Four Generations & Generational Differences by Debi Busch

On Sunday morning as the sun was rising, I met Darrell Ward and his son Robert (he now lives in Lindsey, OK) to mount the bracket and sign to the water tower.  But I’m getting ahead of myself, here’s the back story.

Darrell told me that the bracket he designed to hold the sign was the 1st of three designs he presented to the OK Music Hall of Fame board.  But it was only approved after all three different designs were presented on three different board meetings.  Robert then did the actual architectural drawings for the bracket.

The surfaced of the sign had to be sandblasted and then a special ‘powdercoat’ process was performed by Broken Arrow Powdercoat.  The coating is typically applied electrostatically and is then cured under heat to allow it to flow and form a “skin”.  Darrell contacted a fellow Rotarian in Muskogee but they declined the job because it required three different colors. 

So here we are (I say ‘we’ like I had anything to do with this), on Sunday morning.  Darrell and Robert prepared the crossbar for the bracket to be welded on and then with U bolts through the existing holes on the sign it was attached.  Since it weighs 75 lbs it had to be raised up by a winch.  All this was carefully planned and thought out by Darrell ahead of time and went off without a hitch.  We were done in just under an hour or so I thought.

NOW FOR THE ‘REST OF THE STORY’. . .

I’d just returned home and had started to download the photos so I could decide which ones to send to the Rotary Blog site when the phone rang and it was Darrell.  He and Robert decided after I left that they didn’t like the way the sign was slightly rotated and wasn’t sitting straight.  So they started over, took the sign down, broke the weld, bent the bracket and reattached the sign once again!

I think this speaks volumes about the type of person that Darrell Ward is!

Please give him a slap on the back the next time you see him and a hearty at-a-boy too!

Dr David Jones