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Naples man boldly goes where few have gone |
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December 17, 2017 |
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By Mike Weland
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| Steve Price,
Naples, once a 10-year-old Star Trek fan
who grew up to be expert in lights,
switches and buttons. |
Here's an improbable story about two kids
growing up on opposite ends of the country, both
watching the original Star Trek, and both
playing the various roles of the crew of the USS Enterprise; Captain
Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Mr. Sulu, et al, in
childhood romps with their best friends.
Unlike
most of their other friends, though, being fans of the 1960s classic never faded
for these two.
One, inspired by the Star Trek he watched when
he was about 10, became infatuated with lights,
switches and buttons and grew up to build
aircraft interiors in Lake Stevens, Washington,
in the days before the events in this story
unfold, the
other became an Elvis impersonator.
For 22 years, James Cawley, Ticonderoga,
New York, traveled the world as one of the top
three ranked Elvis impersonators on the planet,
thanks to his amazing resemblance to "The King"
in appearance, mannerisms and voice.
He often toured with a 15-piece orchestra,
female dancers, often even joined by The Jordanaires, Elvis' original backup
quartet.
But he never lost his love for all things Star
Trek.
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James Cawley,
Ticonderoga, New York, grew up to be an
Elvis with a love of all things Star
Trek. |
In 1997, Cawley
began collecting props and costumes from the
original series and, using blue prints he'd
acquired, began working on building the bridge
of the original Enterprise. It was a beginning.
He went on to spend
over $100,000 each constructing near-flawless
recreations of sets in an abandoned car
dealership in Port Henry, New York.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
About nine years ago, the aircraft interior
builder who loved lights, switches and buttons,
Steve Price, and his family; wife DeAnne and
daughters Alexandra, twins Brittni and Samantha,
and Madeline, the baby of the family, grew
disenchanted with the hustle and bustle of life
on the Washington coast and they began looking
around for a slower paced place, one with good
schools and good values.
A friend from church who'd moved here told them of Boundary
County and School District 101. During a visit,
the Prices fell in love, and when Steve went back
to work, he turned in his one-year notice,
earning the chuckles of his supervisors and
co-workers.
But, one year later to the day, the Prices put their Lake
Stevens house on the market, sold it three days
later, packed up and moved to Boundary County.
But there were few jobs in Bonners Ferry for
light, switch and button experts. Money got a
little tight, and Steve was forced to offer one
of his
prize pieces of Star Trek memorabilia, a replica tricorder he'd had for years, on eBay.
He was
astounded, he said, to discover that there was a
whole subculture of avid Star Trek fans as the bids
for that one item went up to about $400, far
more than the $20 or $30 he'd expected.
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| Science
Station Moiré |
That got him thinking.
He was a guy who loved
Star Trek, and he was an expert with lights,
switches and buttons. He did some research and
built a Science Station Moiré pattern generator
as appeared on the bridge of
the USS Enterprise on which Spock served as
science officer.
He put it on Ebay, and bidding again went far
higher than Steve imagined possible. He built
and quickly sold several, in the interim finding
a local business that needed someone expert in,
well, making precision things.
At Diedrich Roasters, Ponderay, where they have "a strong spiritual
belief in the craft of roasting and in the mystery
of the coffee bean" which is "the reason why
every Diedrich is hand built from the inside
out, specifically engineered to achieve one
goal -- the perfect roast," Steve found the perfect
fit for as exacting a craftsman as he is, and he
became
their electrical department supervisor.
It wasn't long before he was spending a growing
amount of his dwindling spare time at his hobby out in the green shop on
their property south of Naples as word of his
skill grew.
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| Star Trek
TOS Beta 4 Desktop Computer built by
Steve, indistinguishable from the ones
used throughout the show in Kirk and
Spock's quarters, the briefing room and
other parts of the ship. The type 4B is
one of the most recognized computers on
the show. |
He expanded and
perfected his repertoire of Star Trek TOS (the
Original Series) parts,
getting plans and diagrams from the original
manufacturers where he could, finding the rare original
pieces from the set of the Star Trek
series to take measurements so as to make them not only identical in
appearance, but better in performance.
He
expanded from offering his hand crafted props
solely on eBay to offering them made to order on
his own website,
trekpropsandstuff.com.
It wasn't long before he became a name among
those who collect Star Trek memorabilia, and
Steve was soon building parts, pieces and kits
of everything from the Enterprise NCC-1701
series star ship that wasn't subject to
copyright.
As word got out about his high quality, on-time
delivery and service above and beyond the call
of duty, it wasn't long before Steve was filling
orders and shipping Star Trek memorabilia across
the U.S. and Canada.
"My customers are doctors, lawyers," Steve said.
"There are Star Trek fans everywhere. I got one
order from an Adam Savage, and I said, 'wait a
minute! I know that name!' I checked the
address, and sure enough, it was the Adam Savage
from Myth Busters!"
As orders climbed, there was one very good
customer from the east coast who stood out.
And now we fly back in time to New York.
In 1985, the pre-Elvis James Cawley was a
teenager and a big "Star Trek" fan. He wanted an
authentic uniform, so he decided to try to get
one made by the costume designer from the
original 1960s show.
"One afternoon I called information, dialed the
operator, got the Paramount number and asked for
the costume designer," Cawley told CNN reporter
Julian Cummings for a January 21, 2016, article.
