This is an opinion column

Bill Giardini isn’t good at retirement. When he retired from Huntsville’s Teledyne Brown Engineering after working there for thirty-six years, he wanted to be useful, not idle.

“When you retire, people expect you to spend your time hitting balls—golf balls, tennis balls, ping-pong balls. I was never any good at that stuff and never liked it,’ he says. So he found something he did like—building houses. And he’s been doing that for Habitat for Humanity, now called Habitat for Humanity of the River Valley, since 1990.

“I’m a sports klutz,” he says, “but I’m good at swinging a hammer.”

Former President Jimmy Carter, a man he reveres, inspired Giardini to get involved in this important work—building affordable houses for families who work right along side him, nailing and trimming and painting. Building a home for a lifetime.

At 95, Bill has cut back on the housing projects he used to work on. He now builds furniture to use in the houses, tables of all sizes as well as garden benches that people can rest on in their own back yards in a place they helped to build. There are more than 300 Habitat houses in Madison County. Bill is proud to have been involved with many of these.

Bill’s workshop is in the back of the Habitat building at the corner of Washington Street and Pratt Avenue, and the staff there hung a sign that reads “Bill’s Playhouse.” Woodwork does feel like play, he says, and he comes to his workshop several days a week. He uses the wood donated from Wilson Lumber Company, and the furniture he creates is sold in Habitat’s ReStore section.

Bill’s a widower now, with two daughters and two grandchildren. One daughter lives in a house that Bill helped to build, watching the carpenters and bricklayers and learning from them. He did this with five of the houses his family lived in, so he had on-the-job training.

Bill used to teach college students from all over the country how to build Habitat houses. They came as part of Collegiate Challenge Week during their spring break. These were serious students. Instead of getting hammered at the beach, they learned to swing a hammer with Bill, starting the skeleton of a house that would be finished by the time the school year ended.

And when they had problems with the work or weren’t sure what to do, the answer was always the same: “Ask Bill.” Bill could teach them how to nail studs, wire boxes, and put up walls.

“When we raised a wall together,” Bill says, “It’s like I was their age again.”

Executive Director of Habitat, Jeremy Foulks, says that Bill inspires the staff and volunteers he meets. “He lives by the rule of ‘love they neighbor’ and people see that when they meet him.

When he’s not at his workshop, Bill sits in his chair and reads or listens to music on YouTube or BBC radio. He plans to keep working as long as he can. His retirement plan is not to retire.

“If you find something you love—something that helps other people—keep doing it,” he says. “It may just keep you alive.”