HAMLET — On Oct. 17, 1983, Thomas Schoonover’s father chopped down 14 walnut trees.
“Stay out of trouble,” he said, pointing at the pile of scrap wood, to a 20-year-old Schoonover who was fresh from three years as a turret mechanic in the Army where he saw brutal action during the United States’ invasion of Grenada. Schoonover had been crafting with wood since he was 11 years old and, for the next 20 years, his hobby would become his refuge as he grappled with the things he had seen.
His time in the service left him with post-traumatic stress disorder. He was depressed and angry with an uncompromising frustration — against what, it’s not clear. But that day in 1983 was the day he committed to doing something positive instead of sinking deeper.
“It kept me out of trouble,” said the New Jersey-native, now 55. “I was one of the few people that didn’t end up in jail or doing drugs … the black sheep.”
Woodworking became his preferred medicine. He was already taking so much medicine for hypertension and anger management, he said, that he refused to take more to address his PTSD symptoms. Plus, the guys he enlisted with told him it only made them want to sit in a chair all day — and he likes to think of himself as the Energizer Bunny.
Having been raised by a Marine and later state trooper in his father — a man he called “sir” until the day he died — Schoonover had it ingrained in him that there was always someone worse off than him, so don’t complain.
He started Truely Unique Woodworks where he made swings and wishing wells, shelves, prayer benches and other furniture, picnic table centerpieces, doghouses, and Dutch clogs which were a novelty item down south but became fashionable up north — his mother’s advice was “make stuff people aren’t making.”
This work continued until 2000 when he became a truck driver which made it difficult to fit woodworking into his free time. It wasn’t until 2011 that his talent would be called upon again to save his life. Schoonover suffered a stroke and his doctor told him to find something he was good at, something to calm him down. The only things that could do that, he said, was woodworking and being around children — and he was too old for children, so it was back to the wood.
“I blocked out society,” Schoonover said of his time rediscovering woodworking.
He joined American Legion Post 147 in 2012, later also joining the Sons of the American Legion, and his new crowd quickly found a use for his talents. After talking with Wayne Johnson, commander of SAL, he decided to start a fundraiser by raffling off bird houses and other handmade items, and Johnson told him to make a bird house to bring to their next meeting.
But that first bird house didn’t make it to the meeting: a member bought it before the rest of the Legion could get their hands on it.
So Schoonover made second one, and since then he says he’s worked nearly 40 hours a week creating bird houses, dog houses, even butterfly and squirrel houses to raise money for the American Legion, which supports Toys for Tots, the summer leadership program Boys State, the Ronald McDonald House’s Pop Tab Collection Program, BackPack Pals, and Homeless Veterans of America.
“As far as I’m concerned it’s an art form,” said Philip Bradley, the adjutant and treasurer of Post 147. “When you see the amount of work he puts in it’s really exceptional.”
Bradley said he’s known Schoonover since he joined Post 147 and said his impact has been substantial.
“He talks to everybody … he’s a wealth of knowledge — that’s sometimes exaggerated,” Bradley chided, comparing Schoonover to a sponge that absorbs information. “If there’s any project (Post 147) is doing, he’s involved.”
He makes them from scrap pallets and other unused wood he’s able to salvage. There’s the “Fort Hamlet” birdhouse he made for a disable veteran which has a cannon in the front yard, one that’s done in the style of the hospital from the show M*A*S*H, another that’s a train station complete with a section of track, and one with a white picket fence, clothing lines in the back yard and two stone fireplaces with a sign that reads, “Nest for Rent.”
His birdhouses don’t compare to the store bought ones that are stapled together, Barbara says. Her husband’s are “built to last,” and at least one has survived a blow from a car. Johnson, the commander of Post 147, said they asked Schoonover to make them lighter because the men that deliver them keep getting older.
When he started his second go at woodworking we was working under a tarp in his backyard. After about four years of battling the elements while working, Barbara bought him a shed which he has made his second home. He keeps his dog, Bear, in a pen close by, and Barbara comes in to work on her own projects — angels made out of wire mesh, wreaths, paintings and others — when Schoonover cleans up a bit (and keeps the temperature at 70 degrees). He has a sizable speaker set up above his work space where he plays everything from Beethoven to Lil’ Kim.
Since that first stroke, he’s had another, plus three heart attacks about a year apart each. He had two bypass surgeries five months apart in 2016, the second of which he said finally threatened to kill his energy, but it never did.
He said during this time of near constant hospital visits he once saw a 6-year-old crying his eyes out on the floor of the hospital saying, “I’m bald!” The child was on his 11th chemotherapy treatment and Schoonover said he asked the child, “You’re alive aren’t you? What’s wrong?” But it didn’t stop the tears.
So, with the help of the hospital staff, Schoonover set up a makeshift barber’s chair in front of the child and had the nurses shave his head completely bald. This had the child in stitches. “You look like an Easter egg!” he said, laughing as he pointed and rolled on the floor. Schoonover has been bald ever since, but Barbara says she likes it short.
His anger still rears its head. Barbara says he turns into the Hulk at times, exploding over a few specific things — like men abusing their wives or children, which has resulted in multiple public confrontations. He doesn’t remember these moments, he can’t remember when he went to Grenada — only that he came home — and the memories from that period flash and disappear making them impossible to decipher or verify.
His attempts at therapy have amounted to nothing but wasted money he says. A doctor tried to give him a Rorschach test but Schoonover says he made up the images he saw in the ink blots in order to spare the doctor from nightmares.
Instead, Schoonover has taken to reading the Bible twice a day and tending to his pets. He was “prescribed” a cat, Summer, after his second open heart surgery. He says she’s moody “like my two ex-wives” but she knows how to calm him down.
He and Barbara even took in a baby squirrel. Schoonover was walking in his yard one day when he heard a squeal and something landed on his shoulder. When he looked to see what it was the critter was millimeters from his face and right away he knew Barbara would want to keep it. They tried to let it climb back up the tree but it could only get 4 feet up before falling again. So they bottle fed it to help it grow and then released back into the wild so that it could adapt to live on its own.
Rocky, as they named it, still hangs around their yard and even hangs out in the pen with Bear. Schoonover said that whenever he’s muttering to himself, stewing over something in his head, his animals are able to snap him out of it by asking for food, to go outside or wanting to play.
“My brain shifts,” he said of playing with his animals. “It’s like ‘time to take care of my responsibilities, stop being stupid.’”
