Hi there everyone……it’s been a long time since I’ve updated the site. Grad school’s been quite intense and, to be honest, Culver hasn’t been in my immediate thoughts a whole lot. This site’s been more or less sitting around collecting dust. If you’re interested in getting it moving again or just want to say hi, drop me an e-mail. (mrflora at goculver.com)

Here’s something interesting though. As many of you know, Culver announced it was pulling the plug on its aviation program this winter. This didn’t come as a huge surprise to many I’m sure, but a lot of us were definitely hoping the academy would find a way to put planes in the air again.

That was not the case however.

John Buxton, Culver Academies’ current and 12th head of schools, wrote a letter to aviation alumni and supporters back in January that I just stumbled across today. In it he explains the official reasons for closing down the program. As I found it quite interesting, I thought I’d post it online.

Dear ____________:

At its fall meeting, the Board of Trustees voted to discontinue the Aviation program at Culver. A general announcement of this decision has not been shared with the alumni or the student body, but an announcement will appear in the next edition of the Culver Alumni Magazine. I am writing so you have advance notice of this and so that you will not be surprised when the formal notification is made. You have been close to the Aviation program at Culver, and you need to understand why we have reached this very unfortunate conclusion. Obviously, the tragedy that occurred on August 10, 2005 was extremely difficult for the school, the staff, and the families involved. The accident led to 12 months of intense examination and questioning and a thorough analysis of every aspect of our program. We had all of our planes examined; we did benchmarking with other aviation schools; we worked with the FAA and the NTSB closely as we tried to get answers to our questions; and we worked closely with the insurance company to see what the future might look like. In the final analysis, it was clear that it would be too great a commitment of assets to one program in order to bring aviation back to Culver as we have known it.

You may know that this past summer we offered a ground school program for aviation students. We created a state of the art aviation lab so students could participate and practice in a “virtual” environment. The program was actually quite successful even though no one left the ground. We provided transportation for students to travel to local airports for their flight training, but most students seemed content to work in the lab for their training, knowing that they would be able to pursue individual pilot lessons after they attain the age of 16.

In the meantime, we have thoroughly researched the cost and the limits for insurance coverage, the costs of new planes, the cost of relocating the airport and runway operation farther away from the Woodcraft Campus. We concluded we were unable to conduct the program at the level we would want with the protection we would need. Clearly this is a financial more than a philosophical decision.

I imagine you will be disappointed, but I certainly hope you will understand and support our decision. I wanted you to know that this decision to discontinue the program has been reached and that the official announcement will be coming out in a few months.

I hope this letter finds you well, and I appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely yours,

John N. Buxton

What do you think of the letter?  Any thought son aviation getting shut down? Suprised?

DISCUSS THIS IN THE FORUMS

Hey there everyone! Sorry for the slowness on the updates, things have been hectic this week during staff training and its thrown me out of my “rhythm” for updating.

Staff training has been going on all week and this morning, campers will start officially registering for Culver Summer Camps 2006. Very exciting. Here are some fun facts I’ve heard this week:

• After a thorough search, Company One gained a Sr. Counselor on Thursday, Mr. Karamon, perhaps known by some as the Assistant Military Activities coordinator from summer 2005.
• Enrollment is way up this summer with approx. 1352 campers attending. Last summer involved roughly 1298 campers.
• 38% of this year’s Culver Summer Campers hail from outside the United States down from 40% last summer.  There are 26 internationals on staff this year.
• Aviation A and B have been combined this summer into one unit, “Aviation” and will join the Troop in all athletic competitions to compete against the naval companies as the “Air-Cav.” Aviation contains around 40 campers this year and Troop is up over 60 this summer (!) which means this new unit could be quite a force.
• The main upper camp SOP has seen substantial revision this summer as predicted on this very site. The TUXIS program has indeed been tied into rank for all upper campers. In order to gain any sort of rank promotion at the end of the summer, a camper must have earned his or her Tuxis.
• The Tuxis banner is also making a return to Upper Camp, going to the boys and girls units who showed the most participation in Tuxis each week.
• The girls are adding two new naval events to their competition each week, a wherry race (single pull) and a kayak race (double sprint). As these two “events” have long been a part of the Great Race it seemed only sensible to have the ladies race them throughout the summer to build of more experience.
• Boys intramural sailing will now include a 420 class sailing race on Tuesday’s.

