C0mpany: Display Dynamics Inc.
Headquarters: Clayton
Specialty: Design, build and service museum and other displays.
Founded: 1994
Owner: Veit Von Parker
No. of employees: 20.
Sales in 2011: Not disclosed.
Website: www.disdyn.com
Spellbound visitors to the nation’s top history and military museums probably don’t know that the man behind the exhibits is Dayton native Veit Von Parker, a 54-year-old business owner with an unusual family history that ties directly to many of the displays his company builds.
Display Dynamics Inc., of Clayton, achieved much recent fame with the construction of the giant 7-ton, 52-foot standing Jesus statue Lux Mundi on Interstate 75 at Solid Rock Church in Monroe. Now, Display is getting ready for an out-of-this-world challenge to build a life-size model of a NASA space shuttle for the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
As important as those projects are, it’s the work at premier museums that’s dominated the life of Parker’s company since it was founded in 1994. It’s a highly specialized field. Parker estimates there are only about a dozen companies in the nation with the means to design, engineer and fabricate large major museum exhibits. Some projects run into the millions of dollars, others deliver at more modest sums.
Parker, who began his professional life as a Montgomery County independent contractor with an interest in architecture, now employs about 20 artists, designers, cabinet makers, paint technicians, fabricators and engineers in a 65,000-square-foot plant.
Display Dynamics designed and built exhibits for the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, the Aullwood Audubon Nature Center, Boonshoft Museum of Discovery, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Dayton History, the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in Manhattan, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Veit (the pronunciation rhymes with ‘fight’) Von Parker connects to many of the exhibits. His mother was German, a Nuremberg native who grew up during the rise and fall of Adolph Hitler. His father was a black U.S. Army sergeant, who met his mother after World War II while stationed in occupied Germany. The family settled in Dayton, and Veit grew up with two sisters and a brother in what was known as the “hog bottom” neighborhood in West Dayton on Gettysburg Avenue in the shadow of the old Dayton Work House.
With a family history that parallels 20th century German, black and U.S. military experience, his exhibits have explained Nazi propaganda and pseudo-science, the dangerous foundry jobs and overall culture of black workers in the early days of Detroit’s auto industry and the lives of humans and machines aboard the aircraft carrier Intrepid, which was commissioned in 1943 and now docks permanently as a floating museum at a New York City pier.
How does he explain how his professional role ended up being so closely tied to his personal history?
“There is no way I could have planned this in my life. I realize that God is working in my life, and I chalk it up to his grace,” Parker said. “I’m able to get a sense for what certain periods of history were like.”
While Intrepid won the competition to land the Enterprise, one of the retired NASA space shuttles, the U.S. Museum of the Air Force is readying for display the shuttle trainer. Parker’s company in early September won a $1.5 million Air Force contract to complete by September 2013 a full-size reproduction of the shuttle payload bay, tail and engine sections to be built around the crew trainer.
Visitors will be able to walk through the payload bay, look into the mid-deck and flight deck, and learn about astronaut training. An added feature is a 60-foot amphitheater for student groups where shuttle technology will be explained.
By early next year, the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery should have Display Dynamic’s “Exoplanets” exhibit open. It’s being built courtesy of an $800,000 grant from NASA. This display will explain the search for life on earth-like planets.
Display Dynamics put together a Boonshoft exhibit on the region’s water resources. “It’s been very effective in engaging families about the tremendous resources we have here,” said Mark Meister, president and CEO of the Dayton Society of Natural History.
“Veit’s the kind of guy you can sit down and dream with,” said Brady Kress, president and CEO of Dayton History.
Display Dynamic’s next challenge -displays to fire up youths for the nation’s STEM school programs, which stands for Science, Technology Engineering and Math. The shuttle exhibit will tie to STEM programs as an instruction zone. The way Parker sees it, for the U.S. to lead economically, it must produce competitive tech-savvy students. He wants to play a part.
About the Author