Volunteer Spotlight: Jimmy Jones

The Volunteer Spotlight for the Spring issue of the Lark shines on Jimmy Jones, a volunteer dedicated to Landmark Park.  Originally from Montgomery County, Jones received two degrees in Agriculture from Auburn University and currently works with the Henry County Extension Office through Auburn University.  Jones credits the Extension Office that he has worked at for the past twenty years with bringing him to Landmark Park in the first place.  He considers Landmark Park to be one of the Wiregrass Area’s best kept secrets and likes to use his work at the Extension Office to bring knowledge about Landmark Park, as well as knowledge about our heritage, to the forefront.

Having been raised on a farm, Jones understands the importance of Agriculture.  Through his volunteer work at Landmark Park with events such as Spring Farm Day, Jones uses his knowledge of farming to educate future generations.  He considers plowing with a mule an art form, and one that will be lost if future generations are not taught about it.  Spring Farm Day is his favorite event to volunteer at not only because he can expose kids to farming methods of the past, but also because it allows him to meet former farmers who want to plow just one last time.

Through his volunteer work at Landmark Park, Jimmy Jones hopes to contribute to preserving the agriculture heritage of our area and our state.  He says “It is very enriching to know you are involved in something.  My thing is preservation; I want to help preserve a part of our history.  If someone does not preserve our history, we will lose it.  I want to make sure someone down the road gets to see it, and with recent budget cuts, someone has to step up and help take care of the park.”

Astronomy Night & World's Smallest Airport

Tomorrow, February 24th, Landmark Park will be holding our annual Astronomy Night!  Come out to the Park from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. to view stars, constellations, and planets through telescopes and binoculars.  Admission is $3 for members, $4 for scouts and their leaders in uniform, $5 for nonmembers and free for children 5 and under.  This event meets several requirements for an Astronomy Badge!

On Sunday, February 26, visitors to Landmark Park will have the opportunity to view a newly released documentary titled “World's Smallest Airport: The True Story of the Thrasher Brothers Aerial Circus, 1945-1950”. The film begins at 2 p.m. in the Stokes Activity Barn. The film is free with paid admission to the park.

The film features the flying stunts of Grady Thrasher, Jr. and his brothers “Bud” and Tunis who took their aerial circus on the road and performed from New York to Texas to Miami. Over the five year period of 1945-1950, the Thrasher Brothers Aerial Circus performed their daredevil stunts in 384 different shows, closing their last show in 1950 in Charleston, SC.

“The World's Smallest Airport” is the brainchild of son Grady Thrasher III and the film utlizes vintage footage, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia discovered among family possessions. Viewers will be amazed to watch the Thrasher brothers demonstrate wing walking, “delayed” parachute jumping, steering a flying plane while sitting outside the cockpit on the wing, and a variety of other stunts. The most celebrated stunt was Grady landing a Piper Club onto the “Worlds Smallest Airport”--a wooden and steel platform mounted on the top of a 1946 Ford car--as Tunis drove it down the runway.

In 1957, Grady Thrasher, Jr. moved to Dothan and served as head of Test & Development Company, a subsidiary of Southern Airways.  The company had a contract with the army at Ft. Rucker to test and maintain new helicopters being purchased by the army.  His son Grady Thrasher, III graduated from Dothan High School and daughter Miki  attended Girard Elementary and Girard Jr. High.  In 1962, Thrasher moved his family to Huntsville where he worked for the Army Missile Command at Redstone Arsenal.

The Thrasher brothers feats were not forgotten, however. In 1976, when the new Smithsonian Air and Space Museum opened in Washington, D.C., the Thrasher Brothers Aerial Circus story and photographs were displayed in the museum's Exhibition Flying Hall. They remained on display there until 1981. All three of the original Thrasher brothers are now deceased. Grady Thrasher, Jr. died in 1994 at the age of 76.

Both of Thrasher's children, Grady Thrasher, III and Miki Thrasher McFatter, along with filmmaker Matt DeGenarraro, will attend the one-hour film presentation at Landmark Park and will answer questions afterward.

Below is a link to the trailer of the documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R_76LHkU6I

Landmark Park is located on U.S. Hwy 431, three miles north of Dothan's Ross Clark Circle. Admission to the 135 acre park is $4 for adults and $3 for children, with free admission to park members. For more information, call the park office at 334-794-3452 or visit www.landmarkpark.com

Interview with Evie and Luke Thornton

Landmark Park was an influential place in my childhood, so a few weekends ago I decided to find out what Landmark Park means to other kids.  I brought Evie (8) and Luke (6) Thornton to the park to have a picnic lunch and interviewed them about what they thought about Landmark Park. 

First, I took them on the nature trail, something they had never been on before.  We stopped and read all of the signs on the nature trail. Once Luke found out that Indians used to live in the Wiregrass Area, he began pointing out things that he thought the Indians might have made.  There was a fallen tree that he said the Indians “might have chopped down” and a hollowed out tree where he said the Indians used “to hide important stuff.”  

