Three of Bruce Rea’s drafting students worked in the Parsons High School basement storage
area Thursday organizing molds used to make parts for the three-quarter scale Humvee PHS
students built from the ground up over the course of 20 years, with the aid of local industry.
The USD 503 Board of Education granted approval last year for the class to donate the scaled
Humvee to a Parsons veterans group, 5 Pathways to Freedom, to help them raise funds to build
a veterans memorial on the north side of the Parsons Municipal Building.
The molds will be pulled from the basement in the next week or two in order for students to get
their picture taken with them, alongside the resulting Humvee. 
The photos will then be submitted
by the 5 Pathways to Freedom veterans committee to the Barrett-Jackson Charity Auction,
along with a consignment application. If the renowned philanthropic auction accepts the scaled
Humvee to auction, Barrett-Jackson will waive all fees and commissions, ensuring 100% of the
hammer price goes directly to Five Pathways to Freedom. The veterans plan to provide the top
bidder with not only the Humvee, but all the molds, making this purchase unique, beyond the
story behind its origin.
The veterans committee is hopeful that involving a national auction house will help them raise a
much greater amount than trying to auction or sell the Humvee more locally.
Once the photos are taken, the molds will be stored at Steve Ray’s home, giving the veterans
full control over all aspects of the auction items.
While the veterans committee moves forward with raising more funds to construct the memorial,
PHS students from various career and technical education classes continue their work building
parts of the memorial.
The students have already built the six colonnades that will define entry to the five pathways of
the memorial’s design. However, installation cannot begin on the actual memorial site beside
the Parsons Municipal Auditorium until all funds have been raised to construct the memorial.
Friday, Ducommun Tool Design Engineer Jeff Wolverton and Tool Design/Aeronautical
Engineer Wesley May delivered titanium letters to the students that will be attached to an
arched beam on the memorial. The aerospace parts company laser cut the letters from scrap
titanium material used to build parts for fighter jets. They explained to Rea’s students how they
will use bonding epoxy to attach nut plates and studs to the back of the letters to affix them to
the curved aluminum beam that will sit atop the six evenly spaced colonnades. The process will
allow for individual letters to be replaced as necessary should they become damaged.
CST is set to help roll the beam that will sit atop the colonnades, providing the precision curve
required. After it is powder coated, the letters can then be attached.
Once the colonnades and arch beam have been installed concluding the first phase of the
memorial project, concrete and electrical work will follow in phase two. Pavers and other items
will be added in phase three.
While visiting the drafting students, Wolverton and May also shared with them the
advancements in aeronautics relative to projects that they are currently working on, like helping
to build complex components of F-47 (Next-Generation Air Dominance) stealth fighter jets that
are a part of Boeing's defense programs. Students graduating from PHS’s CTE programs could be among the next to work on such projects.