Touch of Gray - August / September 2006

Craftsmen find fun and utility at Woodcraft Shop
Going to the (therapy) dogs

Craftsmen find fun and utility at Woodcraft Shop
   The small shop near Apartment Building 3 on the Carolina Meadows campus smells of fresh sawdust and machine oil. Residents who, have qualified for membership in the Woodcraft Shop turn out useful objects from furniture and shop signs to recycling bins for use at the mail kiosks.

   "Sometimes residents call in and say, 'I've got this old brokendown chair. Can you fix it?' said Chairman Bob Newton. "Usually we can. When they offer to pay, we say, 'Just buy a box of screws for the shop.'"

   The Woodcraft Shop serves as a practical utility for members to pursue private projects, and doubles as a facility for jobs that benefit the entire community. Jack Parry and Pete Peterson used the shop and its equipment to repair chairs from the dining. room that had become creaky with age.

   After the dining room staff noted that the cups holding crayons for small children often overturned, Bob Newton designed and hand-made flat wooden spill-proof receptacles for the crayons.For the renovated gift shop, Bert Morhart made a new display sign, and he and John Rocco, who was formerly vice president of a furniture manufacturing company in Armonk, N.Y., built cabinets for the new shop.

   An admiring fellow-member watching Rocco at work exclaimed, "It's a pleasure to watch that man handle a saw."

   He uses his skill for many projects, including the construction of birdhouses and cutout birds of plywood that the young visitors for the annual Camp MeadowWood are encouraged to paint and take home.

   Members have teamed up to build picture frames for Betty MclMIahan's cartoons displayed around Club Center, and screens for the auditorium.

   The shop has been in operation since 1987, when Paul Oakley, a resident and dedicated craftsman, donated a starter group of power tools and installed them in the lower level of the Club Center. Soon afterward, a storm felled cedar trees on the campus, so Oakley and newly recruited members used the fallen timber to build benches that were placed around the golf course.

   In time the membership and the requests for public service projects outgrew the basement quarters. Under Oakley's leadership, the shop was moved to its present quarters.

   Former chairman Bob Kent recalls that a welcome improvement was soon installed in the new quarters - a vacuum-powered cleaning system to keep the shop clear of loose sawdust.

   As more members joined the group, some contributed equipment. Today, the shop provides, access to band saws, a jig saw, power drills and hand drills with bits as small as 1/64th of an inch.

   A craftsman can find sharpening tools, a radial arm saw, table saw, joiner, planer, work benches and almost anything else he a might need to build useful wooden and metal objects of grace and beauty.

   Carolina Meadows workmen are free to use the shop as a convenience when working on campus projects. Each member must sign a statement releasing Carolina Meadows from liability in case of an accident. The 32 members are responsible for cleaning up after themselves, reminded by a sign pointing out that "Mom Don't Work Here No More."

   The Residents Association budgets $200 a year for the shop, with most of the funds going to pay for minor supplies and, for the professional sharpening of power tools.

   One unique, handsome and eminently practical piece of equipment is called a "screwy-goround." It is an octagonal vertical arrangement of drawers that hold screws and other small metal objects, a rotating structure built on a fixed base. The whole piece, including its 72 tapered drawers, was designed and hand-built by Herb Guralnick, whose villa is a virtual museum of exquisitely designed, carefully built and highly useful objects.

   During a Brooklyn boyhood, Guralnick learned to , build toys and equipment from old apple and orange crates scrounged from scrap piles behind grocery stores. His skills grew with his age, and 30 years ago, while living in Rockville Centre, N.Y., he felt the need for a roll-top desk, but was appalled by the price tags of finished desks, running well into four figures.

   "I did copy the design from a desk in a furniture store," Guralnick said. "I was in that store so many times they were ready to throw me out.''

   With infinite patience, he designed and built small drawers and tubby holes for documents. Then in the top of the desk, he installed a combination safe, so well-camouflaged a burglar would be unlikely to recognize its presence. Guralnick said the desk of solid oak materials should last another generation or two.

   Like many of his colleagues, Guralnick prefers to invest his labor only in good woods oak, cherry, teak and other tropical hardwoods. "It doesn't pay to spend your time and energy on bad wood," he said.

   Another craftsman, former chairman Hugh Steele, who spent . working years as a pharmaceutical company executive in Brazil, retains a love for Brazilian cherry and other woods from the tropics. From fine polished woods he builds trivets faced with wine corks and designed to hold hot dishes on a dining room table. A standing order for the wine corks liberated in the Carolina Meadows dining room keeps him supplied for his trivets, which he has presented to many friends as memorable gifts.

