Octogenarian continues and chooses to work

ELIZABETHTOWN – Floyd Merritt decided to retire and then continue to work. In another field.

Merritt is Bladen County, born and raised, beginning his life in Colly, North Carolina – just out of White Lake. He was a blue-collar worker and one of the old-school men who worked all of his life chose it rather than finishing school.

He did tile work for the better part of 25 years in several towns in Bladen County just before he got into his cement pottery business that he is working currently.

“I started doing this part-time,” he said. “I did it from ’74-’85 and in ’85 I went into it full time. I just looked at something to do and saw this and just started messing with it and it got better than I thought it was going to get, so here I am.”

Here, 39 years later, he’s still working his passion. With metal molds and fiberglass molds, old cast iron molds, he has carved out a niche for himself that in a business that is unique and a type of one-of-a-kind in Southeastern North Carolina. And at a price that make people wonder how he can do it so inexpensively.

He orders the forms that he likes and feels will sell and when the forms arrive, he gets to work. As he has for the past four decades.

“I used to have family working with me,” Merritt said. “But now it’s just me and the wife. Actually she worked here with me all the time, but now she’s been out for a while due to some eye-work she’s had to have done.”

In their eighties, the load can get heavy at times for Pat and Floyd Merritt.

“What sells the best are bird baths and table sets and benches and stuff like that,” Merritt said. “I’ve slowed down a bit, but the shop which is still open six days a week has been a good place for me. I used to work sometimes 13 hours a day or more.”

The question is whether a person can quit a lucrative job in the tile industry to make large cement pottery. According to Merritt, he said he makes a living at it. Not only that but he said that a young person wanting to go into this craft could make it, but the problem is that laborers are few.

“Oh, it’s work, now,” he said. “And it’s heavy work. We do have to use fork lifts to transport the pieces. We also do some delivery, but I like to stay within a hundred miles. Delivery fees can differ, according to Merritt as to how much someone orders and what types of pieces are ordered.

The joy for Merritt comes in his simple answer.

“Just workin’” he says. “I love to order the forms and then the anticipation of what it’s going to look like when the piece comes out of the forms. But I’ve gotten so old now that I don’t do very much anymore. It is good to ride up and down the road and see some of the things I’ve made here. Just sitting out in people’s yards. It makes me feel good.”

As for painted pieces, it used to be that he could do a lot of that also, but since his workforce dwindled, he doesn’t paint like he used to.

The Merritts have been married 62 years and last month Floyd turned 87. Still working and laboring with the heavy forms and cement pieces he creates.

He’s an artist. His art is unique and the remnants of his work can be seen all over North Carolina. He created beauty from rock and now, heading toward 90 with no plan to retire, there is a peace to the man that comes from the satisfaction of a hard day’s work.

He hits the pillow at night and he finds peace in his sleep.

For the Merritt’s, this was certainly the right profession, a call to passion and a way to make the world a bit more beautiful because they are in it.

The shop features the over 1,000 art pieces along the road at their shop at 3943 US-701 Hwy, Elizabethtown, NC 28337 and for tourists driving by, the traffic will slow down as they stop to admire the work. To call for questions or orders, you can call Floyd Merritt at his office where he still uses his corded phone to do business.

The shop is open from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. each day except Saturday when they close at 3 p.m. They are closed on Sundays.

Mark DeLap is a journalist, photographer and the editor and general manager of the Bladen Journal. To email him, send a message to: mdelap@bladenjournal.com