For a museum that has spent nearly three decades trying to convince Mountain State families that wonder does not require a border crossing, an airplane is a fitting teaching tool. On Saturday, Oct. 24, Spark! Imagination and Science Center at 5000 Green Bag Road in Morgantown holds its first-ever aviation exhibition, Spark Takes Flight!, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Admission is the museum's standard $5 for children and adults, free for members.
The lineup is deliberately low-tech and hands-on: glider building, wind tunnel flight experiments, plane design exercises and career exploration. The point, executive director Kelley Burd-Huss said, is that the barrier to entry for engineering is roughly the cost of a sheet of paper. "When you fold a paper airplane and experiment with it, you're being an engineer," she said. "You're engineering the aircraft, and it's got a really low barrier to entry in terms of discovery."
The guest of honor is Ed Waske, chief operating officer of EASW Engine & Airframe Solutions Worldwide and an inductee of the West Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame, who will be on hand to share anecdotes from a career that has spanned more than five decades and work in nine countries. Waske's own origin story is the sort of thing a room full of kids might actually listen to. His father was a Marine Corps F6F Hellcat mechanic in the Pacific during World War II; his mother worked on dirigibles at Goodyear Aerospace in Akron, Ohio. But what hooked him was a "dollar flight" at age 4, riding in the co-pilot seat as the ground fell away. "You go, 'Wow, that was fun. Can I do it again?'" he recalled in a 2026 interview with WV News. More than 70 years later, he says, the memory is still vivid. He went on to build model airplanes, a hobby he keeps up today, and after his eyesight kept him out of the pilot's seat he entered the Air Force as an aircraft mechanic, eventually co-founding EASW in Harrison County more than two decades ago.
That pairing — a child's first paper glider and a hall-of-famer's first flight — is the whole idea. Burd-Huss describes north-central West Virginia as uncharted territory for STEM and air travel careers, and she wants children to see the runway that exists in their own backyard. "This is a place where kids can get ideas," she said. "They can maybe find their spark, and they can do so knowing that there are programs right here in our area that can accept them and can carry them all the way into a fulfilling career."
Her conviction has a personal root. Growing up, she said, her parents drove her out of state to science centers and children's museums because there were none nearby. For her seventh birthday she went to COSI, the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio, and had a wonderful time — and came away with a quiet misconception. "I started to make the mistake that because I had an amazing experience out-of-state, that's where the opportunity lived," she said. "One of the things we're trying to do at Spark is help people recognize that the opportunity gap that people are perceiving isn't necessarily the case."
Spark! has been chipping at that gap for a long time. The organization traces to 1998, when a group of parents and teachers set out to build a children's museum in Morgantown and formed the nonprofit Recreational Opportunities For All Young Kids Initiative, Inc. In 2002 that effort opened The Fun Factory, a play space for preschoolers and their caregivers. In February 2011 it became the Children's Discovery Museum of West Virginia; as board and staff recognized how much of the work was science, the museum renovated and rebranded, and in 2016 it emerged as Spark! Imagination and Science Center. It now bills itself as the region's only hands-on children's museum and science center, serving families across a 10-county area that reaches into North Central West Virginia, Southwest Pennsylvania and Mountain Maryland.
Spark Takes Flight! belongs to a deliberate strategy of rotating "platform" exhibits, each built around a different academic discipline and often with a local partner. "Using these opportunities really make it so that a small museum like ours isn't the same thing twice," Burd-Huss said. "Every time you come in, you know you're going to find something new to discover."
The setting fits the theme of reinvention. The Mountaineer Mall, where Spark! is housed, now describes itself as a mix of businesses, educational institutions, arts and historical organizations, and start-ups — a shopping center that has become something closer to a community campus.
Spark! is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and typically closed Sunday and Monday except during Monongalia County school breaks, snow days and special events. Upcoming programs and pre-registration details are posted at sparkwv.org.