"And he answered the phone!"
"William Ware Theiss and Cawley hit it off
instantly," Cummings wrote. "It was the
beginning of a friendship that boldly sent
Cawley deeper into the 'Star Trek' universe than
any fan has gone before. Soon after the call,
the men met in Los Angeles, where Theiss gave
Cawley patterns and fabric samples to help him
make his own authentic "Star Trek" uniform.
"When Theiss died in 1992 he gave Cawley a
special gift: the blueprints to the sets of the
original "Star Trek" show."
Using money he'd earned as one of the world's
best Elvises, James set about recreating the sets
from the Star Trek series he remembered so
vividly, starting with the bridge from which
Captain James Tiberius Kirk led his crew on a
five year mission "to explore strange new
worlds, to seek out new life and new
civilizations, to boldly go where no man has
gone before."
He and his grandfather missed no detail. And
then, once the bridge was built, he decided that
not only did he want to be Elvis, he wanted to
be Captain Kirk, too!
He became a film producer and developed "Star Trek: New Voyages" not as a
way to make money, but as a way to keep Star
Trek alive for old fans and new, producing
"fandom" episodes with all
volunteer casts and an all volunteer film crews
for release on a then-infant internet.
"Star Trek: New Voyages" started drawing a
following, and as it did, others tried to
emulate Cawley, spinning off their own fandom
Star Trek episodes, but none did it quite like
he did; his exacting detail, well thought out
scripts and quality production, even though the
actors, in the beginning, were merely fans just as he
was.
But pretty soon, he was attracting some of the
original actors who had played roles in the
original Star Trek series, as well as other of
the science fiction shows that followed.
Cawley left his role as Captain Kirk to focus on
production, on building more and better sets,
sometimes stepping back in front of the camera
to play bit roles, including, in one, Elvis
Presley.
It was, perhaps, inevitable. In building exact
replica sets for "Star Trek: New Voyages,"
Cawley frequently shopped the internet for parts
and pieces, and he soon noted the high quality
and precision of the pieces he was getting
shipped in from a place called Naples, Idaho.
He and Steve were soon conferring regularly by
email and phone, and in late 2016, Steve flew to
New York, where he met Cawley for the first time
and was welcomed like a long lost brother.
He gave Steve a tour, and Steve was amazed at
the detail ... and surprised to see that no
matter where he looked, he found pieces that
he'd made. While there, he not only got the
grand tour, but he got to help build a set, one
that had been torn down though it was near
completion after James found that the diameter
was about an inch and a half off.
He also invited Steve to act in an episode, and
he did, working 18-hour days for the two weeks
the shoot lasted.
"It was grueling," Steve said, "intense. But
what a great experience!"
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| Richard
Hatch |
Among the actors he worked with, volunteers all,
was "Battlestar Gallactica" star Richard Hatch.
Unfortunately, an early informal agreement
Cawley had with Paramount Studios in which they
overlooked his filming his Star Trek spin-off so
long as no one was paid and no profits were made
was being changed due to the number of upstarts
trying to jump on the bandwagon.
Rather than fight, Cawley switched direction.
That was the final episode of "Star Trek: New
Voyages" ever produced, and it was never
released. It was also, it turned out, Richard
Hatch's last role; he died of pancreatic cancer
at age 71 on February 7, 2017.
Cawley worked with Paramount on getting licensed
to use his immaculate sets to open
The Star
Trek: Original Series Set Tour, 112 Montcalm
Street, Ticonderoga, New York.
There, guests can walk through sets that are
complete recreations, but more realistic because
they don't have the cutouts in the originals
that allowed access by camera, light and sound
crews, each set with hundreds of hours of
serious research invested to capture the
original Desilu Studio sets as they looked
during the years between 1966-1969, while Star
Trek TOS was in production.
From the bridge to Bones McCoy's sick bay to Mr.
Scott's engine room, it's all so meticulously
recreated even those who appeared in Star Trek
TOS would feel as if they were back on the set.
Last August, at their third annual Trekonderoga,
TOS stars Walter Koenig and Nichelle Nichols
marveled at how down detailed and accurate they
were.
Cawley has invited Steve back to New York in the
spring, and Steve is as agog over the upcoming
trip as that 10-year-old boy would have been, as
he will be meeting none other than Captain Kirk
himself, William Shatner.
"I had to ask him how much because I know that
getting Mr. Shatner to a meet and greet isn't
cheap, and James just laughed and told me family
doesn't pay," he said. "So I'll be going and
meeting Captain Kirk and working on a few things
at the museum.
He can't stay long; he is still plying a hobby
that is growing by leaps and bounds, with orders
now coming in from around the world that he has
to build and ship in his "spare" time.
And then there's the fact that his family is all
back here in one place, and a little bigger.
One daughter recently returned after living in
New Zealand, another is home from Hawaii, where
her husband served in the military, and she
brought home Steve and DeAnne's first
grandchild.
"It's a little bit crowded," Steve said of their
house, "but it's great to have everyone home.
They are both looking to settle here, but we're
in no hurry."
Life is good, Steve says, for a boy who built
his first Enterprise bridge out of boxes with
lights, switches and buttons so he and his
friends could boldly go where no boys had gone
before.
"I'm still playing Star Trek," he said, smiling.
"I just have better toys!"
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