene DiGennaro, Jr. who has had
the position for years has stepped down.Gene's efforts providing membership
communications are greatly appreciated.
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