Father's woodshop turned into a Covid haven and hub of creative activity
Item
- Title
- Father's woodshop turned into a Covid haven and hub of creative activity
- Description
-
This story was written by Kim Grizzard and published in the Daily Reflector 7/2020.
For Bobby Dixon, keeping busy since retiring from work as a general contractor has never been a challenge. He routinely met friends for breakfast at Panera Bread and often stopped at Lowe’s home improvement afterward for supplies he would need for projects in his workshop. Over the last 12 years, he and three generations of his family had built three boats together.
But when the pandemic hit, Dixon found himself in the same boat as other senior adults, needing to stay at home to avoid the risk of contracting COVID-19.
“I didn’t have any plans,” Dixon said. “I was just going to probably sit in the house and watch TV.”
But a phone call from his daughter caused Dixon to table that idea. Sharon Justice, a teaching instructor in ECU’s college of business, asked her father if he would help her build a piece of furniture during the university’s extended spring break.
The two finished the project before ECU’s online classes began. But with Justice back at work, Dixon continued his daily woodworking.
To avoid stores, he used wood he had left over from previous projects. When he needed more, he turned to grandsons Collin and Tanner Dixon, who had remaining wood from home remodeling they were doing.
Over the next two months, he built 15 tables, four cabinets and a bench, so much furniture that he invited his two children and five grandchildren to take whatever they would like.
“I had a raffle and I let them choose a table by drawing a number,” Dixon said. “They were all able to choose until they were all gone.”
For each piece, Dixon recorded the history of the wood, noting where it came from and how he obtained it. Some wood was from oak trees that blew down in a hurricane, while other pieces came from pecan trees his grandfather owned. Besides the 75-year-old wood he recovered from his grandsons’ remodeling work, there were teak boards he had left over from refurbishing a boat.
Whether mahogany or holly, the leftover lumber kept Dixon from growing bored during the pandemic.
“I just wanted something to do and I kept looking at this wood that I had had for years,” he said. “This has been a great thing. The weeks have gone by fast, and I look forward to every day getting out and going to work.”
Since the family furniture drawing a few weeks ago, Dixon has been back at work. Already, he has finished a desk and another table, and he continues to turn out personal treasures from his workshop.
“I’ve never been one for just sitting around and not doing anything,” he said. “I always try to keep busy. It’s not been a time of shutdown for me.” - Creator
- Justice, Sharon
- Format
- Image/Imagen
- Date
- 2020-07
- Coverage
- Greenville, North Carolina
This item was submitted on August 26, 2021 by [anonymous user] using the form “Contribute a Digital Item/Done un Artículo/Producto Digital” on the site “Documenting COVID-19 in Eastern North Carolina”: http://collections.ecu.edu/os/s/ecucovid19
Click here to view the collected data.