Press Release
The Methodist sponsored Midwest Mission, located in Chatham (near Springfield), Illinois will be receiving decades old wooden bleacher boards from the Nebraska City Public Schools through a partnership between the Board of Education and a team of First United Methodist Church members.
Over the last several months, the Lead Team of Howard Orndorff, Paul Stevenson, Dean Thomson, Tom Hall, and Jon Habben were engaged in a discussion about the possibility of planning and requesting Board of Education permission to remove the bleachers and metal structure from the older high school gym after becoming aware of a bleacher replacement project being considered by the administration and school board.
After providing Superintendent Mark Fritch with a proposal, the discussion was considered by the board, and approval was given to turn the plan into a win-win reality.
Over 475 full-length bleacher boards were detached from the metal structural support, and all bolts, nuts, washers, and hardware removed.
Once each bleacher section had boards removed, all hardware, bolts, nuts, washers, and section movers were removed from the metal structure. The metal structure was disassembled piece-by-piece.
All of this was done in a specific sequence, not unlike the original bleacher assembly and installation many years ago.
On Day 1, May 12, the Lead Team staged the gym area, and a large metal dumpster (J-Dog Salvage, Bartlett, Iowa) was set in place.
Lee French (Bleacher Repair Company, Morrill, Kan.) spent the day with the team explaining the sequence and activities necessary for the de-construction.
The Lead Team then began assuming the necessary tasks and spent most of Day 1 moving forward.
By the end of Day 3, May 14, the job was 95% done. Only a small amount of metal to be added to the container plus cleanup remained for a half day 4.
At that point, the project was completed, except for loading boards into a semi-trailer that had not yet arrived. Why no MMDC bleacher board trailer on site? No one at the Midwest Mission Distribution Center thought the Lead Team and additional volunteers could do the work necessary so efficiently, safely, and so fast. Actually, neither did the Lead Team.
Additional project volunteers were Randall Rehmeier, Greg McAlexander, Randy Danielson, Duane Smith, Wesley Hunzeker, Greg Baur, Pastor Michael Brown, Hunter Cook, Colton Cook and Scott Hoagland, John Crook, and Beaux Bender.
Jenny Gawart (NCPS Head of Maintenance) and her crew also pitched in to move materials. The Methodist United Women in Faith provided lunch on two days.
Prior to starting, it was thought it would take more than a week of workdays at best.
The result will be more than 400 student desks that will be cut, planed, finished, assembled with bolts, dis-assembled, marked, placed in single desk kits, individually plastic-wrapped, and loaded onto pallets.
The pallets are loaded onto semis, and then taken by other partners, including the military, aboard cargo flights to their destinations.
It is anticipated that an FUMC Midwest Mission volunteer team going to the Distribution Center in June, the latest annual trip over many years, will be working on the very bleacher boards now being readied for shipment to the Illinois site.
A last note, Nebraska City First United Methodist Church is now an MMDC collection site for used bicycles, sewing machines, and materials used to create flood buckets and personal buckets.
We are also thankful to receive empty buckets with lids from Nebraska City Cargill to take to Illinois, to be used for disaster relief kits.
