Last Saturday, Mary and Bruce Graybill spent the evening having dinner with their two kids. Bruce fired up the wood furnace in his wood crafting workshop like he has done every day for five years.
Graybill is a busy man, working part-time as a Holden Police officer and full-time managing a Wal-Mart. His true passion? Turning wood into art.
“He really is an artist when it comes to that, he can put the different colors and the different woodgrains together and it’s really breathtaking," Mary Grabill said.
That's why he created Sider's Woodcrafting, named after his grandfather, in 2015. He makes thousands of cutting boards, cribbage boards, clipboards and pieces of furniture each year.
But his passion and business hit a roadblock.
After dinner, a stranger knocked on the Graybill's front door.
“I thought she was coming here to buy a cutting board because people come to the house to buy them," Mary Graybill said.
The stranger was driving by their home in Brewer and saw that their RV in the backyard caught fire. The RV was used as Bruce's workshop.
$20,000 of merchandise, priceless tools, and years of work, gone in only an hour.
“My dad passed away and he left me numerous tools so that’s the part I’ve been struggling with the most because I won’t have those," Bruce Graybill said.
The Graybill's expressed their thanks to the Brewer Fire Department that responded fast enough to save a nearby shed filled with personal and business possessions.
“We would have lost so much more if they hadn’t come," Mary Graybill added.
The next day, Bruce traveled to a craft fair in Bangor, just hours after the devastating blaze. Word was already out in the wood crafting community.
“(Wood crafters) offering me to bring the tools from their workshops for me to use offering to help in any way they can, offering me to use their workshop," Bruce Graybill said.
Support came from family, friends, and strangers from all over the country. The Graybill's phones haven't stopped ringing from condolence calls and Venmo donations.
“I didn’t know how many people were out there listening to it and watching his dream grow and rooting for him and now they’re rooting for him, even more, when we desperately need them to," Mary Graybill said.
Now, the Graybill's and Sider's Woodcrafting is in recovery mode. The business is moving to a new, bigger, workshop next door and will continue making custom, handmade, products for customers.
"Our direction to grow the business hasn't changed, the road has just gotten a little steeper. And while we start to climb again, we are so grateful for all encouragement from our community, from near and far away," Mary Graybill added.
