April 4, 2006

Date: Tuesday, April 04, 2006 1:15:26 PM

Trebuchet news release set to take front page of the county paper.

The following is the story which will be included in a future edition of the Harford County Public Schools newspaper. Pictures will also be included.


Brian Norman leaves launch legacy for Wright students

His Trebuchet demonstration precedes deployment to Afghanistan

A day away from being deployed as platoon sergeant leading combat troops in Afghanistan, C. Milton Wright High School world history and government teacher Brian Norman wanted to give his students something to remember him by. So, with the permission of his principal, Bill Ekey, the 31-year-old National Guardsman moved up by more than a month the date of the great Trebuchet Launch on the school’s athletic field.
At 5:30 a.m. on the morning of March 14th, Mr. Norman and several of the 100 students who had spent 2 ½ months on their own time helping him build the 31’ high by 16’ long medieval launching device, lugged it in pieces from the school to the soccer/baseball fields about a hundred yards away and reassembled it there. Beginning in shifts from early in the schoolday, students came out to watch as cantaloupes, pineapples, water jugs, bags of flour, a 12-pack of sodas, a bowling ball, a basketball, and other items were catapulted more than two football-field lengths before crashing to the ground.
“I guess we must have done about 150 ‘throws’ today,” said the intense 31-year-old teacher/soldier. “I taught my students how the catapult and then the Trebuchet had ended the era of castles and forced people to move into cities for protection since heavy rocks could be slung into the castle walls and bring them down.”
Mr. Norman, a native of Pennsylvania, and his students at Magnolia Middle School had made smaller versions of the medieval assault device when he taught there for three years prior to being called to active duty for the first time two years ago. Those launchers threw cans of soda 300 feet. “But this Trebuchet – it threw a cantaloupe 612 feet,” Mr. Norman said with the unbridled enthusiasm that made him a student favorite in the year and a half he taught at C. Milton Wright.
“We’re going to miss him terribly,” said a tearful Carly Garrett, a junior American Government student of Mr. Norman’s and one of those involved in building the Trebuchet. “He gets people’s attention, he doesn’t sugar coat it, and he’s real.”
In the National Guard for 13 years, Mr. Norman had come from his native Pittsburgh to teach at Magnolia Middle six years ago. He was called up with his Delta Company, 1/175th Infantry out of Elkton for a 13-month hitch and deployed to Alabama, returning to the county to be assigned to C. Milton Wright 13 months ago.
“I really enjoyed the kids at Magnolia and I thought teaching at the high school here would be different – but I’ve really built a bond with these kids – this is heartbreaking to have to leave,” the crew-cut teacher/soldier said. “But, I’ll be in Afghanistan with U.S. and Afghan troops in the Afghan Enduring Freedom effort.”
He anticipates he will be deployed in the war-torn area for 13 months and hopes to return to a teaching job in the county again.
“He is an intense person who demands and gets respect,” said Mr. Ekey while watching from a safe distance with a group of about 200 students as Mr. Norman’s mechanical device misfired on its last attempt, tossing a bowling ball backwards some 200 feet. “His students really responded to him.”
Mr. Norman said he received a $200 grant from the C. Milton Wright Parent/Teacher/Student Organization (PTSO) and put in about $300 of his own money to buy the lumber, cables, pulley system, hardware, and sling device for the Trebuchet replica. “My students came in after school and on weekends to build it and we got great support from parents – especially the Stiles and Friend family – the Friends allowed me to test it in their backyard,” said Mr. Norman. “We were going to demonstrate it to the student body later in the spring, but, when I got my orders, Mr. Ekey allowed me to move up the operation.”
The vast majority of C. Milton Wright’s 1800 students were brought by their teachers at various times during the blustery day to watch in amazement as the device lobbed its payload high in the air and then downrange onto the baseball outfield. “Teachers gave up some of their class time to bring their students out here to watch what my students had built – they were extremely well behaved and it just shows how what a great school this is and what top notch students we have,” Mr. Norman said.
With outriggers stretching the width of the launcher to 14’ and the device held in place by heavy rocks, Mr. Norman said the Trebuchet model demonstrated an advancement over the earlier catapult. He said catapults used ropes and tension while the Trebuchet used counterweights to propel projectiles longer distances and with better accuracy.
Mr. Norman also credited Joe Fleishman with putting the device’s demonstration on the school’s website at http://www.cmwtrebuchet.com/.