On August 17th, several of the club faithful gathered for a good old fashioned field revival meetin’. George made a very nice video of Dennis rollin’ the runway. Just click it.
Frank Sutton took 23 photos on Saturday before, during, and after the Electroglide. Here are his impressions:
“Photos of several SEFSD members working hard at various maintenance projects on and off the runway! The projects include photos of rolling the runway, painting new bullseyes, disassembling old tables, installing new tables, and the resulting foliage having been cleared around the “No Parking” telephone logs all the way down to the entrance to SEFSD Field!
I can tell you that Alex and I agreed, we have NEVER seen SEFSD Field’s runway and adjacent areas in such great shape! That runway was SMOOOOTH and the new tables look outstanding!
WOW! Let me assure you that if had the authority to bestow awards to everyone who was working so hard (and I know others assisted too but I don’t have photos of everything!) I would do so, but I’m not in the Navy any longer so I’ve not written a Navy Achievement Medal Award for anyone in quite a few years!
As Randy and I were talking Saturday afternoon, however, there is one person that stood out amongst all the hard chargers as the one person that went, in my own humble opinion, above and beyond the call of duty, and that person is Dennis LaBerge.
From what I heard, he was out there watering down the field Friday evening, then showed up at 0600 Saturday morning and started rolling the field with the steam roller! From what I saw, I can tell you he was working very hard the entire time Alex and I were there, and was still going at it when we left just after noon!
He didn’t stop working! I watched and took a photo of Dennis smoothing out a few bad patches on the runway with his hoe even while the Electroglide was underway! I told him I’d call out to him when a sailplane started its approach so he could get out of the way! Even after the Electroglide, he continued working on the field and clearing the brush away from all of the telephone poles so visitors could now actually see the “No Parking” signs in many of them! Even when Alex was flying his F/A-18 Dennis came down to our end of the field several times to empty a plastic bag full of sand into the trash can or adjust the carpet (with Alex’s assistance once) at the gate entrance to the field, and then he used his hoe again to smooth out the area around the carpet where it went from behind the fence out into the runway area! As Alex and I were preparing to leave, Dennis was going at the old (removed) tables with a hand saw and was cutting each one into two pieces! I’ll tell you what, he just kept going and going like he had an unlimited supply of lithium batteries better than the Energizer Bunny!
I have to be honest with you, I’m too old and too heavy these days to keep up with him, but even when I wasn’t so old and heavy, I would have struggled to keep up with Dennis and all the work he did in support of SEFSD members all day long!
I’d have to salute Dennis, and for that matter, I’d have to salute all the Pilots that helped out with all the maintenance work this past weekend!
I believe they all did one heck of a job, and I’m really thinking of another word to use and it’s not heck!”
Here are Frank’s and George’s pics:
Randy sent in a few pics of the activities as well:
“Here’s a couple pics from Saturday morning.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/XqF342wViz1rkCCv9
On behalf of the club membership, please take a moment next time you see Dennis, Jim, George and Brad to thank them for the work put into the field and tables on Friday and Saturday!!
Dennis and George graded, watered and rolled the field Friday and Saturday…….Jim and Brad removed and replaced 5 tables with really nice straight 2 x 10s …. That JIM painted a couple days before. Great work and thank you so much!!”
