In June 1944, the citizens of Hickory built a hospital in 54 hours to save their children from the worst polio outbreak that had ever hit the United States. Looking back now, even knowing the final results – 13 wards erected in under nine months, doctors and nurses flocking in by the dozens, hundreds of patients treated and released, with only 12 deaths, one of the country’s lowest-ever rates for polio – the enormity of the undertaking still bewilders.

Williams played basketball for the University of Kentucky with the team that won the NCAA national championship in 1978, and after graduation he played professionally in Italy and Japan. After years of the strict practice regimen of college and professional basketball, the freedom of woodworking was