The City’s First Makerspace

There is a feeling in the air at Vector Space, though not definable at first. Stepping into its recently leased home at 402 Fifth Street in downtown Lynchburg, the sensation hovers silent, a background tingle, as one takes in the atmosphere—the smell of sawdust lingering in the air and the hum of old computers given new life complementing the aged, industrial aesthetic: open ceilings crawling with pipes and ductwork, whitewashed brick walls and concrete floors bathed in white fluorescent rays.

Across the approximately 6,000-square-foot workspace, shelves are lined with wood, metal and electronic contraptions in various stages of completion, just beyond workbenches and pegboards carrying an abundance tools. Whiteboards display scribblings over erased scribblings: notes, equations and 3D drawings. A lounge features a collection of old couches and books. In the corner, a homemade, retro-style arcade emulates a nostalgia dressed in frayed denim and highlighter-colored accessories.

While a lethargic spirit might dismiss the whole scene as a grungy junkyard garage, one might just as easily see a limitless playground.

From the back, where metalworking equipment fills the space off a loading zone, complete with a large bay door, Adam Spontarelli, Vector Space co-founder and director of education, emerges, wiping his previously occupied hands before extending one for a warm greeting. His wife, Elise Spontarelli, the space’s executive director and co-founder, soon joins him in sitting amongst desks littered with fat monitors, rectangular PCs, resistors, LEDs and circuit boards.
As the two begin sharing the story of how the nonprofit got started—occasionally finishing one another’s sentences—that lingering feeling surfaces, from time to time, flashing in their eyes.

Vector Space started rather simply—Adam, an engineer, wanted a makerspace in Lynchburg, and, since it didn’t have one, he and his wife decided to create one. The concept of a makerspace—or a hackerspace or hacklab—is relatively new, about a decade old, and is essentially a workspace for the community to come in to collaborate and socialize around common interests like computers, woodworking, art and more.

“(Vector Space) helps to bring together like-minded, hands-on people,” said Board Member Peter Sheldon, Department of Physics chair and Center for Student Research director at Randolph College. “It is a space for the technical and creative to come together and create and share with the community. Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) and outreach is my specialty, and Vector Space really helps to promote both of these really well.”

In its conception, “It was just a place that (Adam) wanted to hang out, and it didn’t exist,” Elise said. “When we started talking about it it, the things that he was not sure about were the things that I have experience with.”

Elise owns her own web design company and works with a number of nonprofits (through her business and as a volunteer).

The idea was further validated as it was brought forth.

“We just started meeting with people in the community to see if this was necessary, if Lynchburg wanted this,” Elise said. “We got a lot of yeses—‘Our people need this.’”

From there they assembled a seven-member board of directors (including the Spontarellis) and began fundraising (Areva has been a major supporter).
The first official test run was a class held in a basement classroom at the Academy Center of the Arts. It involved building a quadcopter drone from scratch.

Among the students was Nathan Marraccini, a rising junior at E.C. Glass High School.

“It has been a wonderful experience where I have gained mass amounts of knowledge,” Marraccini said of his involvement at Vector Space. “Throughout my time here I have learned how to solder, weld, program and much more.”

Most recently, Marraccini was a part of one of two Vector Space teams that took on the annual Global Space Balloon Challenge. Teams from all over the world build their own capsules and send them into space via a weather balloon. Teams then track their capsule and find where it landed.

After launching on May 29, Marraccini’s team, called “No Strings Attached,” retrieved their capsule—an R2-D2 bot with a sign for a potential discoverer reading “NOT AN ALIEN” followed by contact information—from Lexington.

“I was super psyched about this project because my dream is to one day go to space,” he said.

Vector Space occupied the Fifth Street property—a former auto parts manufacturing warehouse—in February and has since commenced establishing itself in the community.

There are two primary functions of the space. The first is membership; like a gym, members can pay a monthly fee for 24/7 access to the space. (Training is required before being allowed to use certain equipment.)

“Initially,” recounts Jordan Goulder, “I wanted to become a member so that I would have a space and equipment to explore my own projects and hobbies.
“I have found that and much more.”

He said the space not only has a plethora of tools and resources for diverse projects, but he has also been able to meet “great people” and collaborate with them on fun projects.

Members are free to come and go as they please, working on their personal projects or, as is oft encouraged, collaborating in groups.
All of the basic supplies and components, such as scrap wood, screws, nails, circuit boards, LEDs, etc., are on-hand. There are currently about 25 members.
The other aspect is classes, which are either skills-based, like computer programming, screen printing or photography, or project-based, like the quadcopter and space balloon.

Anyone with a passion and knowledge can pitch a class. The instructor develops their own budget and curriculum. Half the profit goes to the instructor while the rest is invested back into the space. Classes span from four to eight weeks and typically meet two times per week for two to three hours at a time.

