It was a hot day at Edwards Air Force Base, California when Dr. David Smith visited an on-base high school to help with a science lab experiment and noticed the classroom’s emergency exit was blocked with soaking wet towels. He asked the teacher why.

“She said, ‘Well, the swamp cooler’s outside, and the floor of the classroom is settled there, so if I don’t block up the door with towels, the water floods the classroom, and it starts to stink out here in the desert.’”

Another classroom at the school had tree roots growing through the floor, Smith recalls.

Smith, in collaboration with the Joint Muroc School District school board and Patrick O’Brien, director of the DOD Office of Economic Adjustment – now the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation – and OEA worked to secure a $150 million grant to update the base’s three schools.

At the time Smith was installation support director at Edwards and collaborated with the greater community to find $30 million needed to match the grant. A few years later, the new elementary school is open, a new intermediate school facility opens this year, and renovations to the high school are ahead of schedule to open after that.

Smith also helped bring STARBASE – a DOD-funded STEM program for fifth and sixth graders in underserved areas – to Edwards.

“We have one week of STEM involvement on a high-tech installation like this. You watch their heads explode. They love it.” Smith, a father of six, says of STARBASE. “It’s tracked, and we find that for those STARBASE attendees, their likelihood of graduating high school and going to college doubles, and their likelihood of being involved in crime is cut in half.”

Smith spends less time at Edwards these days. He’s now director of the Production and Flight Test Facility, 412th Test Wing at Air Force Plant 42, a 5,600-acre campus in Palmdale with more than 12,000 contract and government personnel. Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed-Martin have operations at the plant.

In that position he continues to focus on collaborating with the greater community to improve quality of life for government and contractor employees, such as housing, health care and transportation.

“Let’s lower the fence line,” Smith says. “Let’s figure out how we can make our base more collaborative, more integral to our community. It should not be us-versus-them. It ought to be one mentality of how we’re going to excel.”

Part of a series honoring ADC’s Defense Community Champions

Photo submitted