Bob Pearce has been woodworking for most of his life, but it wasn’t until about two decades ago that he started using it to encourage others.
“My dad was doing some carving one day, and I started,” said the Boulder City resident. “He gave up and I kept going. … I started in 1979, out of high school, and I haven’t looked back.”
Twenty years ago, Pearce took that hobby to a new level when he had an idea to create small wooden angels and give them to waiters and waitresses from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
“I heard something about some guy doing it somewhere,” he said. “I decided to do it. … I give one out with the tip when we go out to eat.”
“They work hard and it makes them feel good,” added Barbara Pearce, his wife, who praised her husband for his giving nature.
“I feel it just takes a good-hearted person to do it,” she said. “He really does it because he loves it.”
Bob Pearce not only spends time throughout the year designing and making the angels to give out, but he also works on other projects in his home workshop for other organizations in town.
He created American flags for the Wounded Warrior project and made a shield for the National Park Service.
When he’s not working on projects for other people, Bob Pearce is working on ones for his wife.
“I’ll say it’d be nice to have something like this … and the next thing I know he’s working on it,” she said. “I’m lucky.”
For him, Bob Pearce said woodworking is relaxing and wood “speaks to him.”
One of his recent projects is a set of small wooden houses.
“I just cut out the house that’s there,” he said. “None of them are the same.”
Barbara Pearce also found relaxation in an artistic new hobby she started during the pandemic. She said she started painting pictures with dots on rocks.
“I don’t know where it came from. … As long as I can make dots, I can do it,” she said. “But don’t ask me to draw a straight line.”
The Pearces have lived in Boulder City for seven years.
Contact reporter Celia Shortt Goodyear at cgoodyear@bouldercityreview.com or at 702-586-9401. Follow her on Twitter @csgoodyear.