Apologize for the long post, but there is no short way to tell the story.
Had a busy day today.
Have to give you a bit of background. Some of you will remember my post about the Publishing Museum that Sherri and I took on as a project a few years ago.
Posted about it here:
https://www.yenko.net/forum/showthre...museum+project
We are still hard at it. We have made about $70,000 worth of improvements to the building. I have an architect that has donated about $25,000 worth of his time and a structural engineer who has donated somewhere around $15,000 of his time. I have the preliminary structural report (should have a final in another month or two). Happy to report we have zero structural issues on this 120 year old building where Statehood was announced for Oklahoma on Nov. 16, 1907. What is amazing is that the 3rd floor windows have been boarded up since sometime BEFORE 1965!!! Even with all the water intrusion, and all the neglect this building has suffered in the last 60 plus years, it stands firm waiting to be restored.
We raised a net $93,000 at our first fundraiser, fighting with Covid all the way. My fundraising chair (a fairly new board member who is a bonafide heavy hitter in the non profit sector) tells me we will raise at least $250k this coming October. She is incredible. Still, we are a LONG way from our current goal of $10 million to bring this building fully into the 21st Century.
So, what does this do with what I did today. Our former Governor, Frank Keating (he was Gov here during the OKC bombing in 1995) and his wife Cathy have been incredibly supportive. Gov. Keating is speaking at our next fundraiser. His son Chip, a great fundraiser in his own right (he has a Foundation that supports families of fallen troopers) has started working on Oklahoma lawmakers trying to get the State of OK to put up some matching funds. Although our local Senator has not expressed much interest in introducing any such legislation, we haven’t given up hope. I have now shown the building to one former Gov, the current Gov, the Lt. Governor (who spoke at our first fundraiser, and is also very supportive) several lobbyists, and 46 different State legislators. They are all blown away by the amazing artifacts we have, and some of the now working machinery we have mechanically restored. After I explained the field trip experience we wanted to create for Middle School kids, he said: “every school child in Oklahoma needs to make a field trip to this historic building before they graduate.” Chip immediately started pitching the idea of State matching funds. Gov. Stitt looked me in the eye and said: “you get these guys to pass it (pointing at several legislators that were present that day) and I will sign it.”
Today, I was able to show our US Representative, the Honorable Stephanie Bice, through the building. We spent an hour looking at the artifacts. I demonstrated one of the presses (it has been in the building since before 1911) and showed her the party favors we printed on that machine. Like everyone else, she was blown away by this significant piece of Oklahoma History and Publishing History. Really neat young lady whose father is a first generation immigrant to the US. We are lucky to have her in Washington.
As soon as she left, I went to work replacing some dilapidated letters on the third floor balcony. The phrase “ESTABLISHED 1889" was prominently displayed on the front of the balcony. Most of those letters were metal. Two had been replaced with wood. As you might expect, the wood swelled up, rotted, and was falling off. The two missing letters were the first “E” and the “L”. I had already replaced the letters on the second floor balcony (also wood) with laser cut aluminum letters anodized silver. Those we were able to get to with my scissor lift. The third floor balcony is 35+ foot high, and my scissor lift was useless. A few months ago one of my neighbors was painting windows on her downtown building. She and her partner had rented an articulating boom lift. She called me and asked if I needed it for an hour or two, as it wasn’t get picked up until the evening. Hell yes. So, I went up and removed the deterioration wooden letters, and also removed the one good “E” that was still up there. It was metal, painted black on the sides and bottom and yellow on the front. I could tell from how some of the tabs that were tucked into the mortar, that it was original to the building. I have since confirmed that, sure enough all the letters left up there were original to the building.
Looking at the back side, it sure looked like galvanized steel. So I bought some galvanized steel sheet metal and hammered out a new “L” and a new “E”. Had to get special low heat solder and flux to solder the pieces together. As soon as I finished I started sanding the front surface of the original “E” which quickly revealed ..... copper. Crap. Made them out of the wrong stuff. Oh well, it was good practice. They weren’t quite dimensionally correct, as I ended up making them about 1/16 inch too wide.
So, bought some copper sheet and made new letters out of copper. Sandblasted them to make sure the paint would stick. Painted the sides and bottom black.
How the hell am I going to get these up there? I had no idea. I was thinking that I may be dangling in a harness from the balcony. Sherri wasn’t crazy about that idea. Then I heard that OG&E had donated a bucket truck to the City of Guthrie. This is where it pays to live in a small town. Two weeks ago I go see the City Manager. I take my new copper letters into his office and tell him we need a way to get them up there. He calls one of his maintenance guys and says: “Hey, I am giving your cell phone number to Lynn. He is going to call you when he needs the bucket truck. We need this done before the 89er day parade, so when he is ready, make sure you have someone at the Museum with the bucket truck.” Doesn’t get much easier than that. Then I ask him if they have any street striping yellow paint we can paint the front of the letters with. He says sure. Also says it takes months to get that stuff because of EPA restrictions.
Bottom line: I show the Congresswoman around for an hour and spend the next hour and a half putting up letters and painting them with the paint the City donated. They look awesome. Yes, the “L” is slightly crooked. But by the time we were done, the wind was coming from my left at 30 mph with 35 mph gusts. All in all a good day.
Enjoy the pics.
OH yeah, and we were still at the office for a 1:00 pm appointment, and worked right up til 5.