This piece originally ran in the May 2025 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.
For many EAA members, the weeklong escape to Camp Scholler each summer is something they look forward to all year. Andrew Rezmer can relate; he started coming to AirVenture Oshkosh in 2001 with his family when they moved to Wisconsin, and now that he has completed his time with the Navy, he’s excited to be back on his old stomping grounds and picking up where he left off.
When Andrew was a young teenager, his mom decided to start volunteering for EAA’s Print Mail Center during AirVenture, and it became a family activity for one week a year. He pitched in by delivering the daily AirVenture Today newspaper to vendors in the exhibit hangars on the grounds.
When he wasn’t busy with his paper route (or checking out the thousands of visiting aircraft), he and his friend Drew enjoyed riding their bikes around. “One time, two days before the convention started when you could still ride on the grounds, we were riding our bikes down the flightline, and an old man passed and waved us down,” he said. “It was [EAA founder] Paul Poberezny, and he talked to us for a while. That was a memorable moment; he was out there mowing grass and working like everyone else.”
Andrew’s annual camping trip and volunteering came to an end when he left for the Navy. Coming from a family full of Navy veterans, he proudly followed in their footsteps. During his time serving, he spent three years in Japan as a calibration technician and then was stationed in Oklahoma City as an air crewman for six years. One of his favorite parts of living near Tinker Air Force Base was hearing the B-1 take off throughout the day.
Before Andrew finished his time with the Navy in December 2023, he had garnered 1,800 hours of flight time. These days, he is happy to “stay on the ground for a while” and watch the aircraft from below. “Modern fighter jets are my favorite, the ‘burst the eardrum’ kind of planes,” he said.
What better place to get his jet fix than AirVenture? Andrew was excited to return to Oshkosh for AirVenture 2024 — and his newspaper delivery route — now that he’s out of the Navy and moved back to Wisconsin. Perhaps in a twist of fate, the B-1 also made a return appearance at AirVenture 2024 after years of absence. Welcome back, Andrew!
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.