[meteorite-list] Planetarium Donations

From: Robert Woolard <meteoritefinder_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Oct 26 00:37:34 2004
Message-ID: <20041026030401.79839.qmail_at_web41521.mail.yahoo.com>

Hello List,

  A few days ago, Mark Ford sent this post to the
List:

 "I am pleased to announce to the list, that Last
Friday, Dave Harris and
I (on behalf of the British an Irish meteorite Society
which we formed
earlier this year), presented The South Downs
Planetarium with a
substantial meteorite collection...."

   My congratulations and hats off to you guys!

  I had the pleasure of making friends with the former
UALR Planetarium director here in Little Rock years
ago. His name was John Williams. He was a very
intelligent man, passionate in his appreciation for
meteorites. He had the "perfect voice" for a
planetarium lecturer, and I always enjoyed attending
his shows. I became close friends with him and his
wife, Jonthy. We shared many fun discussions about
meteorites. My wife and I even went on one meteorite
hunting trip with them to Correo. After three days
searching, the only one found that trip was an ~ 30g
specimen that Jonthy literally spotted out the car
window as we were driving on a freshly graded road!

  As time went on, another good friend, Jerry Hinkle,
and I have had the good fortune to
find/trade/buy/build a modestly respectable meteorite
collection. While visiting with John one day, the idea
of us donating some of our meteorites to the
planetarium came up. We all were excited about this
project, especially John. ( I would like to give
special mention and thanks to those
collectors/dealers, particularly Marvin Killgore and
Robert Haag, for trading with us to help diversify the
collection even more.) Unfortunately, just as the
whole project was coming together, John lost a valiant
fight with cancer, and passed away. That pretty much
brought the dream of having a "Hall of Meteorites" on
campus to an end, at least for now.

  The interim planetarium director was a graduate
student, who was also excited about the idea. But,
with the tightening budget for the university, the
decision was recently made to close the planetarium.
However, a new state of the art planetarium is planned
as part of an aerospace complex here in L.R. I am
hopeful that perhaps the university will work with
them to "host" the collection there. Anyway, below is
a link to the "Woolard-Hinkle-Williams Collection"
as it is now, if anyone would like to visit it. ( The
site seems to have some broken links I'm afraid.)

   http://www.ualr.edu/planetarium/meteorites.htm

  Sincerely,

  Robert Woolard


    









                
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Received on Mon 25 Oct 2004 11:04:01 PM PDT