Tidewater Woodworkers got started in 1980, as an outgrowth of the several woodworkers that met for the free seminars held at the (then) Shopsmith Store along Northampton Boulevard, Norfolk. The store management allowed us...some ten to twelve Shopsmith owners, to meet on the fourth Monday each month to conduct sawdust sessions. If memory serves...Ed Hendricks served as our first "chair"; Ed had recently retired from civil service and actually went to work for the Shopsmith Store as their resident "shop instructor". One of the features of that early organization was that it was all "hands on" work...making sawdust. Whoever volunteered to do a show and tell for the evening actually got to operate the Shopsmith tools to demo the effort before us. Our group probably never swelled beyond more than 20-25 members, yet we did good things.

Our little club built toys and toy boxes for the children's wards at Kings Daughters Hospital, and participated every year in the Toys for Tots program...offering over some 200 cars, trucks and wood toys to the Marine Corps Reserves who sponsor that program. The store-shop was always accommodating...plenty of seating and lighting...and just about all the machinery we needed. Shopsmith was in full swing in those days, such that we would find their new planer in house one week, their beefed up two-bearing quill for the drill press the next month...the upgraded scroll saw was introduced, little nuances such as the improved dust collection for the belt sander, sharpening jigs for the lathe tools...we were right in the thick of it...and the Store...even the Home Office, was anxious to cater to us, for we were their best customers.

Looking at our roster of over 100 today...I see a few familiar names from that original crew: Cliff Atkinson, Chip Hayes, Rob Hummel, Ron Mack, Carl Mullen, Earl Odell, Bob Pennington, Frank Pogue...and, yours truly. While we weren't any more "organized" than we are today...somehow we did manage to have an "election" one evening in the fall of '82. The reins were passed from Ed Hendricks to me...and being the totalitarian that I am...I'm still trying to "get it right", 20 years later! As most of our members know, Shopsmith withdrew from their storefronts to serve basically as a catalog and mail order business.

We spent several years under the roof of the Henry Walke Company...still meeting on the Fourth Monday each month. As that business became purely industrial strength in their outlook, we, and our sister club, the Tidewater Turners, went looking for new meeting sites. So that's the long and short of it...history wise from my recollection.

(Pat Taylor, President of the Tidewater Woodworkers Guild, March 2002)