5 ELVES OF INTEREST
The
TOYMAKER
BY GLORIA TAYLOR WEINBERG
PHOTOS BY ED DRONDOSKI
In a tiny workshop tucked beside his swimming pool,
62
Ken Reynolds lowers his 6-foot-5 frame onto a stool
and creates the stuff of every child’s fondest wish:
rooms full of toys.
Cars and trucks and trains and airplanes fill every
nook in Reynolds’ garage. Miniature firehouses, gas stations,
general stores and dollhouses line his living room. Banks
shaped like pigs and giraffes peer down from shelves, their
see-through bellies waiting for youthful treasure.
“I just love to make toys,” the 83-year-old craftsman
explains amid the disorder of his shop crammed with the
requisite tools: power saws and drills and lathes and routers
and sanders. Multicolored clamps parade like Easter bunnies
along an assembly line of truck beds welded together with
glue, and long dowels skewer car bodies waiting for axles
and wheels.
There is sawdust on the floor, and pixie dust in Reynolds’
blue eyes.
“It’s kind of like a passion of mine,” he says of the hobby
he has pursued now for nearly seven decades. “I learned
how in shop class in high school, and I’ve been doing it
ever since.”
Well, except for those four years in the U.S. Navy during
World War II, when he was a member of Underwater
Elves
Demolition Team No. 42, which participated in the D-Day
invasion of France.
There was a long and successful career as the Eastern area
manager for a division of Harsco Corp., during which Reynolds
managed 11 steel plants from Alabama to Nova Scotia,
and then a decade in real estate; but that was just work.
More importantly, he and his late wife, Mary Ann, reared
three sons, and through a church-affiliated youth group they
became a positive influence in the lives of many other children,
some of whom still call him Grandpa.
But wherever they lived, Reynolds made toys.
“I always put up a shop,” he says. “And everything I
make, I make for children: no screws, no nails. They’re all
glued and doweled.”
Reynolds makes his toys from wood that would be refuse,
except that Reynolds refuses to let it be. Why would he, after
all, when there among the scraps of other crafts are the makings
of his own?
“I used to go dumpster diving, but now people call me
when they’re going to throw wood out, and I just go by and
pick it up,” Reynolds says.
Pine and poplar and mahogany scraps are planed into
boards and glued together into blocks from which the
Name: Kenneth B. Reynolds
Age: 83
Birthplace: New Bedford, Mass.
Residence: Fort Pierce
Education: Graduate of Nelson
W. Aldrich High School, Warwick,
R.I.
Family: Sons Richard, 62, of
Brandon; Kenneth, 56, of Harrisburg,
Pa., and David, 51, of
Elves
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Something most people don’t know about me: I don’t like
crowds.
Proudest achievement: Staying married for 62 years.
What inspires me: The laughter of children.
Elves
Elves
Elves
>>
A tool for every job, and every tool is in its place in Reynolds’ workshop.