There are certain people whose unassuming demeanor might cause an observer to miss the treasure trove of experience and accumulated wisdom they carry around with them.
Such is the case with Neal Whitson, who can, on most days, be found at Columbus Custom Woodworking, the milling shop he runs at the corner of 13th and Union streets.
If you engage him in conversation about particular topics, he might get out one of the guitars he’s made over the last 15 years or show you photographs of him with his friends in Kenya, whom he goes to see every so often.
Perhaps he’ll regale you with stories about his teen years on his own in Florida. Then again, he might just keep the discussion focused on what he does for a living.
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His story begins 80 years ago on a farm near Dudleyville, south of Seymour. He left home at age 14 and went to Florida, where he worked at a fishing camp and tended bar.
“Florida was pretty wild in the 1950s,” he confides. “Police would come by the bar where I worked and ask if everything was OK. I’d say it was, and they’d leave.”
Next, he joined the Navy, spending much of his four-year enlistment in the Mediterranean. He was a weatherman.
Upon returning to Indiana, he came to Columbus and worked in plant facilities management at Cummins.
“That’s when I really got into construction,” he says. He worked for a while at Dunlap, a local contractor, and then went out on his own building houses.
Along the way, he became a father to three offspring, daughter Lynn, who is a registered nurse, son Andy, who is an IT contractor for Cummins, and son Scott, who works for Kramer Cabinets and Furniture. They all live in the Columbus area, as do Neal and his second wife, Karen.
About 15 years ago, he approached Randy Lucas, an acclaimed area luthier, about learning to build guitars.
“I went to school with his dad,” says Whitson. “I’ve known Randy since he was born.”
He’s built several, nearly all of which comprise his private collection. “I’ve only sold one, and that was to a friend,” he says. “I don’t want to have any pressure when I make them.”
He gives careful consideration to how each one is going to sound. For the guitar he’s currently building, the braces on the inside of the top board are going to stop short of coming to its edge. He has a feeling it’s going to give it a particular quality he’s after.
“I’m about ready to build a violin,” he says. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.”
Since becoming a guitar maker, he has learned some chords and currently plays in the praise band at First Presbyterian Church. He lets the other musicians tackle any single-note passages.
This summer, he went on his sixth trip to Kenya. He’s acquired a set of friends there with whom he’s stayed in touch since first going in 2007.
At that time, Whitson was attending North Christian Church and became friends with Joshua Kiilu, a Cummins IT specialist and a Kenyan. Kiilu expressed a desire to return to his hometown of Machakos to build a church.
“He said to me, ‘Want to go to Africa?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ I love to travel.”
Whitson says the population of Machakos is about 80,000. Its one paved road rings the perimeter. “Once you get off that, it’s just helter-skelter,” he observes. “There is an eight-story hotel downtown.”
On the latest trip, the group including Kiilu and Whitson built a community center.
Whitson says that wildlife is abundant in the area. “You see zebras, giraffes, even camels. Most are in preserves, but some are just wandering around.”
Danny Clark, Whitson’s bandmate at First Presbyterian, says that both woodworking and music brought them together.
“He’s a really good draftsman,” notes Clark. “I first met him when I had him look at some blueprints at Brands [the forerunner of Bender Lumber’s Columbus outlet, where Clark has worked for several years]. Our church would get together with North Christian a few times a year for performances, He was singing in the North Christian choir at the time. I got to know him and had him do some woodworking. For a while, he’d come over to Brands from his own shop and run our mill.”
He heard Clark and his wife, Carola, perform and told them that, while he made guitars, he didn’t know how to play. Clark invited him to a praise band practice, and soon he was a member.
Church ties together several of Whitson’s activities, such as music, missionary work and craftsmanship.
“I think it’s a great way to help mankind,” he says. “I think we all go back to the same source.”
