A permanent thank-you

FFA students begin designing ‘donor wall’ for new Youth Enrichment Center

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

When the new laser engraving machine was set up in the Charles City High School industrial technology shop a year and a half ago, FFA Advisor Jim Lundberg turned to student Dan Swartzrock.

“When we got this set up, Mr. Lundberg gave me the books and the computer, like, ‘I want you to be able to figure this out,'” Swartzrock, now a senior, recalled.

“Whatever image I can make on here, which is basically like a Word document, I just hit print and it will engrave it into wood. It can do glass, it can do really intricate designs,” he said. “A lot of plaques for school events, like Star Player, MVP — a lot of different sports groups have us engrave their plaques for them.”

Now Swartzrock and his classmate Cameron Stock are making design plans for the future donor wall, to be on permanent display in the Floyd County Youth Enrichment Center’s lobby. The collection of plaques will publicly thank private citizens and businesses who joined the nearly two-year fundraising effort for the building.

Swartzrock’s plans must work within the limitations of the engraver: “The biggest we can go is one foot by two foot” per plaque, he said.

There are quite a few donors in the community to thank for their efforts. Swartzrock has a stack of about five Excel sheets with names, potentially up to 1,000 people, he said.

The wall display will be completed and on display for the Floyd County Fair in July, Lundberg said.

“This is our number one priority, getting the donor wall done,” Lundberg said. “After the donor wall we’re going to do similar things with former (FFA) members, going back to when the chapter was founded in 1930. Who received the American FFA degree? Who got their Iowa FFA degree, who the chapter presidents were over the years — we’ll have those mounted on the wall in nice displays.”

In time there will also be display cases with historical memorabilia in the Youth Enrichment Center lobby, but that will be collected and put together over the next couple of years, Lundberg said.

“The donor wall will just be a small, small way of thanking all of the people who have contributed to this project,” he said. “The giving of the people in this community has been remarkable.”

DNR State Forester Greg Heidebrink is arranging delivery of 30 panels of wood, which include seven or eight native Iowa tree species, for the students’ use. The lumber is being donated by the Yellow River State Forest, Heidebrink said.

The Yellow River State Forest is run by the Iowa DNR and has a working lumber mill, which sells wood to the public periodically harvested from dead trees or trees downed from weather events. Heidebrink often works with Lundberg on student projects, including tree planting, and recently asked the FFA students to engrave 200 clipboards for a DNR conference on invasive species.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for those kids to get to use equipment like that,” Heidebrink said, speaking of the laser engraver. “It’s great to get to work with them.”

The FFA students will work with Heidebrink in his shop to glue and finish the panels before they are put through the engraver. The panels are made out of species such as aspen, hickory and white oak. The students are still working out how the design will look on the wall, Swartzrock said, but the engraver can manipulate depth and size of designs they create on the computer program.

Swartzrock is currently taking four shop classes a day at the high school, including Building Trades — which teaches students construction industry-skills and techniques as they take on projects for Charles City residents, such as building home garages. He also works with the high school’s 3D printer in Kevin Wedeking’s classroom.

“I like that a lot of different industries are going that way — it’s going to be a lot of design on the computer first, and have the computer do a lot of the finer details for you,” Swartzrock said.

He’s taught ten other students how to operate the machine, but he’s also shared his skills with family: Swartzrock made his parents a unique cutting board out of walnut and cedar, engraving a saying over the top.

“I’ve made two years’ worth of Christmas presents on this so far,” he said.

Soon, the rest of the community will see his skills on display as well.