A Master Craftsman

In his life, Albert "Corky" Richards built oyster tongs, furniture for million dollar homes and everything in between.

Self-taught, self-made and self-reliant, the former fisherman crafted work that mirrored his character - frank, straightforward and unpretentious.

He used the finest materials, favoring centuries-old deadhead cypress pulled from the Apalachicola River, which he admired for its tight, straight grain and resiliency.

Nothing gave Richards greater pleasure than a job that challenged his imagination and put his skills to work.

He left the slap-dash work to others.

"You could always tell his work by the quality of what he did," remembered his wife, Margaret. "The quality is what stood out, the beauty and the quality."

After a long battle with lung cancer, Richards, 66, passed away on July 8 at the Apalachicola home he built with sons Rodney and Buddy.

The many timeless, well-crafted pieces Richards left behind serve as monuments to his life as a master craftsman.

Practicing an Old Art

Though Richards was born in Gulf County and lived throughout Florida, his family always considered Apalachicola home.

In 1958, Richards settled in the city permanently, finding work oystering, crabbing and fishing.

In his spare time, he built his own oyster tongs, constructing the handles from southern yellow pine and sanding them until they were comfortable and sturdy in his hands.

He crafted the metal basket, or head, by bending pieces of steel on handmade templates and then welding them together.

To build the interlocking teeth, which scrape the oysters off the bay's bottom, Richards hammered two-inch pieces of red-hot steel to a point on an anvil.

At the time, several men in town built tongs, but only Richards knew firsthand the needs of oystermen.

"I was the onlyiest one making tongs that had oystered before," Richards said in a 2006 interview with the Southern Foodways Alliance.

"(I) knew how I wanted mine to be, and I just started to do it like I liked them. But everyone else liked them, too."

In 1975, he opened up a shop in Apalachicola on Water Street, in the building that now houses the Tin Shed.

In the early years of his business, Richards found steady work building and repairing tongs for local oystermen and companies in Jacksonville, South Florida, Texas and Louisiana.

Richards knew his clients well and accommodated their needs.

He built the handles in different sizes, according to his clients' preferences. In the winter, when the water was low and oystermen worked a shallower part of the bay, some preferred shorter, 10-12-foot handles.

In the summer, oystermen typically requested14-16-foot handles to work in deeper water.

When good southern yellow pine became scarce, Richards switched to ash for the handles.

He used a three-part lamination process, gluing three long pieces of ash together and cutting them down to the required lengths.

He built tong heads with 14 to 24 teeth, and knew the sound they should make when churning the bay's floor.

"A good pair of oyster tongs really makes the difference. They have a certain sound, a certain feel, so you can tell what's going on on the bottom," Richards told the Panama City News Herald in 1987.

"An oysterman might come in here and say, ‘These tongs are dead.' He can't hear with them or feel with them. But I know what to do."

Richards began teaching his sons, Rodney and Buddy, the trade as children. He stood them on milk crates to operate a band saw, much to Margaret's dismay.

"She'd come in screaming, ‘Get him off that saw,'" remembered Rodney, who inherited his father's woodworking skills.

Richards was a fine, if impatient mentor, holding his sons to an exacting standard.

"He taught us boys well," said Rodney.

A Rich Man

Oyster tongs were just one item in Richard's vast repertoire.

He built kitchen cabinets, paneling, furniture, boats, chests, bookshelves and a wide variety of custom millwork.

He was one of the few local builders who could construct windows and doors in the style of historic 19^th century homes and churches.

His talents are on display in the massive front doors of Trinity Episcopal Church and throughout Apalachicola.

Designated a master folk craftsman by the state of Florida, Richards did not inherit his woodworking talent.

His father, Harley, was a barber, and his mother, Mamie, a beautician.

Richards learned his craft by watching the best in his field - those like the late Roy Smith of Apalachicola and Eastpoint's Joe Marshall.

He absorbed knowledge like a sponge, and recognized his talent as God-given.

"He said many times he was a rich man. God gave him the gift and he appreciated it," said Margaret.

Margaret and Richards met as teenagers and were together for 49 years.

Together, they raised four children, sons Rodney and Buddy (now deceased), Gayle Pace and Cindy Wefing.

Margaret described her late husband as a perfectionist who poured everything he had into each job.

"When he was on a big job, you couldn't be around him. He couldn't live with himself if it wasn't perfect and no one else could either."

Possessed of a good work ethic, Richards worked every day, first at his shop downtown, and later at a shop on Bluff Road.

When his blue GMC truck was not parked in front of the shop, his customers became concerned.

Because of pain in his back and feet, he worked in his stocking feet, and wood chips clung to every pair of socks he owned.

With a large backlog of orders, it sometimes took a year before Richards could begin a piece.

He was selective with his clientele, and his customers knew they were getting the best when they paid a visit to Corky.

"People would come up to him years later and thank him for his work," said Margaret.

