By Jack Krost

Drew Stauss Gets A BANG Out of His Work

Drew Stauss' second job is hard, sweaty work. He has to haul heavy boxes onto a trailer and cart them to the job site. He has to carefully set up all his equipment. He has to supervise a crew of some ten people. It doesn't pay much, but many people are depending upon him.

When all is ready, Drew sets things in motion. There's a brief hiss, and then....

K-A-B-O-O-M ! ! !
Drew sets off the fireworks for Decatur's July 4th festivities every year.

"I love to blow things up. It's a real adrenaline rush. I feel like a little kid," he says. "It's one thing to watch fireworks from a distance, but it's much more fun to watch them from ground zero."

Drew, who lives with his wife, Julie Sammons, and their six-year-old daughter, Amelia, in Oakhurst on Evans Drive, has been blowing things up for some time.
A commercial photographer, he got into it when was hired to take pictures of fireworks for a pyrotechnics company that wanted to put a catalogue together back in 1989. The fireworks were actually set off over Piedmont Park, to the amazement of some mystified bystanders.

Drew, who owns Departure Studios, found the photo shoot interesting, but he thought it might be more interesting to be on the other side of the lens. That prompted him to take the company's training seminar, and one thing led to another.

For several years, he joined crews on July 4th fireworks displays. Then he handled a fireworks display himself at a friend's wedding. And then he did fireworks shows at parties for a contractor in southern Georgia.

Then, 11 years ago, he was offered the Decatur job by Melrose Pyrotechnics, a Chicago firm that handles some 1,000 fireworks shows around the country. Drew is the crew chief. He gets the fireworks from Melrose, lines up a team of helpers and plans the show.

Melrose provides $1 million in bonding for the performance. A county judge must approve the show. For his part, Drew has to keep up with his annual training.
When Drew and Julie started dating, she soon learned about his other life as the guy who likes to blow things up. It seemed like quite a departure from her day job as a federal prosecutor, and she enthusiastically joined him, taking the training herself.

"It's really exciting and a lot of fun," she says. "It's like nothing else I do in my life. We've done some interesting things, but nothing like blowing things up."
When they're not blowing things up together, they like to ride mountain bikes, go kayaking or play for the Seed & Feed Marching Abominable, an offbeat marching band that performs in the Inman Park Festival and the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. He plays a drum, and she plays the trumpet.

Drew also has been active in overseeing improvements in Oakhurst Park funded through the citywide park improvement program, and he and his wife Julie have been at the forefront in supporting the school board's controversial plans for school consolidation.

But there's no controversy about how much fun soaring rockets can be.

When it comes time for combustion, Drew puts on an old T-shirt, tucks his long ponytail under a cap and goes over his long list of fireworks, an assortment of shells with such names as "Red Glitter," "White Spangled Rays," and "Titanium Salute."

Bigger displays, such as the one at Lenox Mall, are computerized and timed to go off with precision. But in smaller ones, such as Decatur's, each of the shells has to be set off by hand.

Drew and his crew load the shells into large racks of tubes. They set up as many as possible before the show. But once a show starts, they have to reload the racks, quickly.

"And even if you know what you're doing, which I do, things can go wrong," Drew says. "Fuses are unpredictable. Some take longer than others to burn. And every year, someone gets a minor burn."

The fire department, of course, is always close by. And it should be contacted if anyone happens to come across an unexploded shell.
Julie, a 15 year Oakhurst resident, notes that she and Drew are "thrilled to be playing to the hometown crowd" in Decatur.

Drew and his cohorts do their dirty, smoky work on the top level of the parking deck behind the courthouse. It's the best place to launch fireworks over Decatur Square. But the size of the shells is limited by the fact that the courthouse is so close.

He's in radio contact with city officials to time the concluding barrage with the band's grand finale in the 1812 Overture.

When the fireworks celebration is over, and people are packing up their lawn chairs and picnic baskets, the celebrating is not over for Drew and friends. They always do a "victory lap" around the parking deck with their flares, to the applause of people below.

"I see it as sort of a party, although there's no drinking, at least until it's over," Drew says.

That's Drew for you: a guy who thinks life is a blast.