This image from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force shows an F-16 fighter jet, the same type of plane that the Union Local School District has as its mascot. An alumni group is working to obtain a retired F-16 to display on the campus. Photo Provided

MORRISTOWN — A new nonprofit in the Union Local School District is looking for some community members who are willing to “aim high” and help them reach a lofty goal.

District supporters formed the UL Jets Flying High Afterburners alumni group with the goal of providing the campus with something it has lacked throughout its more than 60-year history — an actual jet to serve as its official mascot and a focal point of the school grounds.

Organizers include community members as well as UL alumni who graduated in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

Now they are looking for even more people to help with the cause. The nonprofit group – consisting of Dirk Davis, Pete Busack, Superintendent Ben Porter, district Safety Director Mike Menges, school board member Terry Puperi, James Lewis, Ed Tacosik, district Treasurer Janet Hissrich, Teresa Schafer, Dave Schafer and Bryan Mason – wants to form a fundraising committee that includes one or two representatives from each of the communities that make up the district. That committee will be tasked with raising about $92,000 to cover all expenses associated with the effort.

Davis stressed that the jet itself – an actual retired U.S. Air Force F-16 – will be provided by the federal government for free. The money is being raised to prepare a plaza to display the fighter plane and to disassemble the jet, transport it to the campus and reassemble it atop a pylon on the front lawn. Worldwide Aircraft Recovery of Florida has agreed to perform that work.

“There will be no money from school taxes spent on this project,” Davis said. “There will be no cost to the school at all.”

He added that organizers would like to have fundraising volunteers from Belmont, Bethesda, Morristown, Centerville, Flushing, Lafferty, Holloway and the surrounding areas all involved in the effort. Anyone who would like to join the fundraising committee should call him at 740-484-1250 or 740-582-1888 or email him at dirkbethesda@gmail.com.

Busack, who is a Bellaire resident and a graduate of St. John Central High School, got involved with the project while serving as police chief in Bethesda. But he said his interest in the UL campus having a jet of its own dates back to his high school days in the 1980s. He said he always felt the school should have a jet out front.

An aeronautics enthusiast with a plane of his own, Busack made several connections to help the district secure its own plane. Although he had early offers of two planes from the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida, he said members of the nonprofit wanted to remain true to the district’s logo, which has long featured an Air Force F-16. After working with officials in the Department of Defense and at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, Busack helped the district file a successful application to obtain an actual Air Force plane.

The request was approved in August. The district now has a two- to five-year window in which it can expect to obtain an F-16 for static display.

According to Davis and Busack, maintaining the jet once it is on campus will be a pretty simple task. It may need to be washed occasionally, and it probably will need to be painted about once a decade. That work also will be done at no cost to the school district, since the district already has created a line item that will allow the Afterburner group to donate any funds raised but not used for transport and display of the plane to be set aside for future maintenance.

The display itself will be fairly elaborate. The jet, measuring 49.5 feet long and 16 feet tall with a 32.8-foot wingspan, will be mounted on a tall pylon, angled up and over at 15 degrees so it will appear to be banking in flight from the front of the high school toward Interstate 70.

The proximity of that highway may have played a role in the decision to allow the district to obtain a plane – an Ohio Department of Transportation traffic study revealed that about 41,000 cars and trucks will pass within view of the jet on I-70 and Ohio 149 every single day.

“They want it to be seen,” Busack said of the Air Force officials in charge of its Community Static Display Program.

A concrete plaza will be installed to support the weight of the plane and pylon, estimated at 14,000-18,000 pounds. A tall fence will be installed around it, and a stone wall listing all contributors to the project, some runway lights and a camera that students could access from their classrooms eventually will complete the display. The exhibit area is adjacent to a 114 x 60-foot lawn flag that was built to memorialize first responders who answered the call to service following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The military aircraft placed alongside it would also honor the military men and women who served in the aftermath of those attacks.

According to Davis, this is not the first attempt to obtain a jet for the campus. He said the “Union Local Boosters” was the first group to try, in 1959-60. Since then, three more groups have made the effort but failed due to complications with transportation of the craft and financing.

The UNion Local School District was established in 1952 through consolidation of the Union Township, Smith Local, Belmont, Bethesda, Lafferty and Holloway schools, according to information provided by the Afterburners group. In 1968, the Flushing School District joined UL. The original, consolidated high school was built in 1958, and the first class graduated in 1960.

In fall 1998, a new high school building opened and the old high school was renovated to serve as an attached middle school. A new, consolidated elementary school was added to the campus as well.

The district is staffed by 61 non-certified employees, 112 full-time certified teaching employees and 20 administrative employees. It serves 1,513 students.

“The district and its students deserve to have a symbol of what they stand for, a symbol of something you can be proud to be a part of,” Davis said.