Taking flight: EAA chapter installs plane at Sandcastle Children’s Museum

Ludington, Michigan USA — A Cessna landed inside Sandcastles Children’s Museum Saturday morning, flown in by pieces in the hands of the Mason County Pilots Association members and museum volunteers who carried, first the fuselage and then as the day progressed landing gears, wings and other assorted pieces for a new exhibit, “Take Flight.”
“I’m so excited,” Kristin Korendyke, the museum’s executive director, said as the plane move and reconstruction was under way. “One of the best parts of the children’s museum is getting people who love stuff to do it for us.”
In this case, it’s the pilot association’s love of aviation and wanting to inspire children about aviation that led them to find, purchase, move and now reassemble the 1958 vintage Cessna 172 that will be one of the new exhibits this year — and one that will be impossible to miss.
“They have a passion for flying and they want to share that with the kids,” Korendyke said. “What a cool thing it is.”
The two groups have been working together for six months in preparation for the move Saturday. More months of preparation will continue before the exhibit is open to the public when the museum reopens for the year March 22, the first day of spring break.
“It will be an exciting opening,” Korendyke said.