Fenton Rotary Club

The Fenton Rotary Club honored the Veterans of
our country who fought to maintain our freedom and independence over the last
two centuries and more.  Approximately 20
Veterans attended the Rotary Meeting and approximately 70 people in total were
in attendance. 

Bob Reynolds spoke to the audience about the
various functions that Rotary performs for the Fenton-Linden Community.   

Scott Ward was in charge of the program. Scott
introduced the speaker who was Patrick Mihalek, Director of the Sandbar
Mitchell Organization of Brighton.  The
B-25 Bomber was a real “workhorse” in World War II.  The B-25 was the one that was used by Jimmy
Doolittle in his mission to bomb Japan shortly after Pearl Harbor, just to let
the Japanese know that we were still around. 
Later after the war, the B-25 was used as a training plane.  B-25 was also converted to help out in
putting out forest fires.  In 2012
Patrick started out in the campaign to “salvage” the Sandbar Mitchell which was
a B-25 that went down in 1969 while on a mission.  The Mitchell family had acquired the bomber
after the bomber was retired in 1959 and added it to a fleet of B-25’s used in
Alaska  to help fight forest fires.  The plane remained on the sandbar until
approximately 2012 when Patrick undertook to salvage it, thus the name “Sandbar
Mitchell”.

The restoration and recovery of the plane
involved obtaining some of the parts to the plane which had been removed over
the long period of time that it sat on the sandbar.

Patrick had a PowerPoint Presentation and it
showed the large helicopter which lifted the B-25 off the sandbar and moved it
to a location where it was worked upon for restoration.  After lots of hard work and raising of funds,
the Sandbar Mitchell B-25 was able to be flown again.  The Sandbar Mitchell B-25 now sits in a
hanger in Brighton where Patrick and his friend, Todd Trainor, maintain the
plane.  The future plans are to place the
plane in a museum “Warbirds of Glory Museum” in Brighton.

At the next meeting of the Fenton Rotary Club on November 19th,
the GSE Team will be presenting their experiences to the Club.