Most classes offer a scholarship slot, just as some generous individuals choose to sponsor a membership, helping everyone, regardless of their resources, to benefit from the space.

Students have been the largest demographic in classes, though most are open to anyone 12 and up, with a hope to see more adults getting involved.
“Everyone knows their kids need to be learning,” Elise said. “(But) it has been hard to get people in the community to understand the value in improving themselves.

“(Adam and I) are both advocates of lifelong learning. We are self-taught in a lot of fields, and it is just something that we believe enriches lives.”
The couple has built a number of items over the years, like toys for their two kids, appliances and even the arcade in the lounge. (The video game doesn’t work currently, they explain, though they are sure that it is an easy fix, something jarred loose when moving in.)

They realize that everyone is not going to build their own computer. But the Spontarellis know that the more people are willing to engage their minds, to learn a new skill or tackle a new project, the more vital they and, in turn, society will be.

“If you are going to make anything new you have to understand how it works,” Adam said. “Maybe it never improves the economy, but I do think that it will bring joy to the person. There is empowerment when you can do something yourself, when you can fix your own car. And in the end there is still tangible value for that person. If you can fix your computer rather than throwing it in the trash can and buying a new one…” “… it saves you money, it saves the environment,” Elise added. Many, when faced with a problem, may just turn around.

A makerspace helps reinforce the mindset that you can be a part of the solution, even if it is just identifying the problem and then working with others to solve it.

“This is a place to come and play,” Elise said. “And to be useful, too. There is a lot of value when you can come in here and create something.”

“It is an outlet for creativity,” Adam added, pointing out the added benefit of community.

People can tinker at home. But, “Learning from each other, pushing each other forward,” he said, “you can get so much more done together than you could alone.”

Vector Space is not an inventors club—it is designed for anyone to come and flex their creativity in a number of areas. A closet space is being converted into a darkroom. There’s a 3D printer as well as a textiles area. Elise has led a screen-printing class (showcased in June during Innovation Week).
“Everyone can be creative and learn something new,” Adam said.

“You don’t have to be artistic, you don’t have to be an engineer,” Elise added.

Adam continued that some may feel intimidated, that they don’t know much—or anything—about electronics, soldering, woodwork, etc., and fear they won’t fit in.

“We make a concerted effort to encourage learning and to emphasize that you are not expected to know everything,” he said. “No one knows everything so you are not going to be ridiculed for not knowing something.”

“If you are interested,” Elise said, intentionally punctuating the thought there, “then this is a place for you.”

Stepping out of Vector Space, back into Lynchburg’s modest cityscape, that aforementioned feeling rushes back in force, like the open Central Virginia air.
It feels like inspiration.

Learn more at Vector-Space.org.

Local Author Shares Their Stories

Pierce Street Renaissance Historic District, on the 1300 and 1400 blocks of Pierce Street, is the smallest historic district in Lynchburg and has eight historic markers.

While the neighborhood boasts examples of Queen Anne, Shingle, Italianate and other architectural styles popular in the late-Victorian era, it’s the people who lived and visited Pierce Street that make it special.

Ask author and long-time local columnist Darrell Laurant about Pierce Street, and he’ll go a step further. He’ll say the people of Pierce Street—among them Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer, Tuskegee Airman Chauncey Spencer, and tennis coach and physician Walter Johnson—“helped change America.”

“In the middle of a small city, in the middle of nowhere, in the inner city … all of these people became very successful,” Laurant said, adding, “The people on Pierce Street just did it their own way.”

Pierce Street and the individuals who built their homes and lives there are the primary subjects of Laurant’s latest book Inspiration Street: Two City Blocks That Helped Change America. The book was released in March by Blackwell Press.

Laurant is no stranger to writing about Lynchburg’s history and people, having spent more than 30 years as a columnist at the News & Advance, and Inspiration Street was not his first foray into Central Virginia history in book form.

Laurant is also the author of Even Here: A Small Virginia Community, A Violent Decade. The book explores the Bedford County legal system and what Laurant describes as a “whole series of really bizarre murders” that happened there in the 1980s.

And Laurant penned A City Unto Itself, about Lynchburg’s history, although he admits the project was a bit self-serving. “Nobody had written a book about Lynchburg beyond World War II, and I just got tired of looking up everything,” he said.

“I wrote it for myself as much as anything. I interviewed about 150 people. It gave me a sense of the city that I never had before. If I never sold a book, it would have been worth it to do it.”

Laurant is fast to say Inspiration Street is not intended to be a “scholarly work of history,” loaded with footnotes. Instead, it is a “quick read” at 80-some-pages. He further describes the book as “atmospheric … like a large essay.”

