By NORINE ROWE
Public Affairs

NAVAIR PATUXENT RIVER, MD—Continuing a long-standing tradition marking the transition from elementary to middle school, the Naval Medical Clinic here recently hosted an end-of-school-year station tour for Ridge Elementary School fifth-graders.

Dana Davis of the Naval Medical Clinic at NAVAIR Patuxent River, who coordinates a Personal Excellence Partnership between the clinic and Ridge Elementary School, helped organize the mid-June tour.

“We have excellent volunteers and excellent school partners,” Davis said, explaining that strong Navy-school ties have helped maintain this longstanding partnership that began in 1992.

This year, 12 volunteers from the Naval Medical Clinic went to Ridge Elementary on a weekly basis to tutor students in a variety of academic subjects. The volunteers also served as coaches and event monitors at the school’s field day. And, in what has become an annual tradition, the Naval Medical Clinic hosted a tour of station facilities for the school’s fifth-graders to mark their transition to middle school.

In addition to touring the Naval Medical Clinic, the fifth-graders toured a station hangar and visited the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum where they learned about the history and development of naval aviation from museum director Toby van Esselstyn. As part of their museum tour, the students learned about the development of radio communications, radar technology and unmanned aerial vehicles.

“A lot of what we use in our homes today comes from the research, development, testing and evaluation of military technology,” van Esselstyn said, citing microwave technology as one example.

Among the exhibits the students viewed was a model of the Surface Effect Ship, which was considered the fastest boat on the Chesapeake Bay when cruising at its top speed of 200 miles per hour. The students also saw early prototypes of Marine helicopters as well as a full-scale contractor model of Pegasus, an unmanned combat aerial vehicle.

Photo by Norine Rowe
Toby van Esselstyn, director of the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum, explains features of the Navy’s Gyrodyne QH-50D drone anti-submarine helicopter to Ridge Elementary School fifth-graders. The students visited the museum June 11 as part of a station tour hosted by the Naval Medical Clinic, which has maintained a Personal Excellence Partnership with the school since 1992.

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NAVAIR provides advanced warfare technologies through the efforts of a seamless, integrated,
worldwide network of aviation technology experts. From aircraft and weapons development to
carrier launch and recovery, from sensors to real-time communications to precision targeting,
from aircraft and weapons sustainment to state-of-the-art training, NAVAIR provides
dominantcombat effects and matchless capabilities to the American warfighter.