The Village at Gainesville resident shares ‘joy of woodworking’  

When 83-year-old woodworker Terry Morrow looked at moving to The Village at Gainesville retirement community 11 years ago, one feature in particular stood out to him on campus.

“They had a little cupboard, is about the best way to describe it, that fascinated me because it had a sign on the door that said, ‘Sawdust Therapy,’” Morrow said. “And I thought, ‘that’s what I need.’”

At the time, that “little cupboard” woodshop was hardly in use. But after Morrow moved into The Village, he immediately got permission to empty it out and fill it with the tools he’d been collecting since his days growing up on a West Virginia farm, where woodworking was part of everyday life.

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“My father made me a hammer,” Morrow said. “We had wooden floors, and he would give me a cup full of nails. He’d have me drive those nails in a pattern behind the couch, then he would give me a nail puller that he had made and show me how to pull them out. That was my primary toy for a long time.”

Harvesting timber on his family’s farm originally inspired Morrow to want to be a forester. But he ended up earning a graduate degree in agricultural engineering from Penn State, where he stayed on faculty for 30 years. Morrow retired from teaching after six more years at the University of Florida.

Although he said he escaped being a fifth-generation farmer, Morrow still ran his family’s 1,200-acre farm for 25 years before selling it after moving to Florida. No matter where he’s lived or what job he’s done, Morrow said he’s always had a woodshop.

Not only has The Village woodshop been a place for Morrow to dig deep into his farming roots and scratch his crafting itch during retirement, it’s been a place to invite other residents and community members to work on wood projects or try their hand at it for the first time.

“I started a woodworking group, and we eventually started making things to sell to the residents here in The Village, and that became so popular,” Morrow said.

What began as only a few sales annually quickly became four woodworkers producing over 400 items to sell at multiple on and off-campus sites per year.

Their creations include anything that can be engineered out of wood—from pens, canes, signs and lending libraries to grocery bag driers, yarn bowls and light-up chess boards.

Anything going to a sale is packaged by Morrow’s wife, and anything that comes back to The Village unsold is stored inside the woodworker’s homes, including Morrow’s.

“My wife is a wonderful human being,” he said while looking around at the blocks of wood stacked on shelves above storage bins full of project parts. “We’ve been saying for months we need to clean up. But it’s a lot more fun making things than cleaning up.”

Each woodworker in the group averages around 20 hours a week, punching in on a timecard even though “we all get the same zero an hour,” Morrow said.

The craftsmen and women work with wood purchased online from all over the world, such as Bethlehem olive wood, spalted tamarind and even Jack Daniel’s. Morrow said his biggest problem is finding which kind of wood to use and not knowing what size to make a project.

“Anytime you do woodworking, most of us never start out knowing what we want it to look like when we finish. It’s just a free form process,” he said.

Morrow’s biggest joy in the woodshop comes from helping people learn how to use it. He’s found that his desire to share woodworking and others’ desires to learn it seems to only grow stronger with age.

“One [resident] came to me and said, ‘My 90th birthday is next week. I’ve always wanted to do woodworking. Can you show me how to use the lathe?’ She was in here almost every day and that was just a real joy,” Morrow said.

That same resident also provided two-thirds of the funding needed to build a new and larger woodshop before she died. After Morrow gave the rest of the money out of his own pocket, The Village agreed to cover the cost of utilities.

In 2015 the tan, gable-roof, six-person capacity shed which now serves as The Village woodshop was built near building Lakehouse AB.

“We claim that there’s hardly any tool a woodworker can name that we don’t have,” Morrow said. “I’ll stand behind that. We really have a very well-equipped hobby shop.”

One of those tools is a saw with a touch-sensitive blade. If it detects a finger or anything else on it while running, the machine shuts off. Morrow said thanks to technology like that, the worst injury he’s had in the shop was from a chisel and only required eight stitches.

“In the years we’ve been doing it here, we’ve had two people go to the emergency room,” he said. “We all have thin blood, so it’s easy to have to put a band-aid on.”

With the larger shop, the woodworking group has been able to expand its class offerings to more crafts outside of wood and collaborate with other interest groups across the retirement community.

Morrow’s resin-casting class began as a way to stockpile easy-to-make inventory for sales. But along with being his granddaughters’ favorite thing to do in the shop when visiting, making resin also provides an outlet for residents to craft without having to understand all the ins and outs of woodworking.

The Village’s Enrichment Life program casts resin turtles and jewelry in the woodshop before painting them in the Art Studio.

“Even though we call it a woodshop, I started a group of classes for residents to come in and make jewelry. And that has really exploded to where we have a lot of people doing resin in molds,” Morrow said.

The shop also builds all of the bluebird houses for bluebird-watchers at The Village. Even the birds themselves have a say in the construction of their homes.

“I make them with doors that open, and they have people that go around every day in mating season to count the number of hatchlings,” Morrow said. “We have to monitor the sizes to a quarter of an inch because it makes a huge difference on whether a bluebird will use it or not.”

Morrow said his group is also pursuing a partnership with Santa Fe College to host classes for students interested in learning woodworking in addition to construction courses already offered.

Even though he would like to work toward building an even larger shop to support furniture making, Morrow said the woodworkers can’t justify another expansion until they’re able to recruit more people to use it.

Morrow used to give monthly informational meetings and demonstrations to residents in hopes of bringing more to the group. But either health issues for themselves or their spouses prevent most from showing up to the shop.

Morrow believes group numbers could increase if more people also knew the woodshop is open to the public. At 2 p.m. on Nov. 7, Morrow will present “The Joy of Woodworking” at The Village to share his background in the craft, how anyone can enjoy it no matter their skill level and what The Village shop has to offer.

Funding is another limiting factor for expansion. While there are a handful of donations, sales are the primary source of income for the woodshop. But sales are strenuous for the woodworkers to operate and can limit the types of crafts they make.

“We just don’t make as many bowls because you have to ask a lot of money for them,” Morrow said. “Even though we sell them far below their value, money is tight for some people that live here.”

But none of the hurdles are slowing Morrow down any time soon. The Village woodshop workers will be selling their art from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Oct. 24 at Center Point Gifts and More at The Village, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Oct. 26 at the Senior Center (5701 NW 34 Blvd) and on Dec. 7 at The Village Holiday Bazaar from The Village’s Tower Club Ballroom.

Morrow invites anyone interested in learning about woodworking, using the shop or how to support The Village woodshop to reach out to him at [email protected].

Lillian Hamman is Mainstreet’s member ambassador and food writer based in Gainesville. She earned a degree in creative writing with a minor in business from Berry College and has worked in podcast production and news reporting. Lillian is a fan of classic films, maker of all things textiles, and runner of all roads.