People
April 12, 2010
Profile: Carpenter provides the ultimate support
Jack Scheu is Campus Services' senior carpenter.
Mikhail Gorbachev and Jimmy Carter have graced Jack Scheu’s stage. Bill Clinton has sat at his conference table. His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama blessed the soil housed in the vessel that Jack built.
As Emory’s senior carpenter, Scheu crafts the supporting props for dignitaries visiting campus, along with building the cubicles, cabinets and bookcases that help the University run.
The Office of Religious Life enlisted Scheu to design and build folding screens to separate Muslim men and women during prayers, and to craft a sturdy, portable altar for Hindu students. For both projects, Scheu attempted to create simple, functional pieces patterned after the decorative interior walls of Cannon Chapel.
Among other notable commissions, Scheu created a stacked cylindrical vessel to hold the soil consecrated by the Dalai Lama during his visit to campus in 2007; and fashioned an acrylic “biohood” to shield an Emory geneticist’s experiments from the outside air. He was one of the first people on campus charged with making facilities more accessible for people with disabilities.
Laid-back and quick-witted, Scheu plasters the door to his Lowergate Parking Deck office with his “Dilbert” greatest hits. One strip reads: “Jack, what are your goals for the coming year? My goals are to replace my soul with coffee and become immortal.”
Scheu wasn’t always interested in building something out of nothing. For a time, he worked as a traveling sound engineer for the country-rock-jazz hybrid, Rock Killough & The McKnight Brothers Band.
As an undergraduate strapped for cash, he joined the maintenance department of the University of Alabama. He stayed on for eight years, soaking up the knowledge of his mentor, a weathered country carpenter who taught Scheu to “do it right the first time” and enjoyed dipping snuff in other people’s coffee cups.
Scheu has since enjoyed a 26-year tenure at Emory.
One of Scheu’s shining moments on campus came in 1995 when he was asked to construct a 37-foot-long conference table — in one day — for then-President Bill Clinton’s economic summit at Cannon Chapel.
“It could’ve been the biggest disaster in the world,” recalls Scheu, who finished the task at 3 a.m. and promptly fell asleep in his office.
Another near-miss in the mid-1990s came in response to a complaint about the blinding sun at Commencement. Scheu and his crew sunk telephone poles into the Quad and draped them with netting to screen the offending rays. The day before the ceremonies, it rained.
“The netting sagged so low it touched the back of the seats,” remembers Scheu. “We had to take the whole shebang down.”
While renovating the College office at Emory, Scheu met his future wife, Gail, who now works as an administrative assistant in the biology department. The couple have been married for 19 years, with three children and five grandchildren.
In his spare time, Scheu golfs — “I aerate the course” — collects University of Alabama red elephant paraphernalia and exalts “Star Wars.” (He took a snapshot standing atop a temple in Tikal, Guatemala, the same spot where the Millennium Falcon approached the Fourth Moon of Yavin in the classic film.)
“I love my work,” says Scheu, who keeps an album of his projects on his cell phone and can sketch them on demand.
“I feel like a spoiled kid. One day I’m going to the circus and the zoo and the next day I’m going to fantasyland. You never know what you’re going to end up with.”
