by Denise Kowalcyzk

IDPA sponsored an exhibition booth at the Second Annual Maryland Deaf Festival during the weekend of Sept. 29, 2001, to increase awareness about the organization and its statement that any deaf person can become a pilot. This sponsorship was made possible during the membership meeting of the 2001 Fly-in at Lee's Summit, Mo. Eric Mansfield and I made a proposal for the sponsorship, which was approved through positive support from the members.

The IDPA booth was one of the Maryland Deaf Festival's 56 exhibition booths at the Montgomery County fairgrounds in Gaithersburg, Md. This event attracted over 2,000 people from the Mid-Atlantic region and many other states.

Eric Mansfield, Jay Kowalczyk and Denise Kowalczyk at the IDPA exhibition booth last Sept. 29 at the Maryland Deaf Festival.

The booth contained a big poster promoting the 2002 Fly-in and a PowerPoint presentation shown on a monitor. The booth also included a notebook containing all IDPA newsletters, key chains and pins with the IDPA logo, an example of a pilot kneeboard, and an e-mail sign-up list for anyone interested in obtaining information about IDPA and the 2002 Fly-in.

Eric and I spent a great deal of time in creating the big poster with pictures and a map of the flight trips to display at the booth. John Yeh created the PowerPoint presentation with pictures from all IDPA Fly-ins. In order to display the PowerPoint presentation at the booth, John also provided a computer and monitor. I also ensured that enough resources were available at the booth for people attending the festival. Jay Kowalczyk, my son, helped serve refreshments to the booth volunteers.

Overall, the booth was very successful, obtaining 85 signatures for our e-mail list for the 2002 Fly-in. In addition, two people registered for IDPA membership. Hundreds more deaf attendees also stopped by our booth, asking numerous questions about aviation. The most frequent question was, "Can deaf people fly?" For both Eric and me, increasing awareness about deaf people's ability to fly was a great reward for their service.

IDPA extends special thanks to Denise and Eric for their efforts in this project