Museum flies high as first anniversary nears

SANDPOINT - By New York Times best selling author Malcolm Gladwell's definition, Dr. Pam Bird is a connector.

Gladwell describes three types of people who make big things happen in his book, “The Tipping Point,” - mavens, salespeople and connectors.

Connectors bring people together to reach that “tipping point.”

In Bird's case, that means achieving a mutual goal held by herself and her inventor husband, Forrest M. Bird, MD., to expose and encourage a lot more American school children to become passionate about math and science.

“We want to home grow our own scientists,” she said.

To that end, a year ago the Birds opened the Bird Aviation Museum and Invention Center on the site of what for years has been Forrest Bird's research facility on Sagle Road.

This weekend, the Birds will host an open house for the community to celebrate the museum and invention center's first anniversary.

While her husband works in his lab, Pam Bird is the owner and chief executive officer of Innovative Product Technoglogies, located in Gainesville, Florida, with a branch office in Sandpoint.

She works as a commercialization expert, counseling inventors and entrepreneurs - essentially connecting them to the marketplace.

Pam Bird also likes to introduce her husband to young people with the goal of using his success to inspire them to become the scientists, biologists, artists and mathematicians of tomorrow.

If you study the history of successful inventors, they all have a supportive spouse who believes in them, Bird likes to tell visitors to the museum. She can tell you which inventors' marriages survived and which have not based upon that support.

The Birds efforts are beginning to pay dividends in the form of the Camp Invention they will host on the museum's grounds this coming week and through the students attracted to the museum.

On of those students is Blake Alsson, 15, of Rathdrum. On Thursdays, he volunteers as a docent at the museum.

“I really enjoy the museum and what goes on here,” he said. “It's quite impressive.”

An actor who recently returned with an overflowing handful of awards from the World Championships of Arts in Hollywood, Alsson acts in community theater in the Coeur d'Alene area. He has a 4.0 grade point average and will be a sophomore at Lakeland High School this fall.

Although Alsson loves acting, he loves math and science even more. “Math are the two big things in my life, along with acting,” he said. Even though math and science are so critical in our daily lives, it has fallen out of favor for a lot of kids and schools, but that needs to change, he said.

Alsson plans to become a nanophysicist and would like to attend either MIT or Carnegie Melon.

“He studies everything,” Bird said. “He's a neat young man.”

Alsson attributes his love of math and science to his parents - his mother is a teacher and his father works to provide Internet service to rural areas.

The privately-funded Bird museum offers free admission and is packed with treasures that include the first plane Forrest Bird soloed in when he was 14 (the plane was owned by his father, a World War I fighter pilot), original artwork and inventions, including original patents once owned by the U.S. Patent Office which are on loan from a private collection.