You never know what’s going to happen when you ask for help.

PBS Hawaii’s appeal for viewers’ help to build a NEW HOME resulted in a Kauai woodworker volunteering to personally build a part of it.

Dean Mayer of Omao offered to create a large wooden table to our specifications and donate the table.

It didn’t take us long to accept Dean’s generous offer and settle on a lobby reception desk, to be seen by all who enter the new building. Our architect, Sheryl Seaman of Group 70 International, drew a sketch and sent it to Dean.

“This will be a statement piece, beautiful,” Sheryl said. “It’s a very large desk, eight feet by three feet.”

Dean, a veteran woodworker, former Coast Guard electronics tech, and avid PBS Hawaii viewer, is now busy coaxing a desk from the wood. The huge piece came from the trunk of a monkey pod shade tree, down the road in Koloa town, which had grown so big, it was leaning on the property owner’s garage and home.

Dean Mayer of Kauai handcrafted a lobby reception desk for our NEW HOME. Mahalo, Dean!

Dean’s lobby reception desk will feature the “natural edge” of the tree trunk. “I have a special brushing tool from Japan which allows me to take away the softer growth and leave the hard wood edge,” he says.

Dean is delighted with the wood’s “swirly grain.”

“There are a couple of patterns that look like breaking waves which I might use in the front panel,” he said.

Says architect Seaman: “There’s a lot of motion in monkey pod grain. So much imagery in it. And television is about images.”

Perfect fit. One never knows what form help will take. In this case, it will be a gorgeous, handcrafted monkey pod desk, from Kauai with aloha. Thank you, Dean!