Here is a little bit of the conversation we had while eating lunch:

Anna Holman: “Luke, what was your favorite thing about the nature trail”

Luke Thornton: “The beavers and the turtle, and one more thing… the orange snake.  I can spell orange, it’s easy to spell: O G O A N G… orange snake.  Hey, Anna Banana, you hear that bird?”

AH: “Yeah, I hear it.”

LT: “I bet it’s an eagle.  I also liked seeing the spiders and the birds.”

AH: “Anything else you liked about the nature trail?”

LT: “ I liked that stuff and that big tree and that tree where we went under and that’s all.  And I liked that turtle that was waving to me.  That’s all I like.  I didn’t like the green butterfly, I liked it, but I didn’t like it… kind of, but not really.”

AH: “Evie what did you like about the nature trail?”

Evie Thornton: “The pretty water…I think if there were bike trails like the nature trail, I would come out here all the time.  Well, as long as they weren’t longer than three miles.”

AH: “Luke would you like it if you could ride your bike on a trail like the one we just went on?”

LT: “I would… Luke Thornton would! Scratch (write) that down.”

I then took Evie and Luke to the farm to look at the animals and the Waddell House.  They loved the mules, Skunk and Possum, but the pigs were sleeping when we came to their pen, so Evie and Luke decided that the pigs should be re-named Lazy and Snore-y.  I quickly found out that growing up at the park exposed me to things unfamiliar to the average child.  For example, we came to the outhouse between the pig pen and the chicken coup, and they asked what it was.  Evie thought it was a shed and Luke thought it was a rooster house.  When I told them what it really was, they were shocked that people used to have to go outside their houses to go to the bathroom.

After the farm we then went to the church, school, general store, drug store and the planetarium. 

At the end of our visit, they decided that they liked the animals, Possum, Skunk and Elbert (the goat) in particular, the best.  Evie said, “I would want to live out here.  It’s very peaceful.”  That night I babysat for Evie and Luke and we went outside to look at the stars.  They were very proud that they were able to identify almost all of the constellations shown in the planetarium show earlier in the day.

If you would like for your kids to have a great day like Evie and Luke did, come visit us!  Landmark Park is located on Highway 431 North in Dothan, Alabama.  The Park is open Monday through Saturday 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Sundays noon - 6 p.m.  For more information, visit Landmark Park's website at www.landmarkpark.com or call our office at 334-794-3452.

The Night Sky

The night sky has always been something that fascinated me. At a young age, I was able to find major constellations because my parents would point them out to my sister and me. Astronomy has always had a major impact in my life, whether it be looking into the sky to find constellations during a campout or looking for Santa's sleigh, my sister Caroline and I have always found ourselves stargazing.

Some of my favorite memories are ones where we would lay under the stars until we fell asleep. I can remember sleeping under the stars in my backyard, at the beach and at Landmark Park. As my sister and I got older, we continued to be intrigued by astronomy and constantly found ourselves looking towards the stars searching for those familiar constellations. Some of our sorority sisters, who happened to be at our house during a meteor shower, thought Caroline and I were crazy when we grabbed quilts and walked out to the middle of the road, laid down and enjoyed one of nature's greatest shows.

Caroline and I were raised to appreciate the wonder and beauty of nature, astronomy included, but like many other things in life, that beauty is something we take for granted every now and then. People tend to find beauty in things they don't see very often, so in the case of something like the stars, the true beauty is sometimes overlooked. The stars are something we almost always see when we go outside at night. Even on nights when we can't see them, we know they will return.

I never appreciated the beauty of the night sky until I visited Cinque Terre in Italy during my study abroad. Never in my life have a seen so many stars. My dad has always talked about how beautiful the stars are in the desert, and I always thought that was odd because they are the same stars that I see from my backyard. It was not until my trip to the Cinque Terre that I began to fully understand what he meant.

When you're in a place where there is nothing to take away from the beauty of the stars, they truly sparkle. We were in the mountains, so there were no street lights, no lights from houses, no smog. The air was so clear we could see more stars than any of us had ever seen in the states. Looking up at the stars in a place like that made me feel so small. Time seemed to stop, and I began to realize not only how lucky I was to be seeing the stars in such a beautiful state, but how I tend to take their beauty for granted sometimes.

If you are out here stargazing during an event such as astronomy night, you don't have things such as light to take away fromt the stars like you would if you were in your backyard, that's the great thing about Landmark Park. I might be a little partial, but aside from the Cinque Terre, I think Landmark Park is the best place for stargazing around.

For more information about the night sky and stargazing, visit our planetarium or come out to one of our Astronomy nights! Planetarium shows are Saturdays at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. and Sundays at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Admission is free for park members and $2 for nonmembers. Astronomy nights for 2012 are held in February and offer the viewing of several stars, constellations and planets through telescopes and binoculars, as well as regular planetarium shows in the digitarium. Our Astronomy nights are February 17th and 24th from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. with admission $3 for members, $4 for scouts and their leaders in uniform and $5 for nonmembers.