Brady Flanigan penned a lovely and sentimental homage to youth sports tradition in his “oped” in the Tullahoma News. Unfortunately, it was in the news portion of the paper which should be reserved for facts and not persuasive essays.

I appreciate Mr. Flanigan’s view that proponents of the Arnold Heritage and Innovation Center (AHIC) did not take the viewpoint of many Tullahoma citizens into account when speaking before the Board of Mayor and Alderman meeting in early March. I confess, it stung to read his words that those speaking at the meeting were “…not coaches, not parents …” While I do work as a defense contractor, I have also been a coach and am a parent.

Still, much was said at the meeting about how the AHIC will support national defense, but little was said about why the average Tullahoma citizen should care about the AHIC. Let me do that now.

Picture a library that has technology tools citizens can use. Let’s start with sports. The AHIC could have film analysis software coaches and parents could use with their kids to analyze their games and learn better strategy. It could have golf swing, bat, and tennis swing analysis systems athletes could use to master their form. It could also have rooms teams could use for their year-end celebrations. Many groups needing a space could use these rooms.

There could also be a theater holding a few hundred people. We could have guest speakers like astronauts, adventurers, historians, innovators, and even artists and entrepreneurs in a Tullahoma TED talk series. This venue could be rented out for parties. It could have weekly community movie nights.

And what about AEDC? I’d say Tullahoma really hasn’t taken full advantage of having the world’s most extensive aerospace test center on its doorstep. AEDC has not only hundreds of engineering and scientist jobs, but hundreds of jobs for high-skilled trades, administrative and business managers, and even groundskeepers and forestry managers. Parents whose children choose to learn the skills needed to work at AEDC can have their children (and grandchildren) in town instead of hours or days away. Beyond AEDC, having AHIC offering access to tools to create prototypes and software to create apps would create the environment where other companies with high-paying jobs could be started in town. Having conference rooms entrepreneurs could use to meet with customers would help as well.

The AHIC could inspire students to choose aerospace and other high-tech jobs. It could have instrumentation labs and machine shops where people could learn the trade skills critical to aerospace test craft. It could also have labs where students, under the mentorship of volunteers, design aircraft and rockets and fly them virtually in computer simulations or in real life at the RC Airplane club field or with the Music City Missile Club in Manchester. It could have classes anyone from Tullahoma could take on programming, electronics, machining, 3-D printing, machinery maintenance, use of engineering software tools, and a variety of other topics.

With the availability of jobs at AEDC nearby or the tools to start a high-tech business, plus the many businesses in town to provide services, your children might decide that Tullahoma was a pretty nice place to raise their families. Then their parents would be able to take their grandkids out to play ball on Saturday mornings – just like they did with their kids.

Joseph Sheeley

Tullahoma