From left, Sena Robbins, Heidi Anderson, Lorena Gonzalez, Jennifer Hochmayr and Nate Drake work to clean brass panels above the entrance to The Dalles High School. The group are new employees of Mid-Columbia Medical Center, who concluded a weeklong orientation with a community service project.
From left, Sena Robbins, Heidi Anderson, Lorena Gonzalez, Jennifer Hochmayr and Nate Drake work to clean brass panels above the entrance to The Dalles High School. The group are new employees of Mid-Columbia Medical Center, who concluded a weeklong orientation with a community service project.
The brass panels above the front entrance to The Dalles High School went from dark and dingy to shiny and eye-catching last week, following a clean-up effort by Mid-Columbia Medical Center staff.
A task force of The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce has taken on the job of beautifying the high school, and one of its goals was polishing the bas relief brass panels, which depict historic buildings and pioneer scenes.
Some of the task force members work at MCMC, and word of the beautification project got to Kim Booth, who heads MCMC University, which is a weeklong cultural orientation program for all new hospital employees.
The university convenes four to five times a year, and each university group does a community service project, Booth said. The group of 14 people started at 9:15 and were done by noon.
“I went to school here and I’m amazed,” Booth said of the spiffed up panels. “It was always dark. When we put the polish on it was like, ‘Wow! There is brass under here!’”
Jared Sawyer is on the beautification task force and was given the job of researching the best method to shine up the brass panels. He put a call in to the State Historic Preservation Office for its advice, and then started doing his own research.
He was leaning toward a two-application approach of a stripper and a polish. “I came to that conclusion and they [SHPO] called me back a week later and basically told me what I had already figured out, so I was on the right track,” Sawyer said.
First, the brass polishing crew started with a citrus-based stripper because there was a clear coat over the existing brass. “Then they were just able to go back and buff it out with some brass polish that we stock [at Sawyer’s True Value], pretty simple,” he said.
On his choice of stripper, he said, “anytime you’re doing restoration work it’s best to experiment with the least caustic chemicals first and if those don’t work go up to a little hotter things.” The citrus-based stripper “has the least potential negative effects and can still be effective.”
“They did a good job,” he said.
The task force also plans to add landscaping to the grassy front area of the school and do some painting in front.
Booth said she wished the MCMC crew had known about the painting needs. “We could’ve done it this time. We’re always looking for more projects.”
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