Blast from the Past
Blast from the Past: St. Mary of the Lake
There was just a Dedication day for St. Mary of the Lake Catholic Church on August 28th. This year is the 70th anniversary of laying the corner stone for the Church. I don’t know if Easterday Construction was involved with the construction of the Church then, but we have completed several projects there of which I’m aware.
At one point in the recent past, we removed all the pews and replaced the floors in the sanctuary. We also remodeled and updated the bathrooms in the basement just off the community room. (Have you ever been threatened by a grumpy Priest with a gun?) But the biggest remodel we did was the creation of a new entrance and Day Chapel at the front of the Sanctuary with a glass wall partition between the two.
You can read a fairly detailed description of the project here. We won and ABC Award of Excellence for this project when it was completed in 2007.
Heritage Park Pergola Dedication
The Heritage Park Pergola Dedication was in the Culver Citizen last week. The project was built by Easterday Construction Co., Inc. in the 90’s. It was commissioned by Richard Ford. I’ve discussed it here, here and here in the past.
One of the cool things about working in construction is the ability to drive around our area and see the projects that become history over time. Great Grandpa Easterday wasn’t the best about recording the early history of Easterday Construction… He was too busy running a business! But for those of us that remember, we see reminders of our beginnings as we look around Culver and throughout our region.
The Pony Barn remains adjacent to the Easterday Construction Co., Inc. office as a reminder of when the site was the Easterday beef farm at the edge of town. (Before the high school was built, neighborhood kids would ride their bikes to the north end of Slate Street and feed treats to the Grandpa Easterday’s Hereford Cattle in the field there.) The dedication marker on the elementary school gym is a reminder of a depression era project we completed, when we had a three digit phone number and our offices were in on the top floor of the State Exchange Bank Building (Now First Farmers Bank & Trust). Those that remember that history are disappearing. Only the 3rd and 4th generations of the Easterday Construction family remain and some of them have passed on. Those of us that are left still remain proud of the mark we have left in the history of Culver and surrounding communities.
Sand Hill Farm Apartments – Blast from the Past
I was going through some old posts and ran across this video the Culver Visitors Center created when Sand Hill Farm Apartments first opened: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ejjSup5eoh-Rfs266NGxjJ2d42b35t21/view You can tell it was early on because the joy john was still in the parking lot! Ha!
Since opening, we have tried to continue to make improvements. We installed an Amazon Hub, a bike rack, a fire pit and firewood rack (which we periodically fill), some pines to hide the ugly Culver lift station, some trees, a new site sign and this year we mulched the parking lot islands and planted creeping thyme, and will be planting some more trees. We’ve also set things up so the residents can access Surf Internet as well as the Mediacom service, which was there originally.
I would still contend that the construction of the Damore Amphitheater and Sand Hill Farm Apartments are what tipped the scale for Culver’s Stellar designation. We want to maintain Sand Hill Farm Apartments with that same leadership going forward.
Hobie Martin
Easterday Construction lost another friend earlier this month. Hobart (Hobie) Martin passed away September 5th. You can read his (Impressive!) obituary here.
We met Hobie through is connection to the Veterans Memorial at Fletcher Cemetery. That connection was through his son, Architect Brent Martin, who we have worked with extensively on many projects. When I first met him, I said, “It’s nice to meet you Mr. Martin.”, to which he replied, “If we’re going to work together we should be friends. Call me Hobie!” I definitely enjoyed our time working together.
In 2014 we were contracted to move the existing memorial stone to a new location on a plaza created for it. The stone has the names of veterans carved into it and sadly was running out of space. You can find several posts about working on this project here.
Knowing this historic significance of the piece made the project a bit daunting. We ended up working with Tom Lenker to make this move as he was always one of the equipment operators I trusted most. (When someone would ask about him, I told them I would trust him to scratch an itch on my right shoulder blade with an excavator tooth without a second thought.)
While I didn’t see Hobie often after that project, I did keep track of him through Brent. He lived a long and good life and in the end, was able to pass in his home with his family there.
The project goal was to have the project complete by Memorial Day. Several of us from Easterday Construction attended the dedication service and the Memorial Day Service that year. I stopped to check on it when I went to Hobie’s visitation and the plaza is a great tribute to his community service.
Blast from the Past – Culver Academies’ Boy Scout Headquarters
At the award ceremony for Ginny earlier this month, I was reminded of Culver Academies‘ connection to the Boy Scouts of America. In 2010, we built a cabin to be used as a Boy Scouts Headquarters at the far east side of the Woodcraft Camp. The picture to the right is the cabin when it was completed. You can see some pictures of the cabin under construction here.
The cabin is a scaled down version of the Woodcraft Camp sleeping cabins, following the same basic design, but including a larger porch that doubles as a project work space and a stage for presentations. The ribbon cutting ceremony for the project was scheduled to coincide with the 100 years of scouting jamboree that was held in Washington, D.C. that year.
Over the years, Easterday Construction Co., Inc. has completed many projects at Culver Academies, from new construction to major remodels. As has been discussed here before, the origins of our company are tied to the work our founder, Russell L. Easterday, did for James I. Barnes Construction in the early 1920’s. This prompted the creation of Russell L. Easterday Construction and Supply Company as a subsidiary of Barnes Construction and the gentleman’s agreement that allowed Russell to make the subsidiary his own company.
