“A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can just be a small part of one of the most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people — harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.” President Jimmy Carter, June 20, 1979
NORFOLK — In 1979, at the height of a national energy crisis when OPEC countries limited the flow of oil to the West, U.S. President Jimmy Carter began a federal initiative to jumpstart the development and use of alternative energy. The goal of “Solar America” was that 20% of America’s energy would be renewable by the year 2000. Carter had solar panels installed on the roof of the White House to heat the water used in the West Wing.
Norfolk’s Tom Strumolo was on the original team that installed the 32 solar panels. He was part of a band of young, long-haired New England solar energy mavericks who made history.
As a recent Yale graduate, Strumolo was working in the new Energy Department in Hartford where he met Gordon Priess from Mystic, Connecticut. He was “a heat transfer guy who designed water heaters, and became chief engineer of the White House project,” according to Strumolo. They learned the White House was taking bids for a big solar installation, and their $50,000 bid was accepted.
Ed Butler, a Connecticut native, joined the crew. Butler and his partner Rick Schwolsky founded Sunrise Solar Services in Vermont in 1976. They gathered friends with skills necessary for the project. Students from a Groton, Connecticut, technical school welded the steel framework. They transported it to DC on a flatbed truck. The General Services Agency (GSA) installed 1” plywood to protect the entire White House lawn. A massive crane rolled in to lift the entire structure to the roof of the West Wing.
Strumolo laughed, recalling that security was very tight. “Our Secret Service detail told us ‘We shoot to kill,’ so we did not mess around.” They had sniffer dogs checking them out each day. When President and First Lady Rosalynn Carter climbed to the roof for an official photograph, Strumolo warned the President the paint was still wet on the metal. Carter said, “I am not going to mess up your paintjob!” Strumolo was more concerned about the President’s suit.
President Ronald Reagan had the solar panels removed from the White House in 1981. The parts were stored for years in a warehouse. The Reagan Administration reduced Carter’s renewable energy program by 90%. Half of the White House solar panels were moved to Unity College in Maine where they heated the water in the dining hall for 12 years. Some of the original solar panels reside in the Carter Museum and the National Museum of American History.
Tom Strumolo of Norfolk, founder Energy General LLC, was on the crew that installed solar panels on the roof of the White House for President Jimmy Carter in 1979.Jennifer Almquist
Jody Bronson, forester emeritus of Norfolk’s Great Mountain Forest (GMF), recalled, “Ed Butler’s team installed the solar panels on the White House for Jimmy Carter. My wife Jean and I have three of the panels that were supposedly installed on the White House. We can’t confirm this. In 1990 they were installed on our home in Falls Village by Ed Butler. The panels are still functional and have provided all the domestic hot water for our house for 35 years! If more households in our area had done this 30 or 40 years ago, think about how much energy they could have saved.” Bronson said there is a treasured can of “Billy Beer” in the Forestry Office at GMF.
Butler reminisced, “I was really excited when we won the bid to work on the solar project at President Jimmy Carter’s White House. It was such a great opportunity for a relatively small New England solar company. It was something I believed so strongly in and was proud to have been a part of it. Since 1976, we have done several hundred solar jobs in New England.”
Strumolo remains committed to “creating adequate and equitable responses to our changing climate.” He wrote “Decentralizing Energy Production” (Yale Press, 1983) and was a driving force behind the recently installed 13-acre solar array at the town’s transfer station. His energy audits have been used in thousands of buildings. After fifty years Strumolo is “still working, still on the path Carter inspired me to follow. There is so much work left to be done.” In 2008, artists from the Kunsthaus in Zurich created a film, “The Story of the Jimmy Carter White House Solar Installation”, which will be shown at the Norfolk Library in February.
In the words of the late President Jimmy Carter, “Pessimism did not build America, it was built with vision, faith, and hard work. It is time to pull ourselves out of our national doldrums, to recognize our great untapped potential and resources, to build a more prosperous, self-reliant future.” Had the original solar panels remained in use on the White House they could have saved 20,000 gallons of heating oil.
