Warren Walls: Master of his craft

Warren Walls is good with his hands. He's so good, he can replicate Coast Guard vessels, build scaled-down versions of Delaware Bay lighthouses and craft tables, chairs and even grandfather clocks from scratch. There's nothing he can't do.

Walls' workshop is more like a warehouse. What started as a 30-by-40-foot storage building for his home repair company is now his daily getaway. After retiring, the 76-year-old added two 12-foot wings, each with its own purpose.

The wood Walls works with doesn't come from Lowe's or Home Depot; he has a much closer lumber yard to mine for the perfect pieces – his back yard. The stacks of walnut, oak and poplar that inhabit one section of the workshop come from Walls' 32 acres of land off Robinsonville Road.

With that wood, Walls can build most anything; nearly all of the furniture in his home was made in his workshop. If tables, chairs and end tables aren't enough, Walls builds perfect boat models and intricately designed wooden puzzles – a handful sit on a table in his back patio.

When asked how he's become so skilled, Walls responds humbly, “Trial and error, I guess.”

Walls says his love of woodworking comes from his grandfather, who encouraged him at an early age to be creative and work with his hands.

“Whatever I wanted to build, most of the time he would take me to the lumber yard and get what I needed,” he said.

Walls was born and raised on Lewes Beach, literally. His mother did not go to Beebe Hospital, but instead gave birth in a beach cottage west of the former Coast Guard Station, now home to the Pilots' Association. He was raised in the home next door, and once married, he lived in the next house down the street.

Growing up, he would often spend time over at the Coast Guard station, eating and playing ball with the guardsmen. When he turned 18 in 1958, he joined the Coast Guard and served four years. Some of that time was spent stationed on lighthouses in the Delaware Bay. During the infamous Storm of '62, Walls and three others were on duty in the Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse about 15 miles north of Lewes near Bowers Beach. The Fourteen Foot Light, named for a 14-foot-deep shoal in the area, is one of the more unusual lighthouses in the Delaware Bay. Unlike most lighthouses, the Fourteen Foot appears to have a home built atop the cast iron base. When the nor'easter came through in 1962, it was a rough couple of days for Walls and his colleagues.

“To be honest, I thought she was going to go over,” he said. “The main deck was like 30 feet above high tide and the waves were beating up on the front door and flooding the basement. Every time a wave would hit it, it would quiver.”

Those who were stationed on the lighthouse typically worked 21 straight days with seven off. A boat equipped with supplies would come out once a week to replenish the pantry and bring mail. Other than that, the crew had nothing but a 13-foot motorless boat. Getting off the lighthouse during the storm wasn't an option.

“It was rough,” Walls said.

The lighthouse was manned by guardsmen until 1973, though Walls left much earlier than that. It was sold to a Nevada lawyer in 2007. Walls replicated the Fourteen Foot Lighthouse at his home. The scaled-down version stands about 8 feet tall in his front yard.

Walls' connection to the Delaware Bay's lighthouses did not end when he left the Coast Guard in 1962. Nineteen years later, in 1981, Walls was compelled to join the Coast Guard Reserves, serving nearly two decades more before retiring in 1998.

“It was Armed Forces Day, and I saw [a poster] for the Coast Guard Reserves,” he said. “I checked into it, and I was eligible, so I joined.”

During his second round, he again found himself at the bay's lighthouses. This time, instead of being stationed in one, he was part of a crew that would go out to the lighthouses and perform much-needed maintenance work.

“The Coast Guard just abandoned them, and they let them go. Then they found out they owned them, so they had to take care of them,” he said. “So they came up with this reserve group to go out and do maintenance.”

Walls spent weekends at the lighthouses doing whatever was needed, from building docks and changing doors and windows to scraping off lead paint or disposing of asbestos tile.

Walls retired from the reserves in 1998 and now spends his time working in his shop and volunteering for the Overfalls Foundation and at his church. Recently, he's been part of the Overfalls' effort to restore a Monomoy surf boat, again doing what he does best – working with his hands.