The Whitley family remembers Bill Whitley through his finely detailed wood carvings. Courtesy photos
C Heart arving from the
By Kaylan Watkins W
.M. Whitley, more affectionately referred to as Bill, was a man of many skills. Bill possessed a thorough understanding of the time, dedication, patience and creativity that go into creating a single sculpture carved from wood. This understanding led him to create many woodcarvings that stand in his memory today. The late Bill Whitley was married to Nadine Whitley and they were blessed with five sons: Blake, Kevin, Colin, Brett, and Pat.
Bill spent approximately four years in the Army and was based out of Fort
Riley, Kan. Colin Whitley, general manager of Alfalfa Electric Cooperative, remembers stories about his father’s time in the military. “He was in the Cavalry,” Colin said. “He was in the last unit that actually rode horses, but he never served overseas. He was right at the tail end of the Second World War.” Bill chose to pursue a degree in the industrial arts after his time in the Army. “He went to college right after WWII and there was such a flow of students from the GIs coming back,” Nadine said. “The government offered to pay for their college expenses and he took advantage of that and started college.” While in school, Bill was responsible for some of the designs of the wood projects that were built. He graduated with a degree in industrial arts and a desire to teach, which is evident in his early career path. Colin fondly remembers the multitude of hobbies his father had enjoyed over the course of his lifetime. “He always had an interest; he loved identifying any bird that came near the house,” Colin said. “He was a wonderful father, but he was also one of those guys who had an interest in a lot of different things.” When Bill suffered from a major heart attack in the early 1970s, he turned to woodcarving as a form of therapy. He wasn’t able to get out and be as active
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as normal while he was recovering. He had to do something, so he started carving. The ability to work with wood seems to have been a trait Bill came by natu-
rally, according to his wife, Nadine. “He was sort of a natural,” Nadine said. “His father was a builder, so he grew up around wood and working with his hands. He was always curious about a lot of things.”
Bill’s interest in woodcarving, while natural, developed through another pastime he had previously enjoyed—looking for driftwood. His early carvings were pieces of driftwood that he thought looked like an owl, so he would add some carved features to it to make it stand out. The hobby quickly took flight and became a skill that Bill spent many hours perfecting. “He went from that kind of work to getting a random piece of wood and shaping it into whatever he wanted it to be,” Colin said. Nadine recalled many late nights that her husband spent in the shop whit- tling away at the carving he happened to be working on at the time. For several years in the early ‘80s, Bill’s woodcarvings were on display in the
Oklahoma Territorial Museum in Guthrie, Okla. Woodcarving requires many skills, and not all of them are related to the ability to handle the woodworking tools. “He had a natural eye and flair for it,” Nadine said, ”but he also had the patience that it takes to do something like that.” Colin mentions a strong admiration for the traits necessary to be successful at woodcarving.
“I don’t think I have the same talents or patience,” Colin said. “A lot of working at woodcarving is patience; you have to be willing to go very slowly. The ability to feather out the wood so thin and put the detail in there. I wish I had the patience for that.” A technique that some woodcarvers use is to carve the overall shape and
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