Fun

Nine Years and 35,000 Legos Later

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When we asked for a faculty member with unusual hobbies, the ROTC sent us straight to recruiting and operations officer Dave Jungheim. As it turns out, building the Salt Lake Temple out of more than thirty-five thousand Lego bricks can get you noticed.

While that’s what Jungheim did, it wasn’t for attention as much as it was a pursuit of creativity—and to please his wife. Jungheim, like many, rekindled his childhood love of Legos as an adult. While in flight school in 2002, his pieces were all gears and pneumatics for engineering robots. Then his wife, Catherine, suggested he try something different and build the Salt Lake Temple. Knowing the scale and the cost of such a project, his initial reaction was disbelieving: “This is not something we’re ever going to build.” After Catherine persisted, Jungheim scrapped together a fifth of one tower over a Labor Day weekend to prove the task impossible.

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