FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. — Nearly 20 Soldiers attending the U.S. Army Engineer School’s 120A Warrant Officer Basic Course had the chance to build a new, portable stage for Plato High School, in Plato, Missouri, complete with accessibility ramps, as a volunteer class project over the past couple of months.
According to Chief Warrant Officer 3 Shaun Emmett, the lead instructor for the class, the project planning began in mid-March, when he and Rena Humphrey, the technical director for USAES’s Department of Instruction, met with Plato R-V School District officials to discuss what was needed ahead of the high school’s May 10 graduation ceremony.
“We had an initial meeting with the school administration to see what we could do for them, how we could help,” Emmett said. “One of the students within that school was in a wheelchair, and the existing stage had too high of an elevation to build a small-enough ramp. So, we were able to build a smaller ramp with less elevation rise to fit in the space that was available.”
Emmett said once the students developed the plans, they sent a materials list to the school officials, who provided the materials. After that, the students used weekends and lunch hours to put in the work, right behind their classroom at Training Area 244.
Warrant Officer 1 Hunter Wilmoth is a North Carolina National Guard Soldier with the 878th Engineer Company, who was one of the students involved in the project. He said everyone in the class had a hand in various facets of it.
“All in all, I’d say somewhere around 100 man hours were put into it,” he said, noting one interesting design hurdle was that the stage would not be a permanent structure. “It needed to be able to be moved. So, putting that factor into building it, we really had to think on our feet and build it in such a way, so it was still sturdy enough and safe enough for the students to be able to walk across and able to be removed and relocated after an event. So, being able to separate it (into smaller parts) was the biggest portion.”
Another student in the class, Warrant Officer 1 Robert Brown, with the Illinois National Guard’s 766th Brigade Engineer Battalion, said many of the skills taught in the course — which is focused on project management — came in handy when completing this project.
“Some of the planning factors, just from the details of the actual build, the design and taking our building materials from that and what we need to build it, cost estimates — those sorts of things are all part of our education here,” Brown said. “The tools we sourced ourselves from our personal collections.”
Both Wilmoth and Brown were two of the Soldiers on hand May 7, when they delivered and set up the stage. Wilmoth said the school officials were “definitely appreciative.”
“It feels great,” he said of the work the class did. “It’s definitely always good to reach out to the community and help where we can.”
Brown echoed Wilmoth’s sentiments — he said many classes do projects, but not typically “quite on that scale.”
“It was nice,” he said. “Rather than just building some picture frames or adjusting something minor here on post, it was good to get out into the community and do something good for them.”
Plato R-V School District Superintendent, Dr. Brad Cooper, thanked the Soldiers of Fort Leonard Wood for their “time, effort and thoughtfulness” in building a stage and ramp system “that works seamlessly with our current stage.”
“The ease with which this project came together was remarkable,” Cooper said. “The Plato R-V School District is very grateful for the 120A Warrant Officer Basic Course, Class 2-24, that completed the project.”
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