My name is Gary Forte. I’ve been married to my wife, Caroline, for 36 years and we have 7 children- 4 our own, and 3 adopted nieces we raised as our daughters. Next to the love and devotion to my family, my biggest passion is woodworking. I have been involved in the woodworking trade for over 55 years.

I already knew I wanted to be a ‘carpenter’ by the time I was 5 years old. It started with my Great-Uncle on my Father’s side. This old Italian with the broken English from the old country was a carpenter who taught my Father a lot of things about building things with wood. One day, he went up into the woods behind our house with an ax. I watched in awe as he chopped down a tree and made a table right before my eyes. I was bitten by the woodworker bug and never looked back.

I started working when I was ten years old- delivering newspapers (even though it was technically illegal to work until you were 12 years old)- and that’s also when I started my first business, doing odd jobs in the neighborhood while making woodcrafts in the basement and selling them. I bought ink stamps, carbon paper, and receipt books from the local stationary store with my paper route money and sat in my room typing out invoices on an old Royal typewriter. I couldn’t afford to replace the ribbons when I got to the end, so I would take the spools out, rewind them in reverse and use them over and over until there was nothing left. That was all before ‘copy and paste’.

I got into doing custom carpentry and home repairs, but my real dream was to be a cabinetmaker. Not what it had come to mean back in the late 1960’s when everyone was making particle board boxes covered with Formica and calling it furniture. But what it used to mean a 150 years ago when being a cabinetmaker meant going from apprentice to fine furniture master craftsman in the span of a lifetime.

It was frustrating for me in school, because my level of academic achievement dictated that I had to go to college. Teachers and counselors could not or would not accept or understand how desperately I just wanted to be a cabinetmaker. Then, one day, my best friend and I were walking to town for pizza. We stopped at his Father’s place of business to get some money. As I walked in to the back of what I came to realize was an antique furniture refinishing shop, I was struck by the smell of turpentine and lacquer, and the vision of old broken furniture being transformed into things of beauty. I may as well been struck by lightning. I had to get a job there, and I did. I was only 15, and soon enough I was working back and forth between there, the cabinet shop, and the upholstery shops next door. I was that eager to learn and experience every aspect of this trade.