Openings for Tomorrow's Overnight Camp!

Hello Troops,
We have openings for this week's Overnight Camp. Our Overnight Camp is competing with a Scouting Klondike.

If you're interested in coming on an overnight camp this weekend please let me know.
Normal price is $43.00. We can let our Blog Readers and Frequent Flyers attend for $37.00.

You must be between 10 and 14 years old to attend. Caution, be sure we are running a mission you haven't done. The Voyager will be telling Greenpeace. The Magellan will be telling Invasion, the Odyssey will be telling Heir to the Empire, the Phoenix will be telling Supernova and the Galileo will be telling Scorpion Relay. If you're interested in attending please send the following information by email:

Your Name:
Age:
School:
Phone Number:

We will collect payment at the door Friday night. Payment must be a check or cash.
An Overnight Confirmation Form will be sent by email for your parents to complete. The form comes with you to camp.

Thanks!
Mr. Williamson

In Case Your Wondering What A True Hero Is, Please Read On....

Hello Troops,
The word Hero is overused in today's society. I'm convinced that most people really don't understand what a real hero is. May I take a moment of your time and introduce you to one? Please read on....

This is the story of an incredible woman and her amazing gift to mankind. Irena Sendler. An unfamiliar name to most people, but this remarkable woman defied the Nazis and saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. As a health worker, she sneaked the children out between 1942 and 1943 to safe hiding places and found non-Jewish families to adopt them.

For many years Irena Sendler - white-haired, gentle and courageous - was living a modest existence in her Warsaw apartment. This unsung heroine passed away on Monday May 12th, 2008.

Her achievement went largely unnoticed for many years. Then the story was uncovered by four young students at Uniontown High School, in Kansas, who were the winners of the 2000 Kansas state National History Day competition by writing a play Life in a Jar about the heroic actions of Irena Sendler. The girls - Elizabeth Cambers, Megan Stewart, Sabrina Coons and Janice Underwood - have since gained international recognition, along with their teacher, Norman Conard. The presentation, seen in many venues in the United States and popularized by National Public Radio, C-SPAN and CBS, has brought Irena Sendlers story to a wider public. The students continue their prize-winning dramatic presentation Life in a Jar.

In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and the brutality of the Nazis accelerated with murder, violence and terror. At the time, Irena was a Senior Administrator in the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, which operated the canteens in every district of the city. Previously, the canteens provided meals, financial aid, and other services for orphans, the elderly, the poor and the destitute. Now, through Irena, the canteens also provided clothing, medicine and money for the Jews. They were registered under fictitious Christian names, and to prevent inspections, the Jewish families were reported as being afflicted with such highly infectious diseases as typhus and tuberculosis.
In 1942 the Nazis herded hundreds of thousands of Jews into a 16-block area that came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto. The Ghetto was sealed and the Jewish families ended up behind its walls, only to await certain death. Irena Sendler was so appalled by the conditions that she joined Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, organized by the Polish underground resistance movement, as one of its first recruits and directed the efforts to rescue Jewish children. To be able to enter the Ghetto legally, Irena managed to be issued a pass from Warsaws Epidemic Control Department and she visited the Ghetto daily, reestablished contacts and brought food, medicines and clothing. But 5,000 people were dying a month from starvation and disease in the Ghetto, and she decided to help the Jewish children to get out. For Irena Sendler, a young mother herself, persuading parents to part with their children was in itself a horrendous task. Finding families willing to shelter the children, and thereby willing to risk their life if the Nazis ever found out, was also not easy.

Irena Sendler wore a Star of David armband as a sign of her unity to Jews. She began smuggling children out in an ambulance. She recruited at least one person from each of the ten centers of the Social Welfare Department. With their help, she issued hundreds of false documents with forged signatures. Irena Sendler successfully smuggled almost 2,500 Jewish children to safety and gave them temporary new identities.

Some children were taken out in gunnysacks or body bags. Some were buried inside loads of goods. A mechanic took a baby out in his toolbox. Some kids were carried out in potato sacks, others were placed in coffins, some entered a church in the Ghetto which had two entrances. One entrance opened into the Ghetto, the other opened into the Aryan side of Warsaw. They entered the church as Jews and exited as Christians. "`Can you guarantee they will live?'" Irena later recalled the distraught parents asking. But she could only guarantee they would die if they stayed. "In my dreams," she said, "I still hear the cries when they left their parents."

Irena had a remarkable record of cooperation when placing the youngsters: "No one ever refused to take a child from me," she said. The children were given false identities and placed in homes, orphanages and convents. Irena Sendler carefully noted, in coded form, the children's original names and their new identities. She kept the only record of their true identities in jars buried beneath an apple tree in a neighbor's back yard, across the street from German barracks, hoping she could someday dig up the jars, locate the children and inform them of their past. In all, the jars contained the names of 2,500 children

The Nazis became aware of Irena's activities, and on October 20, 1943 she was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo, who broke her feet and legs. She ended up in the Pawiak Prison, but no one could break her spirit. Though she was the only one who knew the names and addresses of the families sheltering the Jewish children, she withstood the torture, that crippled her for life, refusing to betray either her associates or any of the Jewish children in hiding. Sentenced to death, Irena was saved at the last minute when Zegota members bribed one of the Gestapo agents to halt the execution. She escaped from prison but for the rest of the war she was pursued by the Nazis.