To escape the cruelties of war, Katya finds solace in her imagination in “Sunflower Field”.
“Once Upon a Time in Ukraine,” a short documentary from directors Tetiana Khodakivska, Betsy West and Richard Blanshard, shares the stories of four children navigating war. Ivanna, a young girl in the Kherson region, reads from her a book as drawings of vegetables, which she has thoughtfully named, animatedly come to life on. As the film proceeds, Ivanna’s animated vegetables eventually go into defense mode against their Russian attackers.
Still from “Once Upon a Time in Ukraine” depicting a coffin designed for a child being lowered into the ground.Krista A. Briggs
Young Rusland from Moschun tells his story with an emotion not usually seen in school-age boys. He resides in a temporary home not far from his house, which was destroyed in a bombing. He speaks of time in the cellar, keeping busy canning food while his neighborhood was under attack. He misses his cat, Tima, another casualty of the conflict, and stays close to his dog throughout his time on camera while taking viewers on a tour of his neighbor’s former home, now a ruin from the devastation of the area. As Ruslan sadly observes, “It used to be a beauty.”
In Dnipro, eight year old Myroslava, likely a budding gymnast, is exhibiting her limberness. She speaks of formerly smooth roads in her hometown of Mariupol, which eventually caught fire. She explains, “Ukraine and Russia used to be friends until Russia got crazy.” Myroslava’s father has, in fact, perished in the conflict, but she remains in denial – or, as her mother explains, “She has gone into herself.” Myroslava finds comfort from multiple hugs from her mother, but continues to maintain her father is alive. “He will return,” she says. “He’s coming back.”
In Bucha, Maksym, 10, relates stories of explosions and bombings, as well as close encounters with missiles, which forced him and his family to evacuate. As with Myroslava, Maksym finds solace in his family, particularly his older brother. He can’t sleep in the dark and stays close to his favorite toy – a present from his mother. A pianist and a dancer, Maksym says, “I dream of peace so they don’t have to take up arms.”
Children are resilient, but the young people of Ukraine are clearly being tested to their emotional limits. When the internet cooperates, the children of war-torn Ukraine have, for the most part, been receiving educational instruction online for the past five years and despite their circumstances, are academically persevering with a strong academic focus on STEM and the arts.
But education, pets, toys and loving families are for those children who have not been killed since the war began. More than 2,000 young people have been injured or killed as a result of the conflict. Observed filmmaker Buchak, “We’re losing such a young generation now.”
The number of children who suffer from mental health challenges is much higher. Untold numbers of children are in need of psychological intervention. All of Ukraine’s children need to know the war is coming to an end, but until that day, they remain awake in a nightmare.
Anastasia Rab of Razom for Ukraine, a nonprofit advocacy organization, fields questions from the audience alongside filmmaker Polina Buchak. Anastasia and Polina are both Ukrainian natives now living and working in the United States.Krista A. Briggs
After the films, a Q&A featured Buchak, Anastasia Rab, chief advancement officer at the nonprofit, Razom for Ukraine, and Joshua Zeman, whose vocal talents were featured in the documentary, “Cropsey.”
“What’s going on in Ukraine is a travesty and truly undemocratic,” said Zeman, who reminded the audience that their participation in viewing these films is a form of protest against the Russian invasion, most appropriate on a day marked by protests by the Hands Off movement in support of American democracy.
Rab, whose organization supports a physically, politically and economically secure Ukraine, noted the trauma in young Ukrainians whose existence and identities are under attack. “This war is about erasing Ukraine,” said Rab, who pointed out another atrocity of war – the kidnapping, trafficking and forced illegal adoptions of young Ukrainians by Russian forces. In some instances, the young victims are “deprogrammed” by Russian forces and forced to fight against their own country – a war crime.
Despite the atrocities of war and its terrible consequences, Polina Buchak, while grounded firmly in the awful realities of the ongoing battle, remained optimistic for change. “My hope is for a peaceful sky over Ukraine without the fear of being invaded.”
