Floyd Holt is looking for a landing pad for his spaceship.
Well, it”™s more than just a spaceship, even though it”™s populated with robots, ray guns, light sabers, the requisite lasers and a 40-foot-long alien car that spews flames. It”™s a museum as well.
Holt is no crazy-eyed, arm-waving Doc Brown of the “Back to the Future” movies, although he and his brother did build the aforementioned spaceship car. He has a hard-core curriculum vitae representative of a nationally recognized and honored physics teacher.
He also has more than $2 million worth of equipment ”“ currently in storage under lock and key ”“ from some 40 corporate sponsors for the museum, named Spaceship Discovery Science and Technology Center.
Holt would like to build the museum in Dutchess County, somewhere along the Route 9 corridor between Hyde Park and Fishkill. His goal is to start building by 2010. And if push came to shove, he could build it himself; he learned the craft from his dad, Archie Holt, who built hundreds of homes and did work for millionaires John Jacob Astor and Vincent Astor.
Holt has the gift for intelligent gab and flattery; both of which have endeared him in his crusade to gather support for his project. He is in the midst of raising money via grants and endowments for the museum.
He is relying on a pay-it-forward philosophy to garner support.
He”™s fueled by his mantra: “What you do for yourself dies with you. What you do for others lives on.” He described his father as a very generous man who worked every day during the Great Depression and helped people by either offering them a place to stay or giving them a few dollars.
“He”™s the greatest man I ever knew. I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I want to help others like he did.”
One way is through the museum.
PRE-FLIGHT CHECK
Spaceship Discovery was born in his classroom at Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park.
His tenure at the school almost didn”™t happen.
Holt was going to be a jet fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. His wife, Evelyn, was going to be a nurse in the same unit so that they wouldn”™t be separated. He had one foot in a Phantom jet when a call from the high school principal to the Air Force changed his plans; he said the young Holt would be more needed as a science teacher rather than a fighter pilot, where the mortality rate was running about 75 percent.
Holt is critical of the education system he had worked in for 35-plus years, specifically a lacking core ingredient ”“ inspirational teachers. He credits a fellow physics teacher and friend, George Amann, with keeping their respective motivation in high gear in teaching.
As members of the Science Teachers Association of New York State, Holt said the two made presentations to colleagues stressing the need for science to be fun.
It”™s what got him into physics in the first place.
Holt started off studying architecture and engineering in college and then stumbled upon a physics class where the professor was having too much fun; it was enough for Holt to change his major.
“Physics gets my heart pumping,” he says. The science museum, as well, provides cardio stimulus.
Although no one organization keeps a close count, it is estimated that there are 17,500 museums in the United States. Of those, 352 are defined as science museums, according to the Association of Science Technology Centers.
In New York state there are 25 such museums. However, lumped in this group are children”™s museums and other museums that might contain a small component devoted to science. Breaking that number down further, there are eight that are basically science only:
Ӣ American Museum of Natural History, Manhattan;
Ӣ Buffalo Museum of Science;
”¢ The Children’s Museum of Science and Technology, Troy;
Ӣ Long Island Science Center, Riverhead;
Ӣ Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, aka The Discovery Center, Syracuse;
Ӣ New York Hall of Science, Queens;
Ӣ Rochester Museum & Science Center; and
Ӣ Sciencenter, Ithaca.
Science and technology museums rank second behind zoos in median annual attendance, according to the American Association of Museums.
READY FOR LIFTOFF
The concept of the museum sounds whimsical, he says, but has evolved over 30 years. Skills as a builder came in handy in his classroom. Classroom of the Future came first. It evolved into Spaceship Discovery.
After the classroom, he leased space at a shopping center in Hyde Park six years ago to test it. Some 60,000 people visited while it was open. In 2004, he took his idea on the road as the Wonders of Science traveling show.
He describes the return on investment for the latest endeavor as “enormous,” and he doesn”™t mean solely in revenue, but in teaching. He said the audience for the science museum would range from 2 to 102.
“Education is the ultimate solution to all problems in the world.”
The Apollo space mission kicked science into high gear, he said.
“The Greatest Generation is yet to come.”
Without new scientists and engineers, “we”™ll become a service society, waiting hand and foot for the rest of the world.”
Holt hopes to turn that around with his museum where he hopes to promote the advancement of scientific literacy, just as he had done in his high school classroom.
