Apprentice welder lends a hand on veterans memorial statue

Some ideas take time to mature, especially when the idea is a public art project like a sculpture or a memorial. The idea has to be fleshed out to become a plan, proposals have to be solicited, a project has to be selected, funds have to be raised, and so on. So it was when the mayor of Ripley, Miss., got a call from a joint committee formed by the local Veterans of Foreign Wars and The American Legion asking for some land for a veterans park. In 2016 the mayor and the Ripley City Council endorsed the project and set aside the land for it.

Just a couple years before all this was put into motion, a middle schooler named Madison Martin was introduced to welding in nearby Tupelo, Miss. She had enrolled in a program called Tek2Go, an advanced manufacturing camp sponsored in part by Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs, a fundraising organization affiliated with The FABRICATOR. Martin’s participation in Tek2Go sparked an interest in welding and two years later she enrolled in Tupelo High School’s two-year welding program.

The veterans memorial project and Martin’s nascent career would cross paths at 1000 S. Green St. in Tupelo, the address of Precision Machine & Metal Fabrication.

An Internship, an Opportunity

Precision Machine & Metal Fabrication offered Martin an internship; it also landed a contract to build a 20-ft.-tall sculpture of a saluting soldier to adorn the Tippah County Veterans Memorial. Martin spent the first few weeks of the internship programming a CNC machine to cut parts for an elevator, and she also learned some of the finer points of welding aluminum. When the time came, she was eager for a chance to work on the statue.

“It’s a huge honor,” Martin said. The internship is 11 hours a week, and with her contributions and those of a few others at Precision, the statue is expected to be finished and installed at the end of July.

A Career in the Making

Martin credits Precision Machine for the opportunity to work on the statue; her high school welding teacher for getting here to this point; and the Tupelo Housing Authority’s career program, Reaching Economic self-sufficiency by Accessing Career opportunities from Home (REACH), for exposure to a few career possibilities.

Of course, she’s not finished with schooling. In the fall she’s heading back to pursue the welding program at Itawamba Community College (ICC) in Tupelo. And while many of the students will set foot on the campus for the first time this fall, Martin is actually returning to ICC, where she was first introduced to welding in the Tek2Go program.

A career in welding wasn’t the only one she considered, Martin said. She also thought about pursuing occupational therapy and machine programming. Welding wasn’t her only option, but it became her choice.

“Welding was my first passion,” she said.