By Barbara A. Schmitz
It started in about 2018 with a simple concept: Have EAA Chapters build chairs for the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh that give chapter members and others a place to sit down, relax, meet and exchange ideas.
EAA Young Eagles Chairman Ted Kirkpatrick, EAA 142682, of Marquette, Michigan, who is celebrating his 40th year as an AirVenture volunteer, created the first chair as a prototype that year, and three other chapter chairs soon arrived. But the effort grew exponentially from there as more chapters joined the effort. This year there are 51 chairs — some child-sized, lots mediums, and one that is extra large. They come as just chairs, or with tables and footrests in many colors and designs.
Ted’s chair has an interesting history. “We have a tree farm and a little bit of a cedar swamp,” he says. “So I went back into the swamp and cut down a tree.” He made the log into cedar boards, which were then made into the chair.
“We really wanted to receive chapter involvement,” Ted says, “and thought there was no better way to do that than have the chapters create something that they could come back and see every year.”
Ted says they give chapters basic plans to build their chair, but not every chapter follows the plan. Instead, they come up with things that are specific to their geographic region. The Keene, New Hampshire chapter chair, for example, is made from skis as it is a skiing community.
There are no plans to stop having chapters build the chairs, Ted says. If they get too many for the Blue Barn location, there are many places on the AirVenture grounds that chairs could be distributed to, such as the Chapter Pavilion in Camp Scholler.
Ted jokes that he’s become the “chair man.” That means he’s the one people contact when they drive in with a chair and need help getting it to the Blue Barn. “If they bring them in their car, we take a golf cart to pick them up. If they bring them in parts in their airplane, we bring the tools to help them assemble the chairs on the ground.”
About the same time they started the chapter chair program, they also started chapter M*A*S*H signs that indicate chapter number, direction and distance to Oshkosh, Ted said. Already 169 chapters have contributed to the eight-sided poles. The directional signs have become so popular that Ted says he’s become a frequent user of the Oshkosh carpenter shop as he makes more poles.
For chapters that haven’t yet contributed, there’s no time like the present. “We encourage chapters to make a chair or a M*A*S*H sign for Oshkosh,” he says. “These programs say a lot about the strength of our chapters because of what it takes to get them here.”