After the war she dug up the jars and used the notes to track down the 2,500 children she placed with adoptive families and to reunite them with relatives scattered across Europe. But most lost their families during the Holocaust in Nazi death camps. The children had known her only by her code name Jolanta. But years later, after she was honored for her wartime work, her picture appeared in a newspaper. "A man, a painter, telephoned me," said Sendler, "`I remember your face,' he said. `It was you who took me out of the ghetto.' I had many calls like that!"

Irena Sendler did not think of herself as a hero. She claimed no credit for her actions. "I could have done more," she said. "This regret will follow me to my death." She has been honored by international Jewish organizations. In 1991 she was made an honorary citizen of Israel. Irena Sendler was awarded Poland's highest distinction, the Order of White Eagle, in Warsaw Monday Nov. 10, 2003. She has officially been designated a national hero in Poland and schools are named in her honor. Annual Irena Sendler days are celebrated throughout Europe and the United States.

“Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory,” Irena Sendler said in a letter.
This lovely, courageous woman was one of the most dedicated and active workers in aiding Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Her courage enabled not only the survival of 2,500 Jewish children but also of the generations of their descendants.

Troops, there are some born to this world different than the rest of us. They walk a different path - a path most fear to tread. These people are my heros.

Mr. Williamson

Notes from Monday's Summer Preparation Meeting

Hello Troops,
I met with our simulator Set Directors, Flight Directors and Education Staff yesterday to discuss the Space Center’s summer season for 2010. You’re wrong if you’re thinking January is too early to be thinking about summer. Stop for a second and think about everything it takes to prepare for the summer.

• Every simulator needs a new story to tell. That includes a story script, video and tactical programming.
• The curriculum for the class session must be outlined, planned and practiced.
• The calendar must be decided upon (days of camps and classes).
• The summer flyer must be prepared, printed and distributed, giving everyone enough time to enroll for camp.

You see, it takes planning. Think of all the problems that can be avoided if you plan and prepare ahead of time.

This is what we’ve decided so far.

• We will take 45 in a camp, not the normal 62. We had 45 last summer and we liked the smaller numbers. It was less stressful.
• Our EdVenture Camps will primarily run Monday to Wednesday, like last year.
• Our Overnight Camps will primarily run Thursday night into Friday morning.
• We will run one Extended Overnight Camp in June, July and August.
• The Voyager will tell “The Grand PooPah”
• The Odyssey will tell “The Plague”
• The Phoenix will tell “Razor’s Edge”
• The Galileo will tell “No More Secrets”
• The Magellan mission is in development and is unnamed.
• Swimming will be at PG Pool as in the past.
• We will offer one Leadership Camp for our older 15 - 17 year olds.
• The price for the three day camp will be $160.00
• We will offer two Super Space Camps! The cost will be $210.00 for the Super Camp. It will run Monday evening to Friday morning.

Shelley Outerkirk is researching the Space Center's impact on education and student attitudes on learning as part of her master's degree program at BYU. Questionnaires make up a major part of her research. Private Mission groups will be answering Shelley's questionnaires. We reviewed the questionnaires in our Monday meeting. You may be asked to fill one out the next time you come for a private mission.

I just got back from trying to book Pleasant Grove's Pool for our summer camps. The ladies at the desk were taken back that I wanted to book so many evenings.
"We have to get this cleared," the older of the two said. She took my list of dates and disappeared through a doorway to talk to her supervisor. Several minutes later she reappeared.
"I'm sorry but this will have to go to the manager's desk for approval," she explained. I wanted to ask why, thinking it was ridiculous a manager had to approve a pool booking. The city rents the pool to private groups all summer long. We are a private group. We want to rent the pool. Is it written somewhere that the pool's private bookings are to be rationed due to a shortage of WHAT? Can you think of what the shortage could be?
Perhaps water. Wait, that doesn't make sense. How about staffing? No, the staff are paid to work the private parties and I'm paying for the party so that shouldn't be a problem. Hmmmmmmm, for the life of me I can't think why the lady at the desk would think I was asking for too many pool reservations. Yes, its one of those strange unexplained oddities we encounter every day as we do our very best to survive living in the Confederacy of Dunces. Sheezzzzze. Blahhhhhhh.

Well, that’s about it. I'm done venting my frustrations. Our Monday meeting went for nearly two hours. The talking is finished. Now it time for action. Time to get the summer 2010 season ready for a successful blast off!


Mr. Williamson