Patricia
Stanfill shows off her husband's fine woodworking
abilities at the couple's Myrtlewood Factory Outlet
store in Garibaldi, Oregon. "Don't let his modesty
fool you," she says. "He's one of the best in the
world."
The
Myrtlewood Master - Continued
Page
4
Starting over
The Stanfills opened a string of businesses along the Oregon coast over the years. They even tried their hand at a restaurant and bar in Florence. At one point the couple had 25 employees.
But as their businesses came and went, the pair kept their myrtlewood shop and showroom in Tillamook, next to the Trask River across from KTIL Radio. They had opened the shop two years after starting the Netarts Table Factory.
Although Stanfill’s beaver dam of a shop still fills the back of the building in Tillamook, they closed the showroom and opened a new store and shop in Garibaldi — The Myrtlewood Factory outlet — two years ago.
“We stayed here long enough to become an antique while the world ran off and left us behind,” Stanfill says with a laugh, standing in his dust-filled Tillamook shop. “That’s a fact.”
They also stayed long enough to lose everything, wiped out by the flood of 1996.
“We had no flood insurance and lost everything we owned,” Stanfill says. “So we bawled like everybody else.
“It was a long time rebuilding the business, and it didn’t come without a lot of hard work and struggle.”
They closed the Tillamook shop two years ago and came up with the “brilliant, gambling idea of opening a shop in Garibaldi.”
It took the last of their retirement savings and the City of Garibaldi’s support, but that gamble has paid off.
“The penalty for success is no days off,” says Stanfill. “But when you overcome a major disaster and then step forward ... it all ties back to the initial education that I received while in management at Freightliner.
“And,” he adds, not as an afterthought but for emphasis, “My wife has pulled the wagon with me.”
Patricia is a natural at managing the Garibaldi store, greeting each customer with an easy smile, asking where they’re from, insisting they sign the guestbook when she hears they live in North Carolina or Kentucky or wherever.
Stanfill says he couldn’t be happier, insists he’s having far too much fun to hang up his chisels and retire quietly to his hobbies.
“Every person my age should begin to have fun for the remainder of their life,” he says. “And if they’re having fun, there’s nothing wrong with it.
“If you do what you love, with great family and great friends, it doesn’t get any better than that.”
BY:GARRET JAROS PHOTOS FOR THE HEADLIGHT-HEARALD