Clarksville: Dave McRae wields a hammer for good

When Dave McRae dances off into retirement this summer, his legacy will live on in fine homes dotted from Post Falls to Coeur d’Alene.

McRae, however, is not a contractor or homebuilder in the conventional sense. He’s the head of North Idaho College’s carpentry program.

As such, McRae, 65, has been the unsung leader behind 20 of the college’s Really Big Raffle houses, one going up for each year of the instructor’s tenure.

McRae’s final student-built offering is a $270,000 beauty overlooking Syringa Park in Post Falls.

Vaulted ceilings. Plenty of living space. Beautiful kitchen. It’s just the sort of home sought by young working couples with children.

But like all Really Big Raffle houses before it, this stunning rancher in soft green and beige will go to a lucky ticket holder at a drawing on the NIC campus.

(A few of the 5,500 tickets are still available at $100 a pop. The internet will give all the details on the July 13 drawing; visit www.nic.edu/rbr/ for details. Or you can take a virtual tour of the prize on YouTube by searching “North Idaho College – Really Big Raffle.”)

These annual house raffles are a brilliant idea. They bring in a lot of goodwill, excitement and, of course, plenty of dough for NIC and its foundation.

But in my mind, the real benefit is in all those students who, under McRae’s expert guidance, have learned the tricks of the construction trade: how to read plans correctly, how to buy the right amount building materials, how to frame and even how to swing a hammer so it doesn’t bend the nail.

“Carpentry,” said McRae in his trademark raspy voice, “is one of the only professions where you have to have extreme brain power and extreme brawn power.”

In other words, he adds, “You get to be dirty and smart at the same time.”

McRae spoke as we sat on the comfortable front porch of his home in Spokane’s West Central neighborhood.

He’s a great guy, positive and full of homespun humor.

I’ve known McRae for years, although not through anything that has to do with forms or foundations.

I’m president of Men Who Can’t Build, an organization I’ve never got around to officially forming.

My father was a pretty good basement carpenter who specialized in making plywood boxes that would hold everything from his power tools to camping gear.

Unfortunately, his carpentry teaching methods involved rapping the back of my head with a swipe of his palm whenever I failed to grasp one of his construction concepts.

THWAPP!!

“Pay attention, Lamont,” he’d holler, naming me after the younger half of comedian Redd Foxx’s old “Sanford and Son” TV show.

As a result I contracted a carpentry phobia that exists to this day. Why, just the sight of a drill press or a band saw gives me the jim-jams.

But I’ve always admired can-do craftsmen like McRae. Plus there’s the music angle we both share.

McRae’s a picker and a grinner from way back. He still sings and plays his guitar and banjo around town and with Sidetrack, his longtime band.

He’s also been a loyal mainstay in my annual Street Music Week, playing and jamming on the sidewalks of downtown Spokane to raise money for Second Harvest food bank.

“I’m both left brain and right brain,” said McRae of his disparate skills, music and carpentry.

“I sang in choirs and always had a good ear for harmony.”

Growing up in Long Island, New York, McRae picked up the guitar at age 14 and grooved on the harmonic sounds of the Beach Boys and the Chad Mitchell Trio.

At the same time he began learning the basics of building thanks to his dad, Donald, a land surveyor who “was always fixing and puttering and inventing.”

McRae’s life took on a pattern as he grew up, taking on varied construction and carpentry jobs and growing as a musician, learning the banjo and guitar.

He also worked on expanding his brain cells, earning a bachelor’s degree in education and psychology, a master’s in vocational education and an advanced vocational education teaching certificate.

With the sound of his lawn sprinkler lazily providing a cadence, McRae told me his story, how he married Louise Chadez, the love his life, how they eventually moved to the Spokane area, raised a boy and a girl, how he played in North Idaho’s beloved Normal Fishing Tackle Band, and how he wound up taking over NIC’s carpentry class in 1996.

The program expanded during his tenure, and now includes a two-year carpentry management program in addition to the one-year carpentry technology program.

The partnership between the program and NIC Foundation’s Really Big Raffle has helped “ensure Dave’s student have a quality ‘learning lab,’ ” wrote Rayelle Anderson in an email. She is director of development at NIC and executive director of the NIC Foundation.

McRae will be missed at NIC, Anderson wrote. He is “a kind, generous man. Always doing good for the greater good.”

As our interview wound down, I couldn’t hold back my curiosity any longer. I had to ask. McRae’s a carpenter, after all.

“So, um, how did you lose that little finger on your right hand?”

McRae laughed. It happened in 2004 and the story, he said, carried a good safety lesson.

He was working on that year’s raffle house with a crew of students on a bitter cold December day.

Too cold, really. The lesson learned was that he should’ve called it quits and waited for a warmer day.

But wanting to get things done, McRae tried to move the last two 30-foot-long trusses but found they were frozen together. While trying to knock them apart, the trusses moved, pinching McRae’s gloved finger like a giant pair of scissors.

McRae took off his glove. “Oh, this doesn’t look so good,” he commented.

Oddly enough, there was no pain. His hand was simply too cold to feel the damage.

He didn’t lose the finger then, he said. A specialist placed a pin in it and wrapped it with a splint. It was later, when an infection set in, that McRae decided he’d be better off without the abused digit.

He had it amputated with a local anesthetic, he said. That way he could drive to the Tri-Cities to watch his son play basketball.

Carpenters are tough.

No big loss. It was on his picking hand, after all, so it didn’t affect his guitar playing any.

And I guess you could count it as a badge of honor, proof of a lifetime spent using those hands for the powers of good.

Speaking of which, McRae summed up his feelings about that back in 2011, when he received NIC’s Top Faculty Award.

“Ethics in work and in life is probably the biggest thing I try to teach,” he said. “I use carpentry as the platform for teaching this.

“I try to nullify the image of a shifty contractor who shows up sporadically and does poor work. I hope my students find a happy life building things, but if they change directions, I encourage that also.”

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.