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The Gift Is In The Giving For Toymaker

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By KLINT LOWRY | The Suncoast News

Published: December 6, 2008

Gerald Graup has always been handy with tools. When he wasn't making a living from it, he spent his spare time making things, like the wooden model of a Mississippi riverboat he displays in a case in his living room on top of a cabinet he built himself.

At 92, he's long retired, but he's never stopped making things out of wood.

"It's a material I always liked to work with, because it allows for mistakes," Graup said. "You can always rectify, so it's a nice thing to work with. And if you leave it alone it just sits and waits."

The wood doesn't wait long this time of year to be turned into something around Graup's house. As he has for the last four years, Graup has been busy throughout the fall making dozens of wooden toys that he donates to Toys for Tots.

On Tuesday, boxes filled with dozens of individually wrapped toys all hand-cut, constructed and painted by Graup were waiting to be picked up so they could be distributed to young children throughout the area.

The scene, and the toys themselves, were like something from a bygone era. On the one hand, the toys are simple, the parts painted in solid colors with just enough shape and detail to identify them - a racecar, a locomotive, a fire truck, a tow truck, a farm tractor pulling a trailer full of animals and other designs.

"Everything has a little something that moves," Graup said as he showed each vehicle. The cranes swivel and the animals can be loaded and unloaded.

They hark back to the toys of generations ago, when instead of being the end product of mass marketing campaigns, toys were something children developed their imaginations with by creating the details themselves as they played.

His 3-year-old great-grandson has one of his locomotives, and "he's the happiest kid on his block," Graup said. The boy would rather play with that than his store-bought toys.

"It's good for children 2, 3, 4 years of age," Graup said. "After that I can't cope with them, they're too smart."

It's a combination of making things for people to enjoy and the work itself that give Graup his satisfaction. He moved into his house in 1968, and as he stepped into his garage, he was happy to announce his car has never made it inside.

Instead, this has been his workshop.

The garage workshop barely contains his one-man operation, with his table saw, sander, radial drill press, and the most important power tool, the scroll saw that cuts out the curved parts of the toys.

On one side of the garage, his workbench is almost enveloped by a remarkable clutter of hand tools hanging on the wall.

"If there's a tool in the world, I probably have it," Graup said.

Up until a few years ago, he used to make whirligigs, yard ornaments with windmills attached to wooden figures. When the wind blows, the action of the windmill causes the figures to move - two men sawing wood, a woman swinging a golf club, a donkey kicking a farmer - whimsical things.

"I could never make enough," Graup said.

But over the years, the market for whirligigs died out, literally, he said. Younger folks just weren't into them. So he started putting more time into his toy making.

Over the years he has collected a cabinet full of toy designs he sends away for. He only uses the blueprints as a starting point, he said, improving on the designs. Take the locomotive, he said. He didn't like the way they positioned the wheels, so he moved them under the main body.

Instead of the smokestack in the design he used some tapered cylindrical parts he picked up 35 years ago in Vermont and had been waiting for just the right use. On the ferryboat, he decided to add some wheels so children could pretend they're crossing a river.

"Otherwise, what's it going to do, sit on the floor?" he said.

This year, his toy making has taken on an added purpose. Helen, his wife of 34 years, died a little over a month ago. At his age, he isn't as mobile as he used to be, and his toy making has helped him keep busy as he deals with his loss.

"This is my lifesaver," Graup said. "I wouldn't know what I would do with myself at this time without this. Grieving is the toughest thing you can go through. This is a godsend."

This year, as he cuts and paints and assembles, he is finding comfort in his tools, the wood, in something that has always been part of his life.

"I'll never give this up, as long as can do it," he said.

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