Floyd man puts his ‘whole life’ into cross
0 Comments | Roanoke Times & World News, Apr 24, 2010 | by Mary Hardbarger
Bill St. Pierre just recently built what he calls the “number one piece of my career.”
And it wasn’t the “office-in-a-box” the woodworker made for a famous Miami TV personality, or the set of small tables he made for a former NASCAR driver.
It was a piece he had never in his 25-plus years as a woodworker made — a cross.
And it’s not just any cross, it’s a 4-by-8-foot, 119-pound Celtic cross that now hangs in the chancel of First Presbyterian Church in Pulaski.
St. Pierre, 41, has created hundreds of custom furniture pieces since he took interest in woodworking as a teen.
His creations include custom beds, display cabinets, desks, lights and grandfather clocks.
Many of his pieces have been shipped across the country from the spacious shop in Floyd that he, along with every other building on his property, built himself.
A Vermont native, St. Pierre moved to Floyd in 1999 as a construction supervisor with his wife, Jill, and their four children.
Although construction is currently his full-time career, St. Pierre, who now works for E.C. Pace Co. in Roanoke, said he’s been fascinated with wood since an early age.
“From its smell, to its plentifulness, wood has always amazed me,” St. Pierre said.
To him, woodworking is more than a hobby, it’s a way of life.
Five years ago, he started his own woodworking business called St. Pierre Woodworking, where he works part time. From inside his 3,000-square-foot shop, he builds anything and everything that his customers ask him to.
And he does it without a blueprint.
He’s usually working on three to four projects at a time, often setting one aside for a few weeks, “so I can just stare at it for a while.”
When he was approached by members of the First Presbyterian Church in November to build the cross, he automatically said yes “before even knowing how I was going to do it.”
Thomas Haller has attended First Presbyterian since he was born.
The 80-year-old retired dentist has seen the church evolve in the many years he’s been a member. He’s also seen the small golden cross sitting on the communion table at the front of the sanctuary every Sunday.
“When somebody would bring in flowers, they’d move the cross and stick it in the corner,” Haller said. “And that bothered me.
“The cross should be the centrality of the church.”
Haller said he’s been searching for 30 years to find the right cross for the church and was overjoyed when the church’s session voted to make that search a priority.
After researching and interviewing artisans from across the country, the session finally came across St. Pierre’s Web site and decided to schedule a visit with the woodworker.
From the very beginning, the group knew he was a perfect match for the project, one that the Lord had guided, Haller said.
Two months into the project, St. Pierre had only stared at the picture of a granite cross the church wanted him to replicate from hard, red oak.
There were a lot of important details to consider, St. Pierre said, and time was pressing.
The session wanted to unveil the cross to the congregation on Easter Sunday, just months away.
From carving the intricate Celtic knots donning the cross, to thinking about how the wood would swell and shrink with the changing temperatures, building such an important symbol was no easy task — one that St. Pierre had underestimated, he said.
And it was about to became even more difficult
custom built cabinets