Hitting the Big Time

Charley Ingle was born in Apalachicola, and returned in 1978 to open a cabinet shop.

Though they were in the same business, Ingle and Richards considered themselves more comrades than competitors, and worked together on many jobs.

In the early 1990s, the friends teamed to help Apalachicola resident Jane Dorfer renovate a 19^th century cottage bordering Scipio Creek.

Dorfer hired the acclaimed Washington, D.C. architect, Hugh Newell Jacobsen to helm the renovation.

Jacobsen's designs include Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' former home in Martha's Vineyard and an addition to the U.S. Capitol.

The architect admired Richards' and Ingle's work on the Dorfer project, and hired them for several more jobs.

The first was a multi-million dollar home for David and Georgia Welles in Windsor, a barrier island eight miles north of Vero Beach.

Jacobsen asked Richards and Ingle to build 54 exterior doors and windows (some 4-foot wide and 12-foot tall) for a Florida Colonial style home with over 10,000 feet of living space.

Jacobsen asked that the pieces be constructed out of mahogany, but Richards proposed deadhead cypress instead.

Don "Cairo" Ingram, a former sawmill owner, introduced Richards to the virgin wood years ago, and it became his wood of choice for all projects, including his home.

Jacobsen wrote Richards back and told him to stick with the original design. Cypress, he noted, was not as good as mahogany.

Richards knew the architect's frame of reference was limited to the young, fast growing cypress trees that populate the Carolinas.

Deadhead cypress has a tighter, straighter grain, with 40-50 rings an inch, and will not warp like younger, inferior wood.

To prove his point, Richards cut two identically sized boards, one out of North Carolina cypress and the other out of deadhead cypress, and mailed them to the architect in a manila envelope.

On the former, he wrote, "This is what you call cypress," and on the latter, he wrote, "This is what we call cypress."

Jacobsen was sold.

With Ingle's help, Richards completed the doors and windows, as well as custom furniture, paneling and other millwork.

Richards helped Jacobsen refine his design for triple-hung Bermuda shutters, which featured three distinct segments that inclined separately from an overall frame.

"Corky was proud of that because he was able to show this famous architect a thing or two," said Ingle.

Ingle admired his friend, whose artistry placed him in a league above other woodworkers.

"I was struck from the very beginning by how much more of an artist he was than I," said Ingle. "I was more of a technician. Corky had an artistic imagination that was special."

Ingle saw continuity in Richards' life and work.

"The joinery tended to be honest and straightforward. It was not embellished. It was right out there, not trying to hide anything.

"That's the way Corky was. He was very straightforward. There was nothing going on behind the scenes with Corky."

Richards completed work for other Jacobsen designs in Vero Beach, Chicago and Nantucket, shipping his completed pieces by truck to their final destinations.

 Jacobsen's homes, and Richards' fine handiwork, were featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Décor and Vero Beach magazines.

Richards never boasted of his late-career achievements.

"My dad was a very humble man. He would've never showed his friends those magazines," said his daughter, Gayle.

But he felt immense pride in his work with Jacobsen, who became a close friend.

"Corky was a little man from a little small town, and he never dreamed his work would go this far," said Margaret.

God's Craftsman

Even when he was working big jobs for Jacobsen, Richards continued to build and repair tongs for area oystermen.

As the oyster industry declined, Richards was one of the last tongmakers left standing.

Though Richards saw no future in building tongs for either himself or Rodney, both he and his son happily accommodated oystermen's requests.

"We're doing it now mostly out of courtesy because of the past," Richards told the Southern Foodways Alliance in 2006.

Richards had a respect for history. He kept a boat built by the late Fred Sawyer in his backyard for years just to admire its construction.

He preferred classic country music, listening to Hank Williams Sr., Ernest Tubb and Willie Nelson, whose song, "Seven Spanish Angels" was played at his funeral.

In his last project, Richards restored a 45-year old Carter Craft boat, which his family plans to exhibit in next year's antique Boat Show.

Richards had many more projects planned when he became sick last year.

He was diagnosed with lung cancer this January, and his health declined rapidly in the months that followed.

Today, Rodney has taken over the family business, building oyster tongs and cabinets using the techniques his father taught him.

Margaret will keep the shop open as long as her son expresses an interest.

"He's as talented as his dad," she said, "but he doesn't want to work seven days a week for the rest of his life."

In between his recent orders, Rodney built a cross made of cypress for his father's grave.

"My dad was a good man," said Rodney. "He never sh-t nobody; he was straight up."

Throughout his life, Richards looked after his friends and family, offering his time and attention.

Ingle likened him to Atlas, holding the world in his hands.

Today, Richards' friends look after Rodney, dropping by the shop that still has no shingle.

"Ever since Corky passed away, everybody checks on him," said Margaret, who continues to grieve for her husband.

Though Richards was taken sooner than she'd ever dreamed, she believes his death served a greater purpose.

"God had a plan for him," said Margaret. "He needed a good craftsman, and he got the best."