 |
|
|
|
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Bill Hook, 90, sits next to the dollhouse that he spent six months working on last year and donated to a holiday auxiliary fair raffle. Hook, who had a career in banking, has been working at his dollhouse hobby for the past 20 years.
|
Elder Craftsman
Ninety-year-old Bill Hook still makes a habit of working with wood
By George Moore
He turned 90 years old a few months ago, is blind in one eye and needs to take an oxygen tank with him wherever he goes. But that hasn't stopped Bill Hook from continuing his 20-year hobby of building dollhouses and myriad other items made of wood.
"It keeps me out of trouble," Hook said.
Hook has lived in Cupertino for 46 years--the past 12 years at the Sunny View Lutheran Home.
"It's one of the finest retirement homes in the state of California," Hook mentioned several times.
Before Hook moved into Sunny View, he said he used to make real furniture in a workshop at his home. He said he also made miniature furniture for his dollhouses, but is now unable to because his fingers don't work as well.
Hook said miniatures are the third largest hobby in the United States, trailing stamp and coin collecting. He said it took him about two months to build his latest creation, "The Victorian," which is a three-story house with nine rooms, wall-to-wall carpeting, wallpaper, tiled kitchen and bathroom floors, a kitchen sink, appliances, and a working front porch light.
Materials cost him about $275, and he said a house such as this would cost around $600 at a hobby store. At an annual fundraiser at Sunny View, he won his own dollhouse in a raffle, which he said he would give to one of his granddaughters. He said he would also like to explore the possibility of giving them away to needy children in the area.
Hook's creativity in woodworking has no boundaries. He has made airplanes, cars, music boxes, trains, shadowboxes, cribbage boards, jewelry boxes and various walnut furniture miniatures, including pianos, grandfather clocks and a functioning roll top desk.
"That was my pride and joy," Hook said referring to the desk. "I sent it to Ronald Reagan."
Hook remembers a boy with the last name of Reagan attending the same church he did in Illinois, but hasn't been able to confirm if it truly was the ex-president. Hook was born in Illinois in 1911 and had three brothers and two sisters. He said his father died when he was only three, and his oldest brother quit school in the sixth grade to get a job and help support the family. His brothers have all passed away, but one 95-year-old sister still lives in Illinois, and another 93-year-old sister recently flew here from Colorado to celebrate his birthday.
Hook moved to California when he was 18 and worked as a meter reader for a water company, which served 2,500 residences in Atherton, Woodside and Menlo Park. He said he would drive around in his 1927 Ford Model T, not only reading the meters, but also collecting the bills.
"If they didn't pay, I'd turn off their water," he chuckled.
He later became a bank examiner, working at several commercial banks before landing a job at a federal reserve in San Francisco.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Dollhouse maker Bill Hook, 90, shows off the tools that he uses to build his creations in his studio apartment.
Hook said his wife, Dorothy, who passed away in August 2001, taught at Lincoln Elementary School in Cupertino for 17 years. They were married in 1940 and had two daughters, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Dorothy suffered from Parkinson's disease in her later years, and Bill is on the board of directors of a support group in Sunnyvale. He said it is hard to talk about her because he misses her so much.
"She kept me on the straight and narrow," he said.
Asked about what she thought of his woodworking hobby, Hook said her famous quote was, "My Willy can do anything."
Hook said two of his uncles and his older brother were carpenters and that woodworking must be in his genes.
"The fun part is designing and drawing the plans after deciding what I want to do," he said.
Sunny View has put together a hobby shop, but Hook said his vision is not good enough to use a table saw. He uses thick cardboard reinforced with basswood for the walls of his dollhouses. They have wood-shingled roofs, which he meticulously glues on piece by piece--paying attention to detail in all of his work. Hook still builds some miniature furniture that requires less detail, including lawn furniture that he displayed on the patio of the Victorian dollhouse.
Hook enjoys reminiscing about his life and family. One of his daughters, Suzanne Whaley of San Leandro, said he used to make a lot of their toys, which included stoves and refrigerators.
"It's just amazing that he's 90 years old and still working on that stuff," Whaley said. "I think it's his drive to live--his reason to get up in the morning. Everyone needs one."
Hook currently is building a two-story dollhouse with four rooms, which he said would be completed in a few weeks. After that, he said he'd be back to the drawing board to work on the design of his next dollhouse.
|
|
|
|
Cupertino, California Since 1947
