Loren Woodward:  

Summers during high school I worked as a union carpenter's apprentice for Canyon Homes out of Kent. Our crew put in a foundation on Monday, stripped the forms and built the floor frame on Tuesday, framed the walls ready for roof truss delivery on Wednesday, framed and sheeted the roof on Thursday, installed exterior doors and windows, ready for subcontractors, on Friday and did it all over the following week. Skills learned working for Canyon Homes served me well ever since. I spent six years at the U of W and serving active duty for the National Guard. I graduated with a degree in Building Technology and Administration from the College of Architecture and became a No. 4 Crewman on a nuclear missile launch crew. For a year after graduation from the UW, I lived on Portage Bay, traveling with a friend in his new Cessna 185. We saw an America Cup race off Rhode Island from the air and on board a US Destroyer, made trips across the Southwest and into Mexico, flew into norther British Columbia on floats to lakes where you got a trout to bite on every cast. My first job after college was for Jack Benaroya Construction doing quantity takeoffs. The company shrank from 120 to 40 employees within six weeks of me being hired due to the Boeing depression of the early 1970s. I left voluntarily after sitting in at a workstation with no windows and no work for more than a week They were kind enough to lay me off so I could get unemployment benefits. I used the funds to start my own design and build construction company specializing in residential and small commercial projects. My first two projects were floating homes in Portage Bay. I eventually incorporated my construction company...Expand for more