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Laura Siek was the receptionist at the Board of Education on the day that Jack Welborn called. She told Jack that she would do some research and became fascinated that such a great story in the history of Greenville was not well known. She shared the story with a dear friend, Sue Edsall O'Brien, and learned that Sue was a 1943 graduate of Greenville schools and knew the events very well. Laura also told the story to Doug Dodd, a teacher at the middle school and advisor to the Young Astronauts group. When the students in the Young Astronauts heard the story, they decided they would like to try to restore a glider as the school student's contribution to the sesquicentennial parade. In an effort to collect as much information as possible, the group consulted with Bill Delp and Eric Guenther, former employees of Gibson Refi-igerator Co. The students also went on a field trip to Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum where an actual restoration of a CG-4A glider was under construction. Bill and Eric joined the group enthusiastically, doubting whether the students had the technical ability or the persistence required to actually restore a glider. The students worked in a small building on the Ore-Ida property that was donated for this use. The progress made by the students allowed them to participate in the sesquicentennial parade sitting inside a center section of a CG-4A glider with the nose section attached and they earned the John Green Award for their efforts. After the parade in 1994, a small team of adult volunteers continued the search for useable parts and assemblies. The restoration project moved from the Ore-Ida property to a pole barn owned by Sue O' Brien and Stan Jorgensen. Parts turned up as anticipated in barns and farm gullies in various locations. The center section of the fuselage was obtained from a barn on the Albert's farm in Belding and another center section from a farm gully north of Greenville on the Petersen farm. The two had to be cannibalized to make one good assembly. The wooded floors were all rotted out, in fact, all wooden parts found were of no value due to deterioration. The metal tubing parts were missing sections, bent, rusted out, and in very poor condition. It was total restoration in all its glory-. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The news began to spread through publicity in our local newspaper and the involvement of the World War II Glider Pilot's Association. We obtained parts, mostly small ones, from various garage sales, basements, attics, barns, etc. The nose tubing section was obtained from a farm in Ohio with all the wooden parts rotted out and the windshield sections missing. The landing gear came from a Chicago junkyard. The gentleman said if we were crazy enough to restore a glider then we could have it, he would even pay for the shipping. The tail section came from a barn east of Greenville and had been used as a ladder to get into the farmer's barn. The rudder and vertical fin came from a farm in New Hampshire. The wing main spars were located in an old airfield hangar in Sparta, Michigan. The rear wing spars came from an abandoned airfield in Deland, Florida, called the Bob Lee airport. Eric found this location on one of his many side trips on his way to and from Florida each winter. Large batches of original wooden parts were uncovered in a cave in Missouri. The Kalamazoo Air Zoo graciously furnished us with many small parts, as well as a set of original tires and tubes. Never has a glider part been recovered without also revealing a story from someone's past. The center section was going to be a home for a veteran when he returned home from the war. He was going to live in it on the back acreage of his family's farm. A minister used a center section as a place to prepare his Sunday sermons without interruption from his small children. One woman still lived in a house constructed of two glider crates south of Belding. After the local newspaper ran an article on the center section retrieved from the Petersen farm, a wife of a Gibson welder wanted to come and touch the frame that her husband probably welded so she could feel close to him in some way. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The restoration team includes Laura Siek, mother of seven children and a secretary at Greenville Schools for fifteen years. Bill Delp is chief of the restoration group and is an 82 year-old WWII veteran. We lost a valuable member when Eric Guenther passed away in August of 1999. Bill and Eric were the only two who actually worked on the gliders at Gibson's more than 60 years ago. The rest of the team consists of eleven men. Two are Korean War vets (Dick Godfrey, Ed Gooding) and six are WWII vets (Tom Blinn, Bill Delp, John Harper, Stan Jorgensen, Robert Taylor, Darl Watters) . Keith King and Roger Slack have also been valuable members of the team. They all have impressive records. Robert Taylor was a glider infantryman and made two combat landings, a rarity in itself. John Ruhmohr was a missionary pilot in Central Africa for over 30 years and is an expert in fabric work on aircraft. Stan Jorgensen and John Harper are U.S. Navy vets. Tom Blinn, a combat infantryman who served on the European staff of Stars and Strips paper as an artist. Darl Watters was a CG-4A flying instructor and combat pilot with 600 flying hours in gliders. He was captured during the invasion of Holland and spent a year as a POW. An uncle of one of our team members, Major General Joe Harper, (325th Glider Infantry Regiment), delivered the famous "Nuts" message to the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge at Bastogne after they demanded our surrender. This was one of the most historical events of WWII. Among them, three have had open-heart surgery; three have had heart attacks and one suffers from Parkinson's disease. This demonstrates the determination of the group to resurrect this legend. They are a mighty determined and talented group, in spite of age and infirmities. We have recently lost Robert Taylor and Darl Watters.
Frugality has always been our motto. There are fourteen restorations worldwide, either fully restored or partially completed. One of them cost $250,000.00 to complete and two of the gliders, built from scratch by Lenair Corporation in Oregon, cost one million dollars. These gliders were paid for and purchased by the U.S. Army and were sent to Fort Benning and Fort Bragg. former glider training grounds. Our group has expended less than $15,000.00 during the nine years of restoration.
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