Gerald Richard
July 8, 2015
New VCHS coach ready to work
July 8, 2015
Wiley Matherne once spent his days handling commercial loans in a bank and his evenings working on wood projects in a shop behind his house in Thibodaux.
Last year, after a 40-year career in banking, he retired and things have changed.
“I’d come home from work, kiss my wife hello, change clothes and head out to my workshop,” he said. These days, however, things are a little different. Matherne now kisses his wife goodbye before she goes off to work and then spends most days in the workshop, except for the few hours a week he spends consulting. The woodworking went from a hobby away from the financial world to days filled with projects.
“It’s a hobby that’s now paying off,” he said. There’s no advertising for his work, just word of mouth and referrals, especially from two area men who like to refinish furniture more than they like to repair it. And that keeps him busy, so much so that he has to be careful not to take on too much.
One of those men, Marion Martinez of Chackbay, he met at a business card exchange about four years ago. “Somehow the subject of wood came up in the conversation, and since then he’s sort of become my mentor, first by bringing me in on some of his projects and now by sending me his customers.”
Another local furniture repairman, who was once a bank customer, forwarded all his projects to Matherne after he moved into a retirement community. One armoire literally came in pieces, and Matherne is painstakingly putting those pieces together and making new ones where needed.
There aren’t many people who want to take old things and take the time to make them functional again in this day and age of if it’s broken, throw it away and just get a new one.
Matherne’s favorite thing to do is repair antique furniture that to some may look like dilapidated pieces or junk not worth saving. Matherne sees old furniture with a different eye, being able to recreate what’s missing, reinforce what’s weak and put back together furniture from bygone eras, lovingly matching wood and wood grain.
“Each piece of furniture tells its own story,” he said, noting how hand craftsmanship can differ even among what might appear to be identical pieces of furniture – the curvature may be different or the carved leaves and fruit may not be exact duplicates, he explained, pointing to the carvings on a set of chairs, which seem to match, except for slight variations in the fruit carving on the top rails.
The path to master furniture repairman and refinisher has not been a short one or a direct one for Matherne.
From his childhood days in Gheens, Matherne recalls going with his mother to a wood shop in Schriever, where she would take furniture that needed repairing. He remembers thinking how “awesome” that shop was and he knew that he wanted a shop like that, and now he has one. His first piece of furniture was a bookcase he made for the family home while he was still in high school. “My dad didn’t care for woodwork, but my uncles were craftsmen. They built
our family home.”
After high school graduation, Matherne ventured to Nicholls State University and tried to find his niche in marine biology.
“Let’s just say I bombed miserably,” he joked. And, before he could find a new major, Uncle Sam stepped in. “I was one of the last three guys drafted in Lafourche Parish,” he said, “and went off to Fort Polk to train to go to Vietnam, but the other two guys joined the National Guard.” But before he could get to Vietnam, he was sent to military pay school in Indiana where he learned about finance. “Hey, I thought, this isn’t bad, all this Army stuff,” but he was still thinking he was going to end up in Vietnam. But before he could go, President Richard Nixon announced that no more American troops would be sent to that country, so off he went to the DMZ in South Korea, where he stayed a year before returning to Fort Polk for an exit party, because he would be among the last to leave the service before the draft ended.
Back in Thibodaux, he finished from Nicholls in business and began his banking career, all the while doing woodworking of some sort. “At first I did some cabinets and then some raised panel doors, but with the doors, I found the work wasn’t worth the effort.” And, along with the woodworking came a love of tools, especially old ones. Matherne proudly displays some of his grandfather’s tools that he refurbished and still uses. Some antique tools he has were found new on the Internet.
In addition to wood working, Matherne enjoys his grandchildren, all of whom love to spend time with “Pop” in the workshop, where they can find new tools and old, bits and pieces of wood, projects finished and in progress.
This wooden chair is one of the many hand-crafted perfections that retired banker Wiley Matherne crafts out of his shop each day. Since retiring after 40 years in banking, Matherne has turned his long-time hobby into much more.
