Burns attends S&K’s signing of a new $2 million, five-year contract with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., schmoozed with tribal leaders in Pablo on Thursday, eating bratwurst and soft drinks with Salish Kootenai College President Joe McDonald, and sitting down with a drum group from Kicking Horse Job Corps that performed during his visit.

By JOHN STROMNES of the Missoulian

Earlier, he stopped by S&K Electronics http://www.skecorp.com a thriving tribally owned enterprise that makes circuit boards and other products for the national defense industry, and provides circuit boards and ancillary services for private nondefense manufacturers in Montana and elsewhere. The business boasts $9 million in annual sales.

Burns took the occasion – the signing of a $2 million, five-year contract with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin for components for the F-16 fighter aircraft – to endorse the ultimate product of the Pablo defense-industry firm.

"You are a tremendously important part of this whole machine that makes us free," Burns told some 100 employees and others who assembled under a big tent on the grass outside the 40,000-square-foot manufacturing plant for the occasion.

Then, back to schmoozing.

"You don’t know how fortunate you are to have a guy like Joe McDonald around," Burns said of the Salish Kootenai College founder and president. McDonald, 70, escorted Burns on his visit to the college campus in Pablo.

"Keep him in the harness as long as you’ve got him trapped," Burns joked. Some 250 bratwurst sandwiches were barbecued for the lunch on an especially green expanse of campus lawn outside the food service building.

During his visit, Burns never seemed at a loss for joke, a bon mot or a turn-of-phrase remark to put his constituents at ease, and to assure them, though a senator, he was "just folks" after all.

Inside the sanctum at S&K Electronics, where only highly skilled workers are usually allowed, Burns approached Fred Courville, a certified circuit-board solderer from Polson, who was dressed in a pressed blue lab coat as he bent intently over his workbench, testing an intricate electronic component of a circuit board.

"What does this thing do?" Burns asked, pointing to a strap snugged up tightly to Courville’s wrist and tethering him to his work table.

"That’s a grounding strap so I don’t build up a (electric) charge," Courville replied.

"I’ve been grounded all my life," Burns shot back, chuckling as he continued his tour of the assembly plant.

Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or [email protected]

http://missoulian.com/articles/2003/08/29/news/mtregional/news08.txt