[Jay H 237]

Ever since I was little I always wanted to build things. I like to work with my hands, and I'm one of those people who can't sit behind a desk all day. Started when I got Legos. After the holidays I would cover the whole dining room table with the road plates and build a whole town from the large Rubbermaid container full of Legos. The town would usually stay up until late April when it was finally nice enough to play outside. Then my father built me a Lionel layout in the rec room. Trainset would be an understatement, I had multiple trains running, buildings, roads, and scenery. Unfortunately I also liked to take the trains apart to find out how they worked. When I got to high school I took 4 years of woods, 3 of metals, and 1 of graphic arts. In woods I built soo many projects I can't remember them all. In my senior year in metals I rebuilt a 1978 Wheel Horse tractor and also built a trailer from scratch. It wasn't until after I graduated that the high school got involved with FIRST. After I saw a FIRST video and the general FIRST idea I was one of the original dozen people that got team 237 going in mid '98 to compete in the '99 season. I'm still on the team because it's great to be able to build something from parts and raw material into something that can move and perform tasks. I still like to do technical things, I still have the trains (which I've kept adding on to), and I also have a '68 Mustang I'm slowly restoring.

And the bottom line of why I'm still on team 237 is that they need me. If it wasn't for people like me to take time out of our busy lives and other interests a lot of these teams wouldn't exist.