FROM STAFF REPORTS

MONTEVALLO – The Alabama Woodworkers Guild is a community service organization from Maylene that promotes the art and craft of woodworking. The American Village contacted Guild President Monta King last fall to inquire about having the guild do a community service project for the Village.

Guild project leader Bob Moore, and about a dozen other Guild members have since constructed a set for the American Village’s Living America’s Story: Patriots program. This program is conducted each spring for kindergarten through third grade students. In the program, children actively participate in helping Paul Revere symbolically cross the Charles River and ride to warn the colonists at Concord that the Redcoats are coming.

Guild members constructed 22 elaborate wooden building facades, each with considerable detail including shutters, steps and pediments over windows and doors. The facades represent Paul Revere’s home, the powder magazine and the Old North Church, from which lanterns famously flashed one if by land and two if by sea. A crafted rowboat used by Paul Revere to cross the river was also created.

The finished wooden set pieces were delivered to the American Village, where staff members Angel Tillman, Noelle Stewart, Karen Black, Rebecca Jones and Holly Blair Formentano added the painted detail.

The first day’s Patriots program, using the new set, will take place Monday, March 26, and will include children from Montgomery and Etowah counties. The official unveiling, to which Guild members are invited, will take place at 8:30 a.m. in the Barn Theatre at the American Village, and will include a traditional christening of Revere’s rowboat.

For more information, call 665-3535 extension 1063, 877-811-1776 or visit AmericanVillage.org.