Photo By Michael Strasser | The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of the USO and 10th Mountain Division and...... read more read more
FORT DRUM, N.Y. (Nov. 21, 2025) -- When the Heritage Center reopened in October, it showcased a brand-new look for the USO at Fort Drum, following a yearlong renovation project. But an old, familiar display remains inside, one that was introduced to the community 18 years ago.
It was on April 19, 2007, when the Heritage Center became home for the USO and the 10th Mountain Division and Fort Drum Historical Collection. Walking inside the foyer after the ribbon-cutting ceremony, attendees saw a Black Hawk helicopter overhead, with a rescue crew reaching down to help (or perhaps welcome) visitors on the ground.
It was a project with a tight deadline that became a labor of love for members of the Fort Drum Directorate of Public Works.
Jeff Fox, retired PW illustrator, said the idea for the helicopter display originated from then-garrison commander Col. David Clark. At the time, the 10th Combat Aviation Brigade had a piece of a helicopter frame in storage that was acquired from a Hollywood film production.
During the filming of “The Day After Tomorrow,” a disaster movie released in 2004, special effects combined with real helicopters from the 2nd Battalion, 10th Aviation Regiment, to create a harrowing search and rescue mission in New York City.
Fox said that Clark thought the piece of Hollywood memorabilia could make an interesting display inside the Heritage Center. It would take more than movie magic to build a Black Hawk inside the foyer just seven weeks before the grand opening.
“We didn’t know exactly how we were going to do something like this,” Fox said. “I never built a helicopter before. But we started early in March, and I remember finishing it three days before the ribbon cutting.”
Fox said he visited Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield countless times to photograph and examine helicopter parts, climbing inside and crawling underneath to capture every detail.
“I was measuring the spacing of the rivets to make sure that everything was where it was supposed to be,” he said. “We had measurements of the doors, where the hoist was placed, and how far it stuck out from the helicopter. I just happened to be there one day when they had a hoist in for maintenance, so we were able to build one from the photos I took.”
Fox and Kent Bolke, museum curator, photographed a 10th CAB Soldier sitting in a helicopter. The printed image was placed onto a sheet of plexiglass, and then a frame was painted to look like window so it would blend seamlessly with the rest of the structure.
Although it’s difficult to see from the ground, Fox said they wanted to include everything possible to make it look like the real thing.
“If the sun hits it just right, you can see the pilot looking back,” he said.
They even adorned the helicopter with decals – warnings, winch assembly and motor identifications, load capacity information and hoist control schematic – knowing they were too small or obstructed from view for most people to see.
For fun, one sticker reads: “This is a label that has no significance whatsoever. It is just merely for show. If you are close enough to read it, I hope you are dusting it.”
Fox worked with Carl Eager from the PW Carpentry Shop to build the display mostly out of wood, aluminum and foam.
“Carl had the idea of how we could do the helicopter blades,” he said. “After all the measurements were taken and we had all the details, I drew a lot of the stuff up on a computer. Then we would cut parts on the router table.”
Fox said they had to get creative when finding substitutes for actual helicopter parts.
“What I would do is take pictures of the section that I was going to work on, and I would go over to different supply offices to see if they had anything that looked similar,” he said.
Fox said much of the work was done while the structure was already suspended in the air.
“Everything was built around the octagon shape of the building,” he said. “You couldn’t do it on the ground and take the chance of something not fitting right. And the ceiling is on an angle too. So, a lot of it depended on how we could fit the space and work within the curves and angles.”
The project required quite a few 12-hour days, sometimes six days a week, to get the job done ahead of the ribbon-cutting for the Heritage Center. Fox recalled the hours spent putting hundreds of rivets onto the helicopter.
“I borrowed a pneumatic rivet gun from the sheet metal shop, and I don’t know how many batteries and drill bits I went through,” he said. “By the time we finished, I could barely lift the gun up there to pop the last few rivets in.”
The Fort Drum Historical Collection furnished the two uniformed mannequins – with helmets, gloves and boots – to serve as Black Hawk crew members in the display. As for the Soldier perched on the jungle penetrator and extending his hand downward, Fox said it was positioned more for dramatic effect than tactical accuracy.
“That’s not exactly how they would do it in real life,” he said. “They would get down to the ground and then strap a person in before going back up. We wanted it to look like they were reaching down to help someone. Col. Clark liked the way it looked, like ‘The 10th Mountain Division is coming to save the day.’”
Upon completion of the display, a few subject matter experts from the 10th CAB visited to see the finished product.
“They sent three guys down and they walked in the door, looked up and said, ‘How did you get a Black Hawk helicopter inside the building?’ That told me we had gotten it right,” Fox said. “They wanted to know how I got a 500-pound hoist on there, and I told them the one I made probably weighed close to 30 pounds.”
“It was such a fun project to work on, probably the most fun I ever had with a display,” Fox added.
Additional historical notes: The Off the Beatin’ Path gift shop also resided in the Heritage Center, and opened for business in September 2006, months before the USO and the Historical Collection. It closed permanently in March 2024. Bldg. 10502 originally was home to Spinners Club, a dance club that opened in April 1990, with a barber shop and shoppette also inside.
| Date Taken: | 11.18.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 11.21.2025 12:13 |
| Story ID: | 552059 |
| Location: | FORT DRUM, NEW YORK, US |
| Web Views: | 28 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Around and About Fort Drum: Heritage Center’s Black Hawk display, by Michael Strasser, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
