Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
It’s a common sight, that old yellow school bus with a load of teen-age boys rolling through town
Though the bus will, no doubt, run again, Ben Dahlenburg won’t be in the driver’s seat.
Dahlenburg, 53, retired from teaching after 31 years in the classroom ? or wood shop.
A native of Sweet Home, Dahlenburg graduated from Sweet Home High School in 1970. He studied architecture for two years at Oregon State University, then decided to switch to industrial arts, a program to train teachers for wood and metal shop classes and mechanics courses.
“All the (architecture) jobs were overseas, and it was a six-year program,” Dahlenburg said.
After graduating with a master’s degree from OSU, Dahlenburg taught metal shop at Henley High School in Klamath Falls for four years. Then he got a call from Kerry Moran, the principal at Sweet Home, who asked him if he’d be interested in coming back to his alma mater.
He was, and was hired as the metal shop instructor. After four years he switched to wood shop and has spent the next 23 years teaching Sweet Home teens everything from finely crafted furniture construction to framing houses.
Up till his retirement, Dahlenburg’s construction students were working on the Habitat for Humanity house being built up the street from the library on 13th Avenue.
“Each year I try to involve the kids in community good will,” said Dahlenburg, sitting in his sawdust-covered office off the wood shop, where boys and girls busily hovered over the saws, sanders, routers and other equipment that screeched in the background. “We’ve done lots of little projects.”
He said he doesn’t use the term “community service” with students because “community service has a bad connotation for kids these days ? like working off a ticket.”
Over the years, their community good will has included repairing and building roofs, constructing wheelchair ramps and picnic tables, building greenhouses around the valley, and creating most of the trailhead sign boxes in the Willamette National Forest around Sweet Home.
What probably is the most prominent legacy left by Dahlenburg and his students is the Weddle covered bridge in Sankey Park, which was restored by volunteers ? many of them his students ? over a two-year period, from 1988-90.
“I love this community,” he said. “I’ve never been sorry I came back.”
Over the years he’s taught his students to make use of everything.
“We recycle everything,” said Jake Self, one of the seniors who graduated this year.
A classic example of this thrifty approach to art is the conference table in the high school administration offices. The top of the 12-foot table is made of maple strips from the old gym floor that was torn up when the new school buildings were constructed last year. Dahlenburg and his troops salvaged the wood and stripped off the old paint and numbers. The framed it with walnut from a tree that had been fallen (and salvaged by the students) a year before the building project began. In the center of the table is the Husky seal, donated by the Class of 1966, which previously adorned the front of the old high school. The glass covering the seal on the table is a piece of a broken window from the swimming pool facility.
It wasn’t just about woodworking skills and thrift. A big highlight of Dahlenburg’s classes was the annual deep-sea fishing trip, for which the students in his construction classes would raise funds throughout the year by building greenhouses and doing other jobs. This year, he said, they limited out with 180 fish and 83 crabs.
Now that he’s retired, Dahlenburg says he plans to stay busy ? fishing, hunting and woodworking. He plans to find some “niche” markets for woodwork and make some money building things.
“I’d like to try to make quilt chests out of glass and wood so people can display and store their quilts in a chest that will filter out ultraviolet light,” he said. He also may try his hand at building church pulpits and podiums.
Though happy to be retired, but he’s a little worried about the future of the program, though not because of who’s taking it over ? Dustin Nichol, who’s moving from the auto shop.
“I’d just like to see them keep the program,” Dahlenburg said. “Dustin’s got the creativity to keep the program going.
“Vocational program are disappearing and it’s too bad,” he added. “Not everyone needs to use just their mind. We need people who can use their mind and their hands.”
Scott Swanson can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 367-2135.