When I was seven years old, hide-and-seek was the best game ever. It has everything you could ask for in a game: a winner and a loser, a seeker and a hider. It has moments of suspense, triumph and bitter defeat. It can have anywhere from two players to a thousand. Sadly, as we grow older, we lose our enthusiasm toward this game. By middle school, we scoff at kids, foolishly hiding in the most obvious of spots.

During World War II, the United States government played its own game of hide-and-seek. If you follow this link, you will find a series of pictures that tell the story of the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deemed that this airplane plant needed to be hidden, fearing that the Japanese would find and bombard it.

So, like a seven-year-old, they hid it. Being crafty, they camouflaged it as a suburban farmland – because what is more innocent than the suburbs? They completed the landscape by routinely moving objects around. For example, they moved a few cars daily to give the illusion that there were real people living on this grassland. They even went so far as to put laundry out on a clothesline and take it down in due time.

In a way, Gannon holds the same duties as the camouflage. It protects us while we are being pieced together in all our prospective majors. So the question I pose is this: What is Gannon hiding?

Like the seven-year-old version of me, I looked around to find what could be hiding under the Gannon camouflage. I’ve found that what was hiding in Lockheed Burbank is the same thing that Gannon is hiding: people.

Just as Lockheed Burbank had people building airplanes to help the war effort, Gannon has people educating the future generations.

As a tour guide, I want to show you all the things that make Gannon great. I want to take you behind the camouflage and show you how we “assemble” our students. I want to show you the community that you will create when you come here.

From living in dorms with fellow freshmen to just being on a college campus in general, there is a deeply rooted feeling of community here at Gannon. This translates to great friendships and a positive attitude toward fellow classmates.

Every Gannon student has stories about the community we create. Sadly, there is not enough time in the day for me to tell you all of them. On tour, I will try to show you our community, but I might fall short. You’ll just have to believe me and the people you meet.

Take another look inside the mind of our Gannon Guide.