EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Sitting dilapidated behind the school, the Desert High tennis courts seemed all but lost until Lockheed Martin decided they wanted to make a difference.

For their annual Make a Difference Day community volunteer project this year, Lockheed Martin employees from Edwards decided to refurbish the tennis courts behind the base high school, which have been unusable for seven years.

"Every year Lockheed does a Make a Difference Day and this year the Lockheed folks here at Edwards decided to be involved in this too," said Kevin Shaffer, Lockheed Martin embedded software engineer. "So Paula, Jim and I were put together as a committee and were tasked to find a project we could do to help out our community."

Mr. Shaffer said that since schools across the state are all having financial difficulties they identified the local schools as the target of their project.

Once they decided to help the schools, the team had to decide which school they wanted to help and what they were going to do. To do this, the three of them were each given a local school to visit and talk to the administration about possible projects.

"Each of us visited a school district from the local area and asked their administration what we could do to help them fix their schools up," said James Moorhead, Lockheed Martin quality engineer. "We had five or six ideas from each school. So the three of us sat down to discuss which ones we could do, given our budget for the project."

After they had gotten the possible projects from each districts, they discussed each of them. One day, when they went to look at one of the proposed projects at Desert High, they walked around to the back of the school and saw the condition of the tennis courts. At that time they decided that refurbishing them would be their project.

"We were looking at one of the other projects here and we happen to walk around to the back of the school and see these tennis courts," said Mr. Shaffer "So we went and asked about them and we were told they haven't been used in seven years. So we decided this was the project we were going to go with."

The parameters Lockheed Martin set for Make a Difference Day was for the project to be completed in one day costing less than $5,000 and no more than six hours of work.
"(The tennis courts were) was in a total state of disrepair," Mr. Shaffer added. "So we had to convince everybody that this wasn't too big a project. But instead of one day of six hours of work in one day, it was going to be three days of working for six hours."

Paula Loehrer, Lockheed Martin administration representative, said that not only did this project help improve the school, but it also helped her get to know Lockheed Martin employees from other programs across the base.

"This was fun for us. Not only did it benefit the schools, but we're all from different Lockheed Martin projects across the base," said Ms. Loehrer. "We didn't know each other, so this helped us build camaraderie and meet new people that we wouldn't otherwise get a chance to meet. Projects like this help us to get a better perspective of what's going on around the base and what Lockheed Martin (employees) can do to be a part of what's going on here."

"These courts look great I've already had students tell me they can't wait until the lines get painted on so they can start using them," said Mr. Day. "This also gives me a chance to teach another racquet sport to my students. These courts will also give our girls tennis team a place at school to practice and it will make it possible for us to get a boys tennis team too."