Word: rollered
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Roller's warehouse is a monument to bureaucratic bumbling. A stroll through it stirs up visions of shattered, best-forgotten programs for the public good, and the rise and fall of federal agencies. Of course Roller doesn't see it that way. He prefers to think of his 12,000-sq.-ft. warehouse on the Iowa state fairground in Des Moines as the U.S. Government's very own garage sale...
...Roller operates the warehouse for the surplus property division of Iowa's department of general services for the benefit of some 1,500 public agencies in Iowa. A beneficent act of Congress requires that federal excess property be offered to state and local agencies, virtually free of charge, before it is put on public auction. That means before all those cigar-chomping characters who excel at turning a profit from reselling Government castoffs can lay hands...
...first glance the warehouse, with its mounds of gas-mask bags, ponchos, entrenching tools, field jackets, might be confused with some kind of Army-Navy store. Over the past few years Roller has acquired enough military surplus to equip the national guard of a modest-size Central American dictatorship. G.I. helmets and uniforms, for instance, are much in demand as props for high school drama departments...
Almost routinely, Roller has become arms dealer for the "Cedar Rapids Air Force." He has snagged four UH-1B helicopters for medical evacuation use by the city. Two fly; the others are being cannibalized for spare parts. List price for these helicopters: about $250,000 each. They cost Cedar Rapids only $10,000, for repair and refitting. In addition, Roller has provided 17 two-seater Hughes TH-55 helicopters, some without engines, others near wrecks. Four operable craft have risen, phoenix-like, from the wrecks...
...Roller says, "when you think of Army surplus, you think of only a fraction of what the Federal Government generates." Roaming his domain, Roller glows as he handles a 400-ft. roll of computer paper. "These are neat," he says. "Schools can use them for drawing paper...