Terry Bierwirth
May 5, 20201 min
In honor of #NationaISkilledTradesDay May 6, 2020, we are launching a series called I Love My Trade. We connected with Jason Davenport, a fabricator located in Springfield, Oregon. Here is Jason's story:
I grew up in Springfield, Oregon, and attended Thurston High School. My dad owns and operates a small reforestation business, so growing up we were always building things to help his business or repairing small equipment. As a kid, I always wanted to be a logger, but my dad was severely injured in 1987 in a logging accident. My folks persuaded me to look into another career. From my experience in high school and at home, welding and fabrication seemed like a fun job. I wound up getting my Associate of Applied Science degree from Lane Community College (Eugene, OR) in fabrication and welding technologies and got a job at a local fab shop before completing my classes at Lane.
I think most fabricators will tell you that one of the most rewarding parts of this job is at the end of a shift, or when you complete a project, you have something in front of you that wasn’t there previously. Something that started as a piece of steel and is now a tangible object that most likely does something now. In my ten year career, I have worked in fab shops, for a couple of industrial contractors traveling around Oregon and Washington and most recently have specialized in heavy equipment repair. If someone had the ambition, the trades could take them across the country and back.
Follow Davenport on Instagram