Hi, I'm Don.

My name is Don Roden, and I have been working with wood since I was four years old. My dad gave me some scrap wood and let me loose on the bandsaw — and the rest, they say, is history. And yes, I still have all ten digits.

I started turning wood round when I was about eight years old, when I asked my dad about the lathe sitting off in the corner of his shop in our basement. He gave me some files with round edges on them and some scrap 2 × 2 wood. After I mounted it up and started working with it, the love of turning wood round was in my blood — from that day to this.

The lathe I learned on died a few years after I retired from the Air Force. The head bearings gave out after sixty years; they just don't make them like they used to.

In my professional life, I served twenty-two years in the Air Force. Eighteen of those years were Aircraft Maintenance — not much woodworking there — and four were a staff position. After I retired and moved back to my hometown, I bought the house my dad built before he and my mom were married.

The real reason I bought it was because it was easier to buy a house than to clean out my dad's shop. The lathe that I started on was still there and working, so I reactivated my joy of turning and began to expand my woodworking and woodworking skills. I joined the Minnesota Woodturners Association in 2000 and served on the board.

It's been a busy twenty-two years since I retired, and woodworking has been part of every one of them.

Before moving from Minnesota to Ohio in 2016, I went to a screening of Project 22 — a documentary on veteran suicide. While watching the film, I saw a man who did pottery and would invite veterans into his shop. The veterans were engaged in trying something new. What was important was not the pottery itself; it was the conversations that happened while making something with other veterans.

That gave me the idea of doing the same thing with wood. It's not about turning. It's about the connection. That's how the name Veterans Woodworking Workshop came to be.

I enjoy sharing my love of woodworking with anyone who wants to learn. As a veteran, I have a special place for fellow veterans who may be struggling — like many of us do — and who may want to share a creative outlet. Maybe out of time in the shop, a veteran will be inspired to find their artistic outlet, whatever that may be.

In November 2025 I married Deb in Chariton, Iowa. We moved into a 131-year-old building on the town square in mid-January 2026. The main floor is eighteen feet wide by a hundred feet long. The front becomes a gallery, the middle becomes my studio and classroom, and the back becomes Deb's studio. Upstairs is our home.

The basement was a Speakeasy in its day, with a drive-in entrance from the back. Now it's storage for wood I rescue from the local burn lot.

My dad passed away in 1993, and not a day in the shop goes by that I don't think about him. I've moved from Minnesota to Ohio to New Mexico to Iowa, and while I couldn't keep all his tools, I still have many of them. I taught my son Ryan on the same kind of lathe my dad started me on. The legacy keeps moving.