SAUGUS — Carmine Moschella retired in 1993. But don’t tell the 91-year-old: Moschella goes to Saugus High School every Tuesday, and sometimes several days a week, to teach furniture making and wood carving.
“I love going to work every day. It’s self satisfaction for me and, I hope, for other people,” he said.
Surrounded by power tools in the high school woodshop that were new when Moschella started teaching there in 1956, he carves creations as small as wood Easter bunnies holding little baskets with room enough for a piece of candy or a marshmallow and larger pieces like bookshelves and wood-wheeled wagons.
“At Christmas, this place looks like Santa’s woodshop,” said Carl Puleo, a Melrose resident who signed up with Moschella three years ago to hone his woodworking skills with Moschella.
The class is offered through the Saugus Senior Center with Tuesday, 10 a.m. to noon, as the official class day and time. But Moschella often works in the shop located at the rear of the school more than one day a week with former colleagues still teaching in the school and friends stopping by the shop to say hello and check on his well-being.
“I appreciate everything people do for me,” he said.
A Revere native, Moschella met his late wife, Audria, at Revere High School and enrolled in Boston Trade School after graduation.
“One of the teachers took a liking to me and suggested I apprentice at a cabinet-making shop,” he said.
Drafted into the Army before he could complete his woodworking apprenticeship, Moschella bowed to pressure from his family after completing his service and enrolled in the industrial arts program at the State Teachers College in Fitchburg (now Fitchburg State University).
His graduation in 1954 coincided with Saugus High School’s construction. He got a job teaching shop and then industrial arts at the high school, moving to Saugus in 1958. In 1971, he was promoted to vice principal and held the job until he retired.
Moschella’s handiwork is all around Saugus. He coordinated the creation of the wood carving depicting the high school’s Sachem mascot mounted under an awning at the school’s Main Street entrance.
He restored a cross-section of the elm tree planted on Main Street in 1770 to commemorate Colonial resistance against the British and constructed Town Hall benches used by the Board of Selectmen.
His commitment to teaching evening woodworking classes following his retirement kept him in the woodshop and set the stage for Moschella to teach his Tuesday class.
“Last summer he taught me how to make a mahogany patio bench. He’s probably the smartest teacher I’ve ever had,” Puleo said.
Mackie Bastarache of Lynn signed up for woodworking classes four years ago with Moschella. Her grandfather, Harry Collamore, owned the former Cliftondale Woodworking and she wanted to know if she could find her way around a bandsaw and joiner.
“He knows so many different approaches to projects and, voila, he shows you something you haven’t thought of,” she said.
Moschella’s daughters, Mila and Carla, live in Saugus and he would like to continue teaching woodworking at the new middle/high school under construction next to Saugus High.
“I’d love to keep going over there but who knows?” he said.
