By Martin Rice
Dale Jackson Career Center – Welding
Iron Workers Local #263

A couple of years ago, I wrote about a great loss to the welding trade with the passing of Duane McLauglin. He was in welding for many years, and represented everything that was right in our field. His love of the trade was contagious, and I’ll always remember him asking, “Do you know your weld is your signature?”

Sadly, I again write about a great loss to the trade, this time about what would have been.

About eight years ago, I looked out and saw a couple of small children on my back dock. I went to see what they were doing and found an eight-year-old boy with his four-year-old sister intently peering inside. I ended up showing them around our high school welding shop and gave them a couple of cut-out steel patterns.

A few days later the little boy was back. He looked up at me and asked “Hey Mister, you got anymore of that free stuff?” I told him he could make all kinds of “free stuff” if he took my class some day.

It wasn’t long before he was back, and this time he had a drawing of a project he wanted me to make. He had a proposition for me…“How ’bout you make it for me during your classes?” He could even come help me after school. I told him yeah, sure, and then put the drawing away figuring he’d forget about it.

After a week or so and he was back. Not only had he not forgotten, he was there to check on our progress. That was the beginning of my relationship with a neat little boy named Evan Baxter.

Through the years, Evan hung around my shop a lot after school. I’d hear him approaching on his skateboard, and see him jump up on my dock doing one of his latest tricks. I’d holler that he better not fall and get any blood on my dang dock, and he’d give me a mischievous looking grin.

Sometimes he’d tell me his latest great fishing story, and sometimes he’d just hang around not saying much at all. By now he’d grown to be a part of my shop and he was excited to soon be taking my class. He was enrolled to start January, and was going to be the only sophomore in a class of juniors and seniors.

Evan had already begun learning craftsmanship, had an outstanding work ethic, and had won all kinds of science awards. I figured he’d be one heck of an engineer.

At the end of last year, he was standing there one afternoon with an envelope for me. As I took it, I noticed how this little boy was turning into a young man, and it blew my mind how fast time was flying in my life.

When I got home, I discovered a $40 gift certificate to one of my favorite restaurants. I found out from his mom that he had bought it with his own money after agonizing over what would be the “perfect” gift for me. That little envelope was worth more than a million dollars!

At the beginning of this year, Evan showed up, a foot taller with his usually long hair cut short looking more grown up than ever. He told me about his summer with his grandparents in Illinois. He had met a neat old guy named “Captain Bill” at a fishing hole, and had also had an emergency appendectomy. (He was back fishing the same day he got out of the hospital.)

As he was leaving the other night, I called him back to tell him he was gonna’ be one of the best welders I’ve ever had. He smiled big time, then took off into the night.

I was out of town a few days later when I got the call. Evan had been struck by a car as he ran across a street with his buddy. He would have been 16 just three days later.

I put a sign out on my back dock declaring it “Evan’s.” It’s where I first met him, and it’s the last place I ever saw him. I don’t understand why he was taken so early, but I thank God for the time I had with my beloved little friend.