By Michael F. Carmichael
July 7, 2011
What’s a retired General Motors Corp. engineer doing at a birthday party for a couple of 8-year-olds who aren’t his grandkids? He’s helping them learn about robotics.
Walt Hickok (ancestor U.S. Marshall Wild Bill “is from the other branch of the family”) is one of several people who are assisting the youngsters – and occasional parents – in learning about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) before devouring pizza and cake at The Robot Garage.
| Walt Hickok, a retired GM engineer and current robotics mentor. |
|
Hickok is by far the oldest of the assistants – most are computer science majors at a nearby Big Ten university – as they help form LEGO corrals for little electronic critters called Hex Bugs.
LEGO plays a big part at The Robot Garage, which is in a converted garage in an area evolving from warehouses and commercial buildings into a home for innovative and entrepreneurial types whose businesses include a prospering swimming school, a high-end kitchen design firm and a refurbished furniture shop.
The Garage in Birmingham, Mich., is the creation of Jonathan and Sara Jacobs. While they both had attended the same suburban high school, they had gone their separate ways to college and jobs in New York City. A joint friend got them together, says Jonathan Jacobs. “I was online for a movie – not in line because this was New York – as was she and we sort of went on from there.”
After successful careers, she with Liz Claiborne and he with a firm that built computer systems for architects such as Michael Graves and Robert A.M. Stern, the Jacobs decided to come back home to raise a family near their parents. “We had watched our friends in New York with kids and they didn’t have back yards and they didn’t see their grandparents, so, although we were never going to have kids, we moved back home to have kids,” Jacobs laughs.