3 minute read
Huntersville’s Rich Fernald carves a new path
Carving NEW PATHS
Left: Rich Fernald first became interested in woodcarving through a chance meeting with a fellow veteran at Richard’s Coffee Shop. Below: Fernald at his son’s home with a few of his carvings.
Woodcarver and former teacher Richard Fernald’s life lessons on opportunity
BY: » Thomas Simonson | PHOTOS COURTESY OF : » Rich Fernald
“How do I get something out of that?” woodcarver Richard Fernald says he often wonders, explaining his reaction to a piece of wood before he has unearthed one of the intricate carved birds that he is known for. Recalling the stages of that process, it is difficult not to see the potential of each piece of wood as representative of other opportunities Fernald didn’t anticipate. As he explains, “when an opportunity comes, I have just learned to go for it—just do it!”
A retired Army veteran, Fernald notes a pattern of unexpected opportunities that became hallmark experiences. Returning from Vietnam, he was able to pursue his dream of earning a college degree, in part through the support of the GI Bill. Before that, “I never had enough money to go,” he remembers. Following graduation, he began working as a substitute teacher, a position in which he found his calling and began a 33-year career teaching history, starting in Eliot, Maine, at the same school he had attended as a child.
Embracing opportunities
Fernald is quick to note that he learned as much about himself as he did from the students and his fellow teachers. “As a young guy, I don’t think I had confidence,” he relates, explaining how teaching changed that. The job gave him the confidence to embrace opportunities, whether spontaneously training for marathons with friends as a retiree or taking up woodcarving. These highlights took place after retiring, in 2006, to Huntersville, where he met
Richard Warren, another Vietnam vet who ran a local coffee shop that hosted veterans’ gatherings. Fernald remembers that it was “nine years ago this Veterans’ Day, on a particular Thursday” that he met Art Rogers, a WWII vet who was carving walking sticks at the coffee shop. Through Rogers, Fernald found the woodcarving group that met at the Mooresville Senior Center, sat down with his first piece of wood, and began what has become nearly a decade of carving into wooden canvases.
“I never thought I was gonna be an artist,” he says, emphasizing, “I’ve done more than I ever thought I would as a kid.” Woodcarving, to Fernald, is a good example of how life’s opportunities enable a rebirth. He recalls being good with his hands as a child, working on model cars and admiring bird decoys, but he never would have guessed that he would later be known as “the bird guy,” carving away in an outdoor workspace between townhomes in his residential community. Fernald describes his neighbors as often “hearing the music going, and they see the sawdust flying” while he works on commissions and pieces with which to challenge himself. Though his work is now shown in art shows, at its heart, the process offers a simple but profound joy: the chance to “go out and make something.” Clearly, given the opportunity, Fernald will take it.
Fernald works on his creations in an outdoor workspace at his townhome community in Huntersville.
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