Is the sky the limit? We may soon know when a Meade telescope and retractable dome arrive at Big Springs Ranch next spring.

Like the many gifts that seem to find the Ranch on a routine schedule, Mary Lorraine Brinton wrote Gary Priour in April with an offer that left him speechless. She wanted to give the Ranch a 12-inch research telescope, known in the field as the Baby Hubble. It’s a 12-inch Meade LX200, fully electric for tracking and GPS powered. The Ranch would simply have to provide a home for it, and use it.

Bill Cammack, cousin of Oma Bell Perry and friend of the Ranch, together with Bill’s sister Emily Bierschwale, contacted Brinton about donating the scope. Brinton has recently begun a foundation to provide high-quality telescopes to schools and retreat centers to "open up the glory of the heavens" to students across the country, much as viewing the stars opened a whole new world for her late husband, Henry Brinton, former Research Director at NASA, and himself a designer and builder of telescopes.

While Henry was guiding mankind to the moon and beyond, Priour was envisioning a campus where abused children could reconnect with their universe. He wanted to bring them back down to earth from a life spent dreaming of escape from horrific home situations.

But he also knew that someday he wanted them to be able to dream big again, to see the universe beyond, and while mapping out the rudiments of his own dream, he sketched in an astronomical observatory.

"I was a school teacher in 1976 when God spoke a dream into my heart to build an innovative facility for abused and abandoned children," he wrote to Brinton. "One morning I awoke to a vision of the whole campus, almost exactly as it is now built. When I drew a map of this first campus for our initial brochure back in 1977, I placed an observatory/telescope on the brochure, just as I had seen it in that vision. Why not dream big?"

Now, 30 years later, Gary’s dream has blossomed into a dual campus, and only one piece has not been built from the original plan – the observatory.

The leftovers from the annual April dedication picnic at the Big Springs campus were barely out the door when Priour got the surprise letter from Brinton announcing HCYR as the recipient of the annual gift. All Priour had to do was pick a spot with the help of experts, build a pad on which to set the telescope and cover it with a dome.

A professional astronomer, Brad Perry from NASA, will come, set the scope in place, and train the staff in its operation – staff that are now beside themselves waiting for its arrival. To be positioned on the Big Springs campus, home to the Ed Brune High School and distant from city lights, the telescope will receive regular use by our older students, and be an excellent field trip opportunity for the younger children at the Ingram campus.