“As the title implies,” he said, “this will be about the aura of the street and its larger collective influence.”

While, “not the definitive book” on Pierce Street’s history, Laurant said he wanted to show how the people of Pierce Street, rather independently of each other, “developed these amazing lives.” He also wanted to depict the residents as they really were, warts and all.

“[A] complaint I have of history is they tend to make people so one dimensional,” he said. “They think of Anne Spencer as a sweet lady who worked in her garden and wrote poetry.

She had an interesting background growing up. “She was a very complicated person, too, and had an edge to her, and you can see it in her poetry. It’s not all about flowers, [but] civil rights and stuff. … It reads just like fiction, some of these people, the lives they had.”
Dr. Walter Johnson coached tennis players on a court he built in his yard at 1442 Pierce Street.

Among the hundreds of players he coached were Grand Slam winners Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe, both of whom paved the way for African Americans to compete internationally in tennis.

During his research, however, Laurant found that Johnson—nicknamed “Whirlwind”—was a “wild child” in his early years.
He got kicked out of colleges, went through a couple of marriages, and was an outstanding football player, scoring eight touchdowns
in a single game at Lincoln University.

“He’s a character,” Laurant said. “He’s a fascinating person. He’s a man of many contradictions. That’s part of it, too. … Sometimes, if you leave out the bad stuff, it’s not as significant, what they do.”

Pierce Street’s denizens also faced racism and other forms of discrimination while trying to achieve the American Dream. Chauncey Spencer—Anne’s son the Tuskegee Airman—had to go to Chicago to get his pilot’s license, because he couldn’t get one in Virginia.

After serving in World War II, he was caught up in McCarthyism and accused of being a communist.

Despite these roadblocks, Chauncey Spencer became a pioneering aviator, a police commissioner, a government official, an author and a member of the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame.

“What we can learn from [them] is they didn’t allow themselves to be stopped,” Laurant said. “They just went ahead and did what they wanted to do and succeeded in it.”

It wasn’t only the full-time residents of Pierce Street that impacted American history, but also the educators, writers, artists, athletes and luminaries who spent time there.

Visitors to Edward and Anne Spencer’s house at 1313 Pierce Street included, among others, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall and George Washington Carver, described by Laurant as “evangelist of the humble peanut.”
Boxer Joe Louis and baseball player Jackie Robinson also made appearances on Pierce Street, as did Ota Benga, a Congolese Pygmy once exhibited at the Bronx Zoo. He was a student of Anne Spencer’s and a playmate to her children.

One visitor to the Spencer house was singer Marian Anderson who, in 1939, was denied an opportunity to sing at Constitution Hall because she was black. Instead, Anderson held a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that attracted 75,000 people.

“Instead of being defeated, all of these people [on Pierce Street] and the people they drew to them, they didn’t take no for an answer,” Laurant said.

While at the News & Advance, Laurant said he wrote numerous articles about Anne Spencer’s gardens and Pierce Street, but it wasn’t until about a year ago that he got “really serious” about writing the book.

“It was a fun book to do, and I just wanted to make these people a little more human and more kind of believable in some of the stuff that they had to overcome,” Laurant, now semi-retired and living in Lake George, N.Y., said.

“I bet there’s not another city block in the country that has as much history as that one does.”

By Suzanne Ramsey

Occupation: Librarian/Builder/Developer/Home Inspector/Writer (although, truth be told, I’d starve if the latter were the only one)
Hobbies: Reading, riding motorcycles, timber-frame construction, shooting, flying and building airplanes
Resides: Goode, Va.

Tell us about your history in Lynchburg?
I moved to Lynchburg in 1974, after completing my freshman year at Penn State, in order to attend Lynchburg Baptist College. Graduate school involved a return to Pennsylvania and attendance at University of Pittsburgh, after which I returned to Lynchburg.
My “Lynchburg day-to-day” initially meant being part of the faculty at Liberty University from 1978 until 1993. After that, my part-time business ventures became full time and I’ve been involved in construction, developing Cedar Rock subdivision, helping to start The Lynchburg Insurance Group and running J.F. & Associates Inspections.

What inspired you to build your own aircraft?
In 1976 I was one of six or eight students who signed up for flying lessons through the college. . .this fledgling program eventually became Liberty University’s ultra-successful School of Aeronautics, and I am proud to have been an early part of it.
I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands, and the discovery of Kitplanes Magazine and the world of experimental aircraft in 2003 was intriguing… I started building in September 2004.

How long did it take to build your aircraft?
Construction began in 2004, and the plane flew in 2014, but there was a several year hiatus because business had gotten too busy. All told it took a little over 1,800 hours in a three-year period.

Tell us briefly about your crash experience.
The plane had accumulated about 50 hours and was functioning perfectly. My son, Nate, was visiting from North Carolina and on June 15, 2013, I took him up for his first flight. It was great. When we landed, I called my wife to let her know we were down safely, and she suggested flying to PA to have dinner with my parents. The circumstances leading up to the crash were several, but the short version is that I flared too high, bent the nose-wheel upon landing, careened off the runway and flipped the plane.

What did you learn in those months of rehab following the crash?
I learned what everyone learns eventually:
That life is short, your circumstances can change in an instant and that you need to make the most of every day. All clichés. . .
and all true.

Do you still fly?
As often as I can. However, getting back to that point took two years and is an entire story in itself.

What led you to write your book Inverted: Looking Back on Walking Away?
Going from being very busy to being able to do almost nothing was more difficult than I imagined. Taking notes about what was medically happening, going over the accident in my head and writing down experiences and feelings was therapeutic. Those notes led to the book.

What are some of your favorite local haunts?
A few pretty good restaurants, Lynchburg Airport, just about anywhere on Smith Mt. Lake and Falwell Airport.

For someone new to the area, what should they know about
our community?
The people are fantastic! In my home inspection business, I’ve met several thousand homebuyers over the past 20 years. Invariably, almost all the folks moving here from out of town comment positively on the people they meet.

What do you recommend visitors do when visiting Lynchburg?
Hike or drive on the parkway in the spring or fall, enjoy a boat ride on Smith Mt. Lake in the summer and get someone to take you up in a small plane at sunset any time of the year. The views and natural beauty are breathtaking.

What does “Lynchburg Living” mean to you?
Life at a pace that allows time to be savored while still offering educational and cultural amenities amongst a diverse group of people who largely hold to traditional values.

Contact Chuck at charles.hagerty@gmail.com

Occupation: Volunteer Coordinator at Sheffield Elementary School
RESIDES: Lynchburg

You’ve volunteered with Lynchburg City Schools (LCS) for more than 37 years! What kept you involved?
The Spirit of Volunteerism is an important part of who I am as a total person. I am so humbled to share my heart and hands, if I am needed on a committee within my community, to assist the amazing teachers that educate our children, to help someone in need or to work in my church.

What have you observed over those 37 years?
I have volunteered within LCS on every level. At one point I had a child in elementary, middle and high school all at the same time. I volunteered at each one of their schools. It was a challenge, but I thoroughly enjoyed being involved with the principals, teachers and staff. I have personally witnessed the dedication of our teachers, and their total commitment to ensure that our children are getting what they need to succeed. . . .Our amazing teachers continue to be the unsung heroes in so many success stories.

Why did you start volunteering?
I have volunteered in some capacity my entire life. Even as a child,
I volunteered on committees within my church and my hand was the first to go up if I was asked to volunteer for a project at school. Regardless of what career I had, I never stopped volunteering. When my children started school, it presented an opportunity for me to become a school volunteer.

What do you appreciate about Lynchburg?
I was born and lived my formative years in Concord, Va. After my college years, I married and relocated to Cleveland, Ohio.
I never could really call Cleveland home. I was not used to a city so large, and the complexities that I could never adjust to. I appreciate the intimacy and simplicity of a smaller community. Lynchburg has really grown since my family moved here in 1975. I feel that the changes being made are socially, economically and culturally consistent with a community that desires quality economic growth.

What type of work have you done?
I have been blessed to have several careers. I have been an educator, an administrative assistant, medical secretary and had my own state-licensed home day care business. I have a business, Eyvonne’s Divine Innovations. I am a wedding planner/director and events planner. I also have volunteered within the community other than the school system. I was Neighborhood Watch President for 13 years, and I served on the Youth and Prevention Board for many years.

What do you and your family enjoy doing together?
We love being surrounded by family and friends that love our community as much as we do. [We] thoroughly enjoy the scenic beauty that we freely share with our out-of-town relatives. My grandchildren especially enjoy Fun Quest and Amazement Square.

What are some of your favorite spring traditions?
My husband, Roy, takes such pride in getting our lawn ready for the first appearance of the daffodils. I enjoy decorating our home, adding touches of spring everywhere. We will have a feast for Easter Sunday and have our grandchildren for Spring Break from school.

For someone new to the area, what should they know about our community?
I feel confident in sharing that our community is progressive, has some of the best schools, colleges and opportunities for learning and advancement. Our community presents an opportunity to get involved in and attend cultural events and volunteering in many ways within our community.

What do you recommend visitors do here?
Take a walk downtown, get out and meet the people and get a feel of our Southern Hospitality that is so contagious.

What does “Lynchburg Living” mean to you?
Continuing to support my community through volunteering, being of assistance in any way and embracing this wonderful concept of family and home that I see and feel every day from so many people. I am so happy to call Lynchburg “My Home.”