The Timber Frame Folly was constructed by Al Thomas in 1993-1994. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Forty years ago, Bradley and Carol Sanders moved from the District of Columbia to their new home in the woods around Shepherdstown.

Bradley, who began his career as the art director for Channel 5 in Washington, D.C., had by that time transitioned to working in a different area of art production.

“Carol and I lived in a spiral around D.C., working our way up, and then we bought this place 40 years ago,” Bradley said. “I then had a company for a long time [that] did museum work.”

Sanders Museum Services became a successful business, based out of a building behind the couple’s new home on Big Oak Drive.

“We worked on over 100 museums. Our job was to take possession of all of the artifacts in a new museum, mount them on walls and install them in cases,” Bradley said. “It was 30 years of handling thousands and thousands of precious artifacts. It was pretty cool!”

Shepherdstown resident Bradley Sanders leans back on a bench on the Timber Frame Folly stage last