Masonry Magazine May 1979 Page. 11
Nama recalls that bricklayers did not receive formal training when he started. After moving to the Eugene area in 1954, Nama registered as an apprentice at the age of 36.
Serving his apprenticeship as a blocklayer under two different contractors, Nama attended related training classes at the old Eugene Vocational School, which would become Lane Community College a decade later. Sometimes building three or four fireplaces a week, he gradually worked his way into contracting.
Today, Nama's niche in the industry is secure. He believes fireplaces are "exceptional selling points" in any home, and the builders he works for aren't interested in costs as much as in quality.
"They don't question prices," Nama says with a grin. "Most of them don't even ask me for an estimate. They give me an address and say, go ahead. And I don't mean standard fireplaces, either," he stresses. "I do most of my work on homes in the $150,000 bracket."
It's not braggadocio when he says he has no competition, it's simply that his clients don't even consider asking anyone else to do the work. His competency can be measured in many ways, but perhaps none more pointedly than by a prominent developer who, having witnessed a small commercial job he did, asked Nama to build him "the best house in the valley." Few doubt that he succeeded.
Nama now walks the grounds of the developer's secluded 3,700 square-foot home, done entirely in Old Town used brick. He pauses to comment on the solidity a cement foundation has given the seven-foot-wide, basket-weave brick walkway wending its way to the columnaded brick front porch; he points out the brick-concealed downspouts, and discusses the challenge of the arched windows; pauses again to reflect on the soldier courses he put in to break the monotony of the standard half-bond pattern over the three-car garage; tells an anecdote about the brick-walled patio; tries to estimate the number of bricks he laid here. 50,000?
"At the end of the day," he says, "I like to stand back and look at what I've built. Bricklaying allows me to do that."
These are proud words spoken from the lips of a man who, earlier in life, and very briefly, considered going to business college.
About the time Nama was holding a trowel for the first time in Lansing, Mel Martinson was finishing a stint as a Navy sheet-metal worker in Bremerton, Wash. Hoping to land a similar job in a civilian capacity, Martinson swung down through western Oregon and stopped at Eugene.
"It was more or less accidental," he says of his introduction to bricklaying. "I needed a job and Jens (Horstrup, a Eugene bricklayer and contractor since the thirties) needed help. I carried hod for him for a year, and the work he was doing kind of fascinated me."
Martinson signed on and served a four-year apprenticeship under Horstrup, and also attended bricklaying classes at Eugene Voc. He quickly developed a penchant for archwork, a hankering for the out-of-the-ordinary, and, after obtaining his journeyman's card, purchased the business from Horstrup when he retired. As his reputation for quality grew, so did his clientele. He was soon building hundreds of fireplaces a year, as well as numerous planters, veneer walls, and the like. He was always on the move.