   Other hallmark items by Steele are working door knockers carved and painted to resemble woodpeckers, decorating his front door and the doors of many of his neighbors.

   With the opening of the expanded library last year, Steele designed and, built a handsome stand to hold a dictionary and other large reference volumes. Working with library chairman Vickie Badrow, he designed and built a substantial wooden case that now rests under the library's front desk and can hold returned books.

   Membership in the woodcraft shop is open to residents, but only to those with demonstrated competence to use the power tools.

   "First we ask them to hold up their hands so we can count their fingers," Newton joked.

   If they have lost no digits to past shop accidents, they are given instruction as needed, and only when judged competent to use the potentially dangerous equipment, awarded a key to the shop and full membership privileges. -- Bob Parker, Resident

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Going to the (therapy) dogs
   Having therapy dog training courses at Carolina Meadows was the brainchild of Lisa Gamache, human resources director at Carolina Meadows.

   She brought her two white Maltese, Sydney and Bailey, to work in the summer of 2004 and took them along when she visited the Health Center. While there, going from room to room, she noticed how patients brightened and became more alert when the dogs entered the room.

   "The idea for the program just mushroomed," Gamache said.

   She discovered that animals are a pleasant distraction and often trigger happy memories of a beloved pet. More important, research has proven the medical benefits of therapy dogs, such as lowering blood pressure. Obvious to her, too, was that visiting dogs need special skills if they and the people they visit were to be safe.

   Barbara Long conducts the on-going programs, which offer testing for certification by both Delta and Therapy Dogs International. Long owns Paw in Hand Dog Training in Chapel Hill. Her philosophy of dog training is all positive reinforcement -- not even a harsh word.

   Unlike service dogs, such as those companions to the visually or hearing impaired that are trained to do specific tasks for one owner, therapy dogs are trained to interact with many different people on a sporadic basis in a variety of settings and situations. They must be at least 1 year old and comfortable being handled by people other than their owner. And they must enjoy being with young and old alike.

   "I looked for a border terrier because their fantastic temperament and love of people seemed well suited to therapy dog work," said resident Mary Pettis. "Casey has certainly lived up to my expectations."

   Most of the participants have come from Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Durham, Cary and Fearrington Village. The dogs have been of all ages and sizes, young and not-so-young, ranging from a 95-pound lab to a 7 1/2-pound miniature poodle. Most have been female.

   Volunteer experiences are deeply satisfying for the human members of the teams because they can readily see they make a difference in people's lives. Yet the visits can be exhausting for the canines.

   "It would be almost impossible to do therapy dog work unless your dog partner enjoyed it," Pettis said. She says Casey gets very excited when the scarf they wear on visits appears, but the dog is "emotionally and physically tired by the end of an hour of the interaction."

   "It's a happy tiredness," Pettis said.

   Pat Aldrich takes her dog, Rusty, with her when she volunteers at the Health Center. She said that she and Rusty once entered the room of a woman who had dementia and who never spoke. The woman looked at Rusty and said perfectly clearly, "Oh, you sweet thing."

   "I'll never forget that moment, ever," Aldrich said.

   Therapy dog training consists of two eight-week courses, both of which can be repeated if necessary or desired. Classes are limited to 10 owner-and-dog teams. The first course, "Canine Good Citizen," teaches the dogs good manners so they can be confident and relaxed with strangers. The second eight-week course teaches the teams practices that ensure safety in a therapeutic environment.

   Not all teams pass the tests to be certified therapy dogs. Those teams that have passed are visiting Carol Woods, The Cedars and Ronald McDonald House.

   In addition to visiting hospitals, assisted living, health care and rehab centers, some therapy dogs work at schools or in after-school programs. One graduate goes to the South Estes Family Resource Center in Chapel Hill to help children learn how to safely approach and relate to dogs.

   "Their limitations are bounded only by our own lack of imagination or creativity," Long said.

   Long attributes the success of the training program to the dedication of the participants and to the support of the residents and the employees who have cooperated and helped out on numerous occasions, often without even being asked.

   For example, during the classes as well as the testing, a person the dogs are not familiar with acts as a friendly stranger who asks to pet or brush the dog, or to be part of a passing crowd that the dog must ignore, or to walk with their own dog and stop and talk to the owner of the dog being tested. Perhaps the hardest part of the test is to stay quietly with a stranger while the owner is away.

   Dogs have long been called man's best friend, but they are also a tonic for shut-ins. Other types of animals are being trained for therapy work. There are now therapy horses and therapy cats. So far, Carolina Meadows is going only to the dogs.” -- Jean Gilles

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