Scholarship Winner Spotlight: Daniel Foreman, USMC
Our first ever Fine Woodworking Live veteran scholarship is sponsored by our hosts, Southbridge Hotel & Conference Center.
Mar 30, 2017
Having spent nine years in the U.S. Marine Corps and National Guard, including tours of duty in Ramadi and Fallujah, Iraq, Daniel Foreman came home and went to work in public education. In time, he rose through the ranks to become a district administrator. Life was good, he thought.
“I had everything I ever wanted, including finding out I had a son on the way.”
Then one day, a pile driver at a construction site across the street set off a horrible noise, shaking the building where he worked. “It sounded just like the mortar fire that we lived with constantly in the war,” Daniel said. Suddenly he realized his hands were shaking, his heart pounding. “In essence, the war that I had locked away in a box in my head had gotten knocked off the shelf, and I couldn’t clean it up.”
Daniel sought treatment the conventional way, with doctors, medication, and therapy. But it was obvious that something needed to change. So he and his wife moved closer to family, buying an old stone house that needed some love.
In the course of fixing up that old house, Daniel discovered woodworking. Under the guidance of his father-in-law, he fixed up a basement room into a woodshop and built a workbench.
“Woodworking has become my newfound love and therapy because I grew tired of the doctors and the medication,” he said.
Having caught the bug, Daniel is anxious to learn all he can, and hopes that his time at Fine Woodworking Live will help him do that.
“I thoroughly enjoy the slow, quiet concentration of hand tools and carving,” he said. “Nothing would make me happier than to go out to the woods, choose a fine tree of ash to fell, drag it to the mill, and work it into things that will become essential to my family’s daily life for the rest of our time on this earth.”
Comments
Congratulations to Daniel and many thanks to Southbridge! Thanks to Fine Woodworking, as well, for coordinating such a great event and including our veterans! HOORAY!
Good on you old mate, well done keep on keeping on
Tony Calladine Australia
What an inspiring tale - if you can find it get "The man who made things out of trees" by Robert Penn - he felled an ash and did just that.
Keep working at it Daniel. Thank you for your service and welcome home. My grandson is now a Marine. You want to go out into the woods and fell a tree, how about carving a tree spirit on several trees? The best to you and your family.
Daniel, woodworking comes in all shapes and sizes, sometimes good, sometimes not so good. But the one common denominator is that creating something out of a piece of wood seems to be a remarkable panacea for our troubles. Yours were mountainous compared to mine and I am pleased to see what this has done for yours. Good luck in the future. Ray Powell, England.
Semper Fi!
My best to you and your family Daniel. Just remember many of the programs you will see anywhere on woodworking have a job, sell products. Before I learned that one I had a fine set of Porter Cable tools, I wouldn't let any go as they are great. Enjoy as you go forward and may God bless you.
All the very best to you Daniel. I'm a Vietnam Combat vet, I've been woodworking since 1970. It's a wonderful way to keep your sanity! Keep up the beautiful work, you'll do well...by the way we're looking foward to hearing more from you. "All The Way"
Also a Vietnam vet that found woodworking and related endeavors an endearing way to work through any troubles. Good luck and enjoy each moment.
southernray; you said it for me...All the best and thank you for "9 years" wow. I'm smiling now...
Daniel, congratulations and thanks for your service. I grew up during the Vietnam era and was always scared to death I would be drafted. As luck would have it I never got that call, there have been many times I have regreted not getting it. I have not been doing woodworking all that long but I have crafted some very nice pieces. The peace and calm that woodworking provides can't be beat. Enjoy everything you do in your shop no matter how big or small. Semper Fi
Congrats Daniel and thank you for your service!
If you want to cut some Ash please stop by in NJ, we are going to eventually lose them all from the Emerald Ash Borer, I have plenty that you can take.
Heavy combat in Nam. Then a few years of college and white collar and those thing were fine but not really me. I started a 40 year career at age 29. http://www.functional-art.com semper fi and a welcome to any who read this and jot me a note via my website or this link. A big thanks to FWW (all most all back copies in my position) for this.
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