Those are some of the interesting changes/developments we’ve been hearing about this week. We’ll keep you posted as things develop. Stay tuned. Our first camper just turned up in Naval 2!

Discuss

Flyerjimi_kephart started a very interesting thread last week (which I almost completely missed) about Culver’s aviation situation this summer.

The gist: Culver Academy will accomodate returning first class aviators with at least 15 hours of flight time who are interested in contracting with another flight school nearby during their 6 weeks at Culver. They will provide travel to and from the airfield and will also allow participating aviators the flexibilitiy they need in their morning schedules to get in these flight hours.

Check out the thread here, with Tony Mayfield’s initial letter to all returning aviators and correspondence between Flyerjimi_kephart and Eagle Aircraft representatives. This is great news. Congratulations to everyone who helped make this happen.

You can read previous pieces and threads about finding alternative aviation accomodations for this summer here, here, and here and can read about last summer’s plane crash incident here and a much earlier letter about aviation from Mr. Mayfield here. Good work everyone!

Jump in on this discussion

Welcome back for part two of our Summer 2006 Preview. Yesterday we took a look at some of the announcements Culver’s made about the Naval Program for this coming summer.

Today we’re going to be looking at what the Culver Academy has so far let out about the Aviation Program this summer. When you’re done reading through be sure to post a comment to the Summer 2006 Preview Thread over in the CulverTalk forums.

Tomorrow we’ll be talking Tuxis!

As expected, in the wake of last summer’s tragic incident, Culver will be shaking things up in the Upper Camp Aviation Program this year, largely out of necessesity. The air fleet will, in all likelihood, remain grounded throughout the summer pending the findings of the FAA’s ongoing investigation. More »

Boardmember Jimi_Kephart82 recently posted this in the Main Guard Aviation Thread. It seems Culver has perhaps looked into his aviation idea:

“Well I talked to Lisa at Eagle AIr, and it looks like my email to Mr Mayfield helped. He called them and asked for a proposal on flying.
They dont think that the FAA will allow them to fly to Culvers airport, but maybe they can fly to Starke county or Plymouth and arrange transportation.

We need all Aviation fans and students to email Mr Mayfield about this program and especially the parents to see if we can work this out.

I am an older alumni, you current cadets need to get your parents to email Mr Mayfield if they are wanting to try to use this solution.

www.jseagle.com is the alternate airfield’s web site if you’re curious.

and you can get Mr Mayfields email from Culver.org”

You heard the man. Culver’s aware of the idea and looking into it somewhat at least. If you want planes in the sky this summer write to Mr. Mayfield. You can look him up on Culver Connect (check the link on the sidebard to the right down below) or just write to summer@culver.org

Posted by Mr. Flora at 2:36 PM

Here I go with my first blog post. Mr. Flora suggested I put this up here after posting it in the forums:

I recently talked to a company in Valpo (Eagle Air) and they have 5 new 172’s and 8 instructors. I negotiated a price with them that would hold so long as we pre-paid at least 10 hours with them per student. The woman I spoke with said it would cost $99 for the plane and $35 for the instructor. I think if we could get a block of kids together to fly on Saturdays they would come to Culver themselves to pick them up.

I have emailed Tony Mayfield, Director of Camps, about this, I know that Culver has looked into this, but maybe if you cadets get your parents on the phone and some of us alumni make calls and get involved we can make it happen and salvage some flight time this summer.

Consider this: If 10 students do not come back this summer because of no flying, then Culver loses what? $40,000. It seems worth a little effort to try this. So maybe everyone that flys or knows someone that flys at Culver, can get them on the phone and rally them to the cause. I am going to send Flyer_Jimi there.

Lets rally on this and try to at least get kids going up during their weekend permit time. Eagle Air is the name of the company. You can reach them at 219-389-0132. Ask for Lisa. She is even trying to see if she can use the Culver airport.

www.jseagle.com is their website.