This piece originally ran in the March 2024 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.
If you’ve ever visited the EAA Aviation Museum, there’s a good chance you interacted with one of our volunteer docents. One of those volunteers is Ann Sederquist, EAA 769163, who loves spreading her lifelong aviation passion to others.
Ann has been an aviation enthusiast for as long as she can remember, going back to when she was a young child in a family of aviators. It’s a deep-seated love that she and her husband have passed on to their children by revolving family vacations around space and aviation museums — she is proud to report one son can name anything with wings, and the other is a dedicated volunteer in the Vintage area of AirVenture.
For much of Ann’s career, she was a director for middle school band and high school marching band; though, she found a way to marry her love of band and aviation by hosting rocket and shuttle launch viewing parties in her classroom. Between teaching and raising children, Ann even found time to earn her private pilot certificate.
During a school trip to Washington, D.C., Ann got the chance to chat with some of the docents at the National Air and Space Museum, and she learned how much fun the role could be. When it was coming time to retire in 2019, she knew she would need something to keep her busy. “I wasn’t quite ready, so I needed to find a ‘carrot,’ and this is my carrot,” she said. Once pandemic restrictions passed, Ann became an EAA docent in 2021.
Ann especially enjoys interacting with the young girls who visit the museum. “Helping young girls realize that, hey, this is a reality for you. You can do this! I hope someday we don’t even have to talk about it that way,” she said.
She also is a Boy Scout Merit Badge counselor for museum programs, helps at special events like Space Day, works each day of AirVenture, and even has a special project on the side.
“I’m a big space geek. So, my other really fun project right now, I am transcribing handwritten diaries of an Apollo shuttle-era astronaut. … I’m looking at all this handwritten stuff in cursive, and I said, ‘Okay, this needs to be transcribed so people can actually read it in the future,’” she explained. “Some of the details are just stunning …. What’s fascinating about reading it as I’m typing it, there was a moment where it hit me: They’re like two weeks away from launch when he’s writing this!”
Ann has been star-struck multiple times from whom she meets as a docent, but aviation-celebrity or not, she knows everyone has a story to share. “You never know who’s going to walk through the door,” she said. “You never know what their story is. You don’t know until you start asking them questions; what their motivation is and what you’re going to learn from them. We always feel like our mission is to help them become more connected, but they’re doing the same thing for us when they walk through the door …. If people are looking for a way to give to the organization, this is one way you can do it. It’s super ridiculously fun.”
Volunteers make EAA AirVenture Oshkosh — and just about everything else EAA does — possible. This space in EAA Sport Aviation is dedicated to thanking and shining the spotlight on volunteers from the community. Sadly, it cannot capture all of the thousands of volunteers who give so much to the community every year. So, next time you see a volunteer at AirVenture or elsewhere, however they are pitching in to make EAA better, be sure to thank them for it. It’s the least we can do. Do you know a volunteer you’d like to nominate for Volunteer Spotlight? Visit EAA.org/Submissions.