In this edition of Bulletin Board Diaries, a business card found inside a Belmont grocery store leads to a veteran-owned business located in a nearby neighborhood.
Adam Volkerding is the owner of Gruntwelder LLC, a business he operates out of his garage.
The garage/workshop has all the equipment Adam needs to run his business. Gas tanks, plasma cutters and other equipment surround a good-sized workbench set up in the center. A large screen TV hangs on one wall.
Volkerding's interest in welding began in high school.
“I took an interest in it," he said. "It was really cool to play with things, with fire that makes metal melt, all that stuff, and I went home, and I bought a welder."
The welding equipment Volkerding purchased was pretty basic, he says, but it worked well enough for his new hobby. Then, after graduating from high school in the summer of 2000, Volkerding decided to join the military, the Army Infantry Airborne Division.
"My grandparents both fought in World War II. My older brother had already signed up for ROTC to be a pilot in the Air Force," he said. "And I felt like, you know, when I would see these names at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, names engraved in the seats and the stones and the memorials, I would look at those things, those names and say, 'Man, these guys are heroes.' I wanted to establish, to be like them one day. I felt like it was my job. I love my country so much."
After completing basic training Volkerding was deployed with the 82nd Airborne Division. He says, at the time, he felt that he had “made it." But then came the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"So unfortunately, on 9/11, 2001, I was on a training mission out in the woods, in Area J at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and a call came over the radio and my sergeant's ICOM, and we were getting ready to do another movement. And the guy on the radio said, 'Hey, we just had a plane hit the World Trade Center. Get your guys in here. We've got to get back to the barracks.'"
Volkerding said his sergeant thought it was a joke at first, but then the Pentagon was hit and the reality that America was under attack sank in.
"So, we run back to the barracks and prepare for a phone call from the president telling us we've got to go," he said. "So we waited."
And they waited. Until Volkerding's unit was deployed in March of 2003 — when former President George W. Bush announced that a coalition of forces were in "the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, free its people, and defend the world against a grave danger."
Volkerding experienced his first battle soon after — on April 1, 2003. He tells me whatever eagerness he and his team members might have felt about their mission quickly changed.
“It's scary. People get hurt, people get killed," he said.
Like PFC Michael R. Deuel.
"When we had our memorial for Deuel, that was our first guy that we lost from our company. I knew him well and it just kind of really woke you up like, 'OK, this is real. Not all of us are going to get to come home,'" Volkerding said. "Your buddy dies, you don't get to say goodbye to him. You don't get to go to their funeral because you're still fighting the war. What you do is have memorials for them. But the memorials would start to hurt. We lost eight of my buddies when I was over there. But, dealing with that death, you turn to your buddies. What else can you do?"
After his military service, Volkerding worked several jobs, including one at company where he helped build tanks that he said were stronger and safer than the ones he had used in Iraq.
Today, the explosions and gunfire of the Iraq War have given way to the sparks and the crackling sound of melting metal that fills the air inside the Gruntwelder’s garage.
Volkerding demonstrates a simple T-weld on some scrap metal. The sparks look blue-green through the protective helmets.
One of Volkerding's two daughters, 12-year-old Adalynn, also is in the garage. She was amazed to hear her dad's experience of war.
"To me, it's kind of mind blowing," she said. "I've never heard a lot of things like that."
It both surprises Adalynn to hear about her dad's experience — and it's what she's come to expect of him.
"He has courage to do stuff," she said. "At the same time, I'm always surprised what he can do. But, you know he can do it."
Adalynn sometimes helps her dad out in the shop, but she said the actual welding part is kind of scary. Her dad has made some cool stuff, like as she calls it, an “old school Metallica rock band sign" for her sister Aubrey.
Adam says he's always getting ideas of what he can make.
"I get excited when I get the ideas, I start thinking about it. My mind starts turning (and) all these ideas come flowing out. And I've got to write them down real quick, too, because I'll forget them, I get so many sometimes," Volkerding said. "And some of them are junk ideas and some of them end up being good ideas, but I love it. I'm out here, I get to melt metal for a living. I get to turn a thought, an idea into something physical that you can touch and use, and maybe it'll make your life easier or something like that. Or maybe it's just something fun to look at or use."
A single business card lead to this garage in Belmont, but during a two-hour conversation, I spoke with a man who once had thoughts of becoming a teacher like his mom, and a man who has paid the mental and physical price of serving in war.
But, what came across throughout our conversation, is that Adam Volkerding is man who knows the importance of family — the values and ideals of the family he was raised in, and how he’s passing those concepts on to the family he’s raising today.
