Lank Avi - The man who painted the universe the story of a planetarium in the heart of the north woods

Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Publishers since 1855
2015 by Ron Legro and Avrum Lank
E-book edition 2015

For permission to reuse material from The Man Who Painted the Universe (978-0-87020-711-2; e-book ISBN: 978-0-87020-712-9), please access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users.

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All photographs are from the collection of Frank A. Kovac Jr. unless otherwise credited.

Photographs identified with WHi or WHS are from the Societys collections; address requests to reproduce these photos to the Visual Materials Archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State Street, Madison, WI 53706.

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Cover design by Anders Hanson, Mighty Media
Interior design and typesetting by Integrated Composition Systems,
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Legro, Ron.

The man who painted the universe : the story of a planetarium in the heart of the north woods / Ron Legro & Avi Lank.

1 online resource.

Includes bibliographical references.

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ISBN 978-0-87020-712-9 (E-book) ISBN 978-0-87020-711-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Kovac, Frank, 1965 2. AstronomersWisconsinBiography. 3. Astronomy. 4. Planetariums. I. Lank, Avi. II. Title. III. Title: Planetarium in the north woods.

QB36.K685

520.92dc23

[B] 2014042431

To Michele and Dannette

I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?

George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah

On a near-freezing March evening in 2001, Frank A. Kovac Jr.s dream came crashing down around him, all 3,500 pounds of it. The dream was a hollow wooden globe twenty-two feet in diameter, and it had just become a deadly object.

Working mostly alone inside his makeshift construction shed in tiny Monico, Wisconsin, Frank had spent four years of hard work fashioning this globe. He was pursuing an ultimate goal: building a working planetarium in the unlikely environs of Wisconsins secluded North Woods.

With great care that night, he had winched the globe off the floor and onto what was supposed to be its permanent home, a thick wooden base ring, inclined and rigged with wheels, which would let him rotate his planetariuma unique structure, as far as he knew. Frank was inspecting his handiwork close to the ring when, with a creaking noise, the globe began to sway. Uh-oh, here it goes, Frank recalls thinking. And then, ruefully, Well, that was a mistake.

Reacting quickly, he ran to the center of the floor underneath the globe, as far away from its inner surface as he could get. Frank crouched as the globe slid off the angled ring and hit the floor. Years later, he remembers how it sounded: There was a lot of noise at this point, recalling the movie Titanicsounds of wood splitting as the ship broke apart.

The fall took only seconds but seemed to last much longer. Frank huddled inside and beneath the hollow globe as it came down. As it fell, the globe knocked aside and broke Franks tall ladder, which barely missed him as it whizzed past. Frank had planned to erect steel support beams later on, but on this fateful evening the floor-based ring sat only on two-by-four timbers. The wood was no match for the globes nearly two tons of falling mass. The globe sliced through the ring, cutting in half its two-inch-thick plywood like scissors through paper. Large splinters shot past Franks arm.

It could have been worse. The globe stopped just short of a complete crashprovidentially, to Franks mind. One temporary support strap remained attached, forcing the globe to come to rest at a slight angle against a concrete perimeter wall and keeping its bottom angled about three feet off the floor.

Franks situation was reminiscent of Buster Keatons in a scene from the classic 1928 silent movie Steamboat Bill, Jr. In it, the famous comedian plays a character who rescues people during a cyclone. The front wall of a house collapses in the storm and looks as if its going to crush poor Keaton, but the fortunate fellow happens to be standing right in the path of an open window that frames him as the surrounding wall slams to the ground. That was how Frank Kovac survived this crash. The hollow globe with its open bottom fell over him, not on him.

That was lucky. Luckier still, Frank avoided being crushed when the spheres upper sections stayed intact. He hadnt been touched. To Frank, it wasnt just luck; it was divine intervention, one of a number of such events that would bless his project.

When his perception of time returned to normal and he had gathered his wits, he crawled to safety from under the dome. He had not yet affixed panels to the globes latticework to enclose it entirely, as hed planned; thus he was able to squeeze through the gaps.

He surveyed the wreckage. The globe had suffered only minor damage, thanks mainly to the support strap that had broken its fall. But the heavy wooden base ring was split in two, which gave Frank pause. Damage to the globes base and its support structure was considerable. This was bad, very bad.

He had been so close. Recent months had brought considerable progress, moving idea toward reality. The project was coming together, despite fits and starts, including the crash of an earlier globe in 1997. This day, beyond all the preceding days in his thirty-six years, had started out as one of his best. After more than four years of hard work on a mostly solo effort that had consumed all his free time, Frank had felt his burden lifting, felt his heart once again soaring into the heavens he had long studied with the devotion of a priest and the eyes of a scientist. He had come so far on his improbable quest and his lifes dream. Earlier tonight, the dream had seemed within his grasp. Now it lay splayed across the floor.

The crash put his entire dream in doubt. He wasnt sure whether he could complete his project. Should he keep trying? How would he ever fix this? How could he make a rotating globe sturdy and safe enough to invite friends and strangers to sit inside? And what other unforeseen challengestechnical, regulatory, financialmight await him?

The biggest challenge would be teaching himself how to paint the universe inside the completed globe. He had an inkling of the projects magnitude. After all, hed been painting stars ever since he was a teenager.