Carved in wood

John Shoemake came by woodworking almost naturally, like a birthright.

“I grew up in the poor belt of southeast Oklahoma,” he said recently in his workshop in Rockdale. “My dad was a carpenter and a farmer. When you grow up poor you have to make them when you can’t buy them.”

Woodworking wasn’t the only thing he took away from growing up with his family and others in the area. He was instilled with a sense of doing good for others.

“You had to help one another. They were good, strong moral people,” he said.

In the early ‘70s his church, St. John’s United Methodist in Rockdale, had a good many elderly members back then, he said.

“We figured the best evangelism we could do is to help our own people,” he said,”We began a helping hand group, then got in with the Methodist Men. We started in the church and expanded into the community.”

They have done a lot of good deeds since then such as building wheelchair ramps for people who need them.

“I don’t know of a wheelchair ramp that we haven’t built in Rockdale,” he said. Adding that the group just recently built one for a woman near Cameron.

“We enjoy helping someone else that is what we are supposed to do,” he said. “The most godlike thing we can do is help our fellow man. It’s a labor of love is all it is. We get more out of it than they do. It’s freedom for them that they haven’t had in a while.”

So he lends his talent wherever he can.

“When the Rockdale Golden Girls needed chairs for a one-time performance, he made a special chair for each girl. He has carved walking sticks and fireplace mantels,” recalled County Judge Steve Young about his friend’s willingness to help where he can.

This year he did something special for his friends Steve and Lynn Young.

“He came to me and said, ‘I want you to build me a table,’” Shoemake said. “I told him I’m getting a little long in the tooth. I don’t know if I have a table in me.”

But he gave it a shot, with the stipulation that he was going to talk to Lynn before he built anything.

“I knew she would want some kind of history behind it,” he said. She is on the Milam County Historical Commission.

“They sort of let me have my way with it,” he noted.

The result is a big, shiny table made of pecan from a tree off the Young’s property.

“John cut up a 200-plusyear-old fallen pecan tree from our place for the project. The logs were then taken to a wood mill where they were cut into two-inch-thick pieces. After a long drying process, John meticulously started crafting the top of the table,” Young said. “The boards were sanded and resanded numerous times. Finally, they were glued together with such precision that it is impossible to see where the joints really are. Afterwards he crafted the San Gabriel River and Alligator Creek that join on the place. The missions at San Xavier and the Moss Ragsdale Cemetery are also depicted on the tabletop. An arrowhead made of flint rock recovered from the ranch was inlaid on the top. Finally, the brands of three generations of “Youngs” who had ranched on the land were depicted on the top and numerous protective coatings were applied.

There is also an S&L on the table as a reminder that the Youngs met on the property beneath a pecan tree.

“I tried to make the base of the table look like it is growing up out of the ground,” he said.

Every year his church holds an auction as a fundraiser and Shoemake usually contributes a work he has carved to be sold

“His always gets the highest bid,” said Wenda Dyer, his sister-in-law. “He has a God-given talent. People recognize his talent and the fact that he is so faithful to his community.”

Young agreed.

“Almost every year he tediously hand carves a wooden Santa Claus for the St. John’s United Methodist Church Lord’s Acre auction. It is always the most popular and most expensive item at the auction, selling for thousands of dollars,” Young said.

Shoemake, who is a former mayor and former administrator in Rockdale Independent School District, has been married to his wife Sharon for 49 and a half years, and they have two children and five grandchildren.

“Four on Earth, one in heaven,” he said.

One of his grandsons was taken by neuroblastoma before the age of four. “It’s just tough, no way to explain it. There was no way to fix it and that was a bad place to be because I am used to fixing things,” he said.