Off the pages of The Bible and out of a block of wood come the animals, two by two, from the capable hands of Peter Ward.
Ward, a 69-year-old Burke resident, has been carving wood for 35 years. His most recent creation, a Noah’s Ark set with 41 pairs of hand-carved animals, is on display at the Kings Park Library in Burke, where it will be until the end of February.
"I started with a few of the animals, and after I had a few, that kind of told me how big that Ark should be," said Ward. "I had a really hard time with the Ark, since there aren’t too many good books on arks."
A member of the Northern Virginia Wood Carvers, Ward started the project as part of that group 10 years ago. While the group has long since put that project aside, he’s still cooking.
"I’ll never finish," said Ward, who credits his work style for the reason he’s spent so long on the project.
"I’m into it right now," he said, removing an unfinished figure whose mate he also plans to carve, from his pocket. "After these two I might just, well, no I have a couple more I have to do. But then, I’ll get into something else, and I maybe won’t touch this for six months or a year."
WARD NOTICED the display case at Kings Park last month and decided he’d like to have the animals on display there.
"I’m doing it for the satisfaction of someone looking at it and saying, ‘That’s nice.’ So that somebody else can see it and appreciate it. The Lord gave me that, with these hands, that I can do this. Them sitting home doesn’t do it any good. Get it out on display where people can do it, share what you have with others."
The display case is used by members of the community who wish to express their artistic talents, culture or anything related to history or science.
"It’s wonderful," said Amy Conerly, a library aide at Kings Park, who manages the display cases. "It brings people into the library for other reasons than just books, and it’s always good to keep the library relevant."
A native of Trenton, N.J., Ward took a job with the Reading Railroad out of high school. He remained in the railroad business for nearly 50 years, working for 41 years with the American Association of Railroads (AAR), a job that sent him around the country. It was during a stop in the Twin Cities of Minnesota that Ward went to school to learn the craft of woodcarving.
"I enjoyed painting, but it was too cold to paint there," he said. Ward served as president of the Minnesota chapter of the American Wood Carvers and was transferred to the Washington, D.C. area in 1980, when he moved to Burke. Soon thereafter, he began teaching classes at Colvin Run Mill in Great Falls.
"He's is a very dedicated woodcarver. He’s done a little bit of every kind of carving that you can think of," said Hank Cloutier of Sterling, a fellow member of the Northern Virginia Wood Carvers. Cloutier said he and Ward are part of a group, the "Tuesday Night Carvers," which meets once a week.
"We sit down in the basement and tell lies and carve wood," said Cloutier.
WARD'S FASCINATION with the railroads extended past his job responsibilities. In 1972, he started working on carving miniature "Z" gauge train sets, a project he continues working on to this day. He said he has more than 1,000 trains in the set, which fills a room of his house, along with a hand-carved and hand-painted track, grain elevators and ships.
"It’s usually this time of year I get into the mood for that," said Ward, who would like to donate the set to the National Railroad Museum in Baltimore when he finishes.
Ward retired from the AAR in 1994 but has kept busy in other ways. He drove a bus for Fairfax County Public Schools for five years and currently works part time driving a van for Heatherwood Retirement Community in Burke.
"You don’t sit at home when you retire. You have to have something to do, and I can’t do this all day," he said of carving.
As for the Ark, Ward continues to keep the same regimen as when he started. He returns regularly to the Kings Park Library, where he checks out books with pictures of the animals that catch his fancy. He then draws the animals and uses a band saw to cut them out of blocks of wood.
"I think it’s a fantastic project. He puts a lot of thought into it, does a lot of research, with libraries and magazines, to look at the color of the animals, and their shape, and how they differ from each other," said Cloutier.
"I’ll be doing it forever. I’ve told my son, ‘One of your children is going to get this Ark someday, and I hope there’s 100 pairs of animals,’" said Ward.