Seabrook Craftsman Donates ‘Rocking Horses’ for Fundraisers
By Jeff Ostroth
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
They’re not rocking horses actually.
One is a rocking donkey, crafted and carved to resemble the donkey character in the animated movie Shrek. It was raffled off last fall to benefit Seabrook’s Benevolent Care Fund and is now the proud possession of a Seabrook staff member’s two-year-old.
The other is a rocking Pluto, the dog of Disney fame. By the time this article prints, it too will have been raffled off, with the proceeds going to the Seabrook Scholars’ Fund.
Both are the works of Ted Tideman, a Seabrook resident since the community opened in 1998 and one of the founders of the Seabrook woodshop.
“I’ve made a dozen of these things,” says Ted, a retired engineer who’s been involved in woodworking since he was eleven or twelve years old. “Not Pluto and the Shrek Donkey, but different rocking horses. I also carve carousel horses the same size.” In addition, since moving to Seabrook Ted has made a mahogany piano bench for his son and daughter-in-law and numerous items for his Seabrook neighbors.
Seabrook Woodshop
The Seabrook woodshop is operated by a group that meets monthly. “We’re the oldest organization at Seabrook,” says Ted. “Actually, we started forming the woodshop about a year before we ever moved in.”
Ted says he met future neighbors who shared his interest in woodworking during meet-and-greets that Erickson held for people who had reserved homes at Seabrook prior to its opening. “There were about ten of us that started the shop initially,” he says.
To plan for the woodshop, Ted traveled to Charlestown and Oak Crest, Erickson’s two communities in the Baltimore area, to see how they operated. “I got a lot of answers,” says Ted, and as soon as he could get into the space provided for the workshop, he started bringing in tools from his house in Bloomfield, N.J. “I brought in a big portion of my own shop,” he says. “Other people did the same thing.”