Unforgettable images

Published 11:10 pm Sunday, April 6, 2008

Patty Wright leans down close to her workspace, carefully moving a piece of wood around a tiny blade until the face of one of America’s fallen soldiers is revealed.

Wright does not know the fallen soldier whose face she is cutting out of wood with a scroll saw. Sometimes she has only seen a black and white pattern revealing the lines and curves making up the soldiers’ faces.

Wright, a 41-year-old civil engineer who has worked in Dalton 12 years, began doing scroll saw portraits of fallen soldiers during her spare time in 2005. She sends them to their families through a Web-based community, SSP Portrait Freedom (groups.msn.com/sspSoldiersPortraits/homepage). Members volunteer time and materials to send two portraits for families of fallen soldiers. One is framed and the other is ready to be framed.

Families contact the Web site, request an image be made and submit a photo. An artist draws a pattern based on the photo for the person making the scroll saw portrait.

When the person making the portrait is ready he or she e-mails Bill Coon, the moderator, who assigns a soldier. He or she then downloads the pattern and begins working. Before the portrait is sent to the family, Coon approves it.

“He may say make the eye bolder or make this different,” Wright said. “We don’t want to send the family something that’s botched up.”

Many times families send thank you notes after receiving the portraits, something Wright cherishes.

“It’s neat when we hear from the families,” she said.

She makes herself a portrait of each soldier and places it in a notebook beside information about the soldier and thank you notes she receives.

“I was blessed to receive both beautiful scroll saw portraits of my son….,” one mother wrote to Wright. “Your beautiful work hangs in a place of honor in my home and each time I look at it my broken heart will heal just a little more.”

Another mother wrote “I was overwhelmed at the likeness in this awesome work of art.”

Wright began looking up information on the soldiers because as she stared at their faces, she would wonder where they are from, how old they are and how they died.

“It brings me closer to them,” she said. “It’s all sad.”

Wright’s workshop at her McDonald, Tenn., home is full of other crafts produced on the scroll saw.

A coat rack with a bear attached sits near the door. Several portraits, images of animals and lighthouses hang on the walls, as well as a clock with an intricate design. Shelves display wooden boxes with images Wright has carved. A manger scene sits on a top shelf, and a pterodactyl hangs from her ceiling.

“Different things I see, I do,” Wright said about how she chooses her subjects.

She began learning how to use a scroll saw to make crafts six years ago because she loved the crafts her father, Julian Oliver of Apison, Tenn., and sister, Sherry Belcher of Ooltewah, Tenn., would make. Belcher is one of the artists who draws patterns for the scroll saw portraits of the fallen soldiers.

While at a craft fair in Dalton, Wright met Coon when she saw a booth with several portraits of soldiers done with a scroll saw.

“I told him I do scroll saw,” she said. “He told me about the group and I joined.”