Gary Statham

This is all too long for anybody to read but Kim Bayless shamed me into getting something down and Hugo.
Nothing. Just kidding. It's too long ago to say, I think Paul Dunn had something to do with it, and Andy Smiles and Dennis Buford, and Hugo.

I'm on the slippery slope early on. I remember leaving OU with a BS in Biology Science and heading for Vermont with a Sioux tipi on the roof of my Plyyymouth Belvidere, all 19 poles, canvas, and rope bed. I was following Paul Dunn to Eden Vermont (North Central by S. Burlington) to fabricate a hexagonal cabin on the Applachian Trail at the Babcock Property. Peter Babcock being an aspiring journalist in a hip Vermont family, was a friend of Paul's and his folks needed a cabin built. Simple.

Paul and I were the guys. He lived in the tree house, Peter in the Main cabin, me and the porcupines in the woods. We relocated a mile of the Appalachian Trail to go around the cabin site and got the wood and sharpened our saws. I just went there a year ago in frozen snow. It is now Babcock Preserve, granted back to the state as a conservation site of sorts. It was a wild 3 to 4 months. We received a package of brownies from Maureen Paul's gal, at the Eden P.O. and headed down the road in the Saab. We were promptly corralled by 3 squad cars, guns drawn. They thought we had the big coke shipment in.
The hippies in the TP crap. Paul politely asked the detectives if they wanted a brownie.

Next step was making some money in New York as a carpenter. I worked with subcontracting cops and firemen building dormers on houses on Long Island while living home. One or two years passed.

By then Dennis Buford had migrated south and bought into a sailboat cult. Rugosa was the 59 food Nathaniel Hershoff designed yawl, winner of the 1926 Bermuda Cup. I picked up Paul in Iowa in my Toyota Pickup truck with tools and we put on Fleetwood Mac and woke up in Florida via North Dakota and Arizona and our poor Big Easy Orleans.

Joined the boat. Paul missed the corn and went on. Hugo visited the boat and fell off the dock one day. It was the Luke Bean association owning the boat, Jay (the seller stayed involved, Joe, Dick and Buford. I worked my way into the group, eased into making a coach roof repair and a sliding hatch, and then took out the galley and replaced the woodwork. Also got to replace a board on the tramsom of Rugosa. We cooked it in a steam box for hours and drank and cooked etc then stuffed it into a mould staked in the ground. Whack that board bent back and snapped the stakes should have broken our ankles.

Worked on boats for two more years. Florida, Grand Cayman, Bahamas. Worked with Luke Bean rebuilding a 54 foot schooner Walter and Mamie on the North shore of Cayman Island. Replaced 6 or ten planks refastened the hull caulked it and painted it. Re caulked the decks. Perkins Diesel reworked. Then lots and lots of sailing and snorkeling. Spent so much time at Cayman spearing grouper with Hawaiian slings.

I had enough of boats though. Really wanted to clean my tools and I headed back to Athens, Ohia. I totally loved the woods and fields there. Set up the TP near Meat's house out Route 50E.

Andy wanted to leave Abex the tire company and was dreaming of a woodshop that would fabricate a quality hutch, table, chair etc. all out of fine solid Applachian hardwoods. We hooked up and formed the infamous Statham Smiles Inc. Chuck and Bart's Furniture Mart. Andy was Black Bart, the meanest orneriest cowboy you ever did meet, and I was Chuck driving the Green Van. We bought up all the woodworking machines we could muster at the Athens Lumber Company. Vintage 1899 to 1920.

Another slippery slope. We unbolted, scraped, soaked, cleaned and painted every cast iron part and reassembled our equipment. In a hand hewn barn that was fabricated of old bridge parts next to Andy and Christine's house, the Grover's property- a hand hewn log cabin. We catalogue each cabinet we wanted to make from the prototypes and visited shows and did art gallery shows and got some in NY showrooms etc.

We expressed the usage of hand cut joinery i.e. Dovetails, saddle joints, thru mortises and tenons, and pins. Then several coats of watco Danish oil. Great stuff yet tough to market to a depressed economy in Appalachia. This was 1976 to 1982 or 83. I shared much of this period of time with Cita Strauss a modern dancer at OU and teacher at the Court Street Studio. She moved out to my farm and taught dance at the B&B Studio on Court Street. Statham Smiles was coming apart at the inside seams yet making strides into the market. Cita and I had two Morgan horses we taught to ride and pull logs and carts and wagons. We then had to relocate the shop (Athens Railroad Station Renewal Project) at a delicate time in our finances and Andy and I parted ways for fifteen years. It was a particularly tough breakup.

I moved the remnants of the shop to Dutch Ridge in Guysville where I owned a 42 acre parcel with and old farmhouse and another hand hewn white oak barn which got remodeled into the shop. I continued fabricating for Ohio clients and also began bringing work to New York through interior designers I met through family ties or show connections. This was great but exhausting. We make high gloss lacquered art furniture at times and leather top tables, inset marble tables, whacked out studio designer furniture. What a trip yet it was still hard to make money at the individual pieces of furniture.. I then started more with the full rooms of cabinetry built in and installed and prefinished in the shop. Several of these rooms went to Manhattan.

Through this time Andy and I and some other teammates played for the Greek United team in Columbus. I lost a front tooth in a head ball against the Macedonian team. We also played in a friendly OU based league down on the river by Oblenis Hospital. Either there or tues and Thursday nights at the airport field across from The Maplewood Inn.

Then of course to the Maplewood. We were really in heaven but not enough dough coming in. We organized a played a few tournaments in Georgia. It was so hot though.

Cita and I broke off through this period of time and I met Jessica Smith who is a dear friend today. She was able to introduce me to a whole new side of life re: farm etiquette something us NY er's knew nothing of. At one point we had on the farm 7 horses, 4 oxen , 1 sheep, three cats and four dogs. It was wonderfull, I was turning into a townie.

As I started visiting NY I signed with the Lynbrook Stueben soccer team on Long Island. We played in the US open amateurs cup and won the national over 30 title in St Louis against a team from Oregon. I think this was 1984 or so. Then on to Hota Bavarian club on Northern LI. This was a great club and I played on the second team for a few weeks then played both games each Saturday for a while then just the first team. It was a beautiful German clubhouse with two practice fields and one European standards field. I usually played back wall but started moving into left wing at times. During this period I tried out for the Cosmos under Gordon Bradley. He asked me to come back the second week but then felt I didn't have enough ball control to continue.

I soon was invited to play with the Pan American team in the Long Island airlines league. This was very serious and fun. I played back wall next to Helmut Knopfler who taught me so much. This was a beautiful team and it traveled extensively. They had been traveling for years and I started going to Germany for the Airlines tournament south of Munich.

This was a week long tourney with 12 to 16 teams and you played two hour long games each day. We played air Japan, Air Lingus, El Al, Luftunsa etc. (This was as good as that Akron game we played at the OU golf course. That was a turning point for OU soccer.)
We would then rent a bus in Germany and go to Bolzano, Italy and play a two day tournament there. Then to Switzerland and Austria for some friendlies and plenty of party. This went on for years. We went to the islands several times, did the October festival in Stutgart one year in four days and played two games over that festy weekend and dragged ourselves back to Laguardia.

This team and its players completely overshadowed my business shortcomings and made me appreciate life so much I was able to get going again making money in the New York suburbs installing kitchens. One a week until the bills were paid. Went on for five years.
Met Emily Roberts in Port Chester, NY on a 95 degree night at the Beat a Punk Rock hangout. We were doing laundry together soon there after.

Emily is a Rhode Island gal graduated in Chemical Engineering from U Conn and working for Avon Products as an engineer and marketing person in NYC. She single handedly whipped my butt into $ shape we were on to the wedding in Little Rhody 7/11/87.

She found an apartment in Greenwich, Ct and it was close to the YMCA,volleyball came into the picture. We bought a house in Greenwich six months later. It was an old CT farmhouse with a beautiful acre on a park that has been our home for 18 years. We added an addition to handle the kids.

Travis, our first born is 16 now and enjoys crew enough to make the varsity team, fingers crossed. He is almost 6'2" and really applies himself to school as a junior at Greenwich High School. He craves the computer and studied at Columbia University this summer learning the c code for programming. When Travis was two Emily and I we left him with a close volleyball family and flew to Bermuda to jump on Dicks sailboat to cross to NY. Beautiful five days sailing and the sixth turned into a stationary nor'easter storm that pummeled us for 24 hours. We were 200 miles out to sea and got hammered. Made it to NY South Street Seaport and kissed the dock. We were so shaken. There were only four of us on board. The interior cabin floor was a soup of books, charts, plates, bags, sails, all sloshing around. A blender. We were lucky to be able to raise him after that.

Three years later we had Hannah who is now in the Central Middle School 8th grade and she adores colors and patterns. She is also showing real interest in cabinetry and the process of work. Hannah enjoys gymnastics and cheerleading and was picked to be a fly girl on the squad. She has a million friends.

Three years later Little Alice came along. She is in 5th grade and currently runs the household. She gets the giggles a lot. She loves the trampoline (the best thing we ever bought) and gymnastics and cheerleading as well.

Emily brought her problem solving background to my cabinetry business and we again leased a shop two blocks from our house with a woman cabinetmaker named Janis Colella. We shared this for at least three happy years and she moved on to join her husband in his cabinetry shop.

We then moved our shop to a larger facility in Ridgefield, CT. From here we fabricated every type of interior woodwork you can think of. We leased 3500 sq ft but were too restricted so we found another facility three years ago in Norwalk Ct and purchased this with a limited partnership. One partner is a high end cabinetry and furniture finisher and the third is a builder. We share clients etc and have been happy as we split up 22,000 square feet. Statham Woodwork currently has 7 employees including Em and I. We work through architects, interior designers, builders and direct to the home.

I spend most of my time now drafting and engineering the complicated rooms we get involved with. I would not change it for anything but it is extremely involving. I will insert some photographs for your viewing. We have done entire homes in Florida, Cape Cod, Boston, New York state and CT. I am exhausted thinking about it. Our next move is to purchase software to help the drafting and engineering and then on to some cnc equipment.

So that's it teammates. I wish we were on that green and white bus shuffling up to Buffalo with Kim on the microphone and Ron driving. I think we should have taken Spiro T. Monkey to the away games. He was a good traveler.

Love you guys can't wait to hook up in Athens.--Gary

(I asked Gary to add a few paragraphs about two sailing adventures he had. One was years ago in the middle of the Caribbean when a boat load of machine-gun totting pirates almost captured his boat. The other was recently when he was sailing with his wife Emily and another couple to Bermuda. They hit a huge storm that bombarded them with mammoth 40 foot waves for several days and almost sunk them. So stay tuned. And Gary also has some photos to add. --Hugh)

Click here's for some pics, check 'em out!