Carpentry instructor hanging up his tool belt

YAKIMA, WASH. -- Schoolchildren have been lining up at the chainlink fence during recess for several weeks now.

They've been watching young men assemble and install three new climbers, a jungle gym and slide. And they've been asking when they will get a chance to play.

This week, thanks to their school's Parent Teacher Association and students in the carpentry program at the Fort Simcoe Job Corps Center in White Swan, they will have that chance. The final touches on the new playground at Yakima's Ridgeview Elementary School are expected to be finished today.

The project caps about five years of fundraising by members of the PTA. It also represents Rod Mitchell's last official project as a carpentry instructor with the Job Corps. The 57-year-old Yakima resident is retiring Thursday after nearly 91/2 years with the program.

"My job is 30 percent instructor, 70 percent counselor," he says. "It's a hard job, but it's the best job I've ever had. If the kids succeed, we succeed. That's what it's all about."

John Rocha, the 49-year-old lead carpentry instructor at the Fort Simcoe Job Corps Center, estimates Mitchell has worked with at least 200 carpentry students during his tenure. He expects to see Mitchell in the shop after he retires.

"He's always welcome," Rocha says.

His students say they'll miss him.

"Not only is he my instructor, he's a friend, somebody I can lean on while I'm here," says 19-year-old Tim Rainey, a carpentry student from Everett who serves as a safety foreman. He's been in the program for 10 months and says he enjoys working on community service projects like the Ridgeview playground upgrade. "It makes me feel good because I'm doing something for the kids."

Mitchell and his students -- along with those in the center's truck driving and heavy equipment operator programs -- have been working on the project on and off for nearly two months.

"I do the thinking; they do the physical work," says Mitchell, who was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2003. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis three years before that.

"He's been going nonstop, even through his difficulty fighting cancer," Rocha says. "It's going to be hard to watch him drop his tool belt, walk away and retire."

For 30 years, Mitchell has worked as a union carpenter, general foreman and superintendent. He currently serves as vice president of Carpenters Union Local 770 in Yakima.

"He's taught me my employability skills," Rainey says. "He teaches us how to work together as a team, how to listen effectively while you're working, how to be patient."

Job Corps, started in 1964, aims to teach young people ages 16 through 24 the skills they need to become employable and independent. The vocational training program is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor and funded by Congress at no cost to students.

Locally, Job Corps has a long history of working on community service projects. In 2007, for example, Mitchell's carpentry students helped build a backyard play area for a 4-year-old with Ondine's Curse, a condition in which the central nervous system fails to control breathing during sleep. The project was coordinated by Children's Wishes & Dreams, a local nonprofit that grants wishes to young people with life-threatening illnesses or severe life-altering injuries.

Mitchell and his students have also worked on the Gap-to-Gap Relay obstacle course, the Mural-in-a-Day event in Toppenish, Toppenish Food Bank, Wapato's Filipino-American Community Hall, and campgrounds at the Track D area of the Yakama Reservation.

They can't accept every one they're offered, though. "They have to meet our criteria," Mitchell says. "We're not here to put working men out of a job."

The Ridgeview PTA contacted Job Corps earlier this year when the group ran out of money to install the playground equipment. Purchased at a discount for about $18,000, the equipment includes two tetherball poles and four removable mats for playing marbles as well as the slide and climbers.

Mitchell estimates it would cost about $10,000 for installation. His students -- there are 27 in the carpentry program -- are doing the work for free.

"It couldn't have happened without Job Corps," says PTA treasurer Lorinda Howerton, 39. She has a second-grader at Ridgeview and helped to spearhead the playground project, organizing bingo nights and candy sales, among other fundraisers. "We made money wherever we could."

The new equipment replaces a run-down wooden play structure.

"It was just not safe anymore," says Sharon Maras, assistant to the principal at Ridgeview, which has 535 children in kindergarten through fifth grade.

"They have been waiting anxiously," Maras says. "Whenever the workmen are out there, they're on the chainlink fence, waiting. They're always asking when it's going to be done.

"I think it fulfills a real need in our community," Maras says. "It's going to benefit not just our school, but the neighborhood as well."

In retirement, Mitchell plans to continue chemotherapy treatment, attend his students' graduations and do some traveling. Meantime, there's the playground project to finish on West Washington Avenue, the same street as the Yakima Air Terminal.

"He can drive by on the way to the airport and say that's the last job I finished with my students," Rocha says.

• Jobs
  www.yakjobs.com
• Homes
  www.yakhomes.com
• 
• 
  
• Autos
  www.yakwheels.com

• All Special Pubs Channels YakJobs.com YakWheels.com YakHomes.com Playdate Yakima Bride Yakima Wheels (Print) Home Buyer's Guide Baby Brag Book Graduates 2009 Summer in the Valley Prep Football 2009 Women in Business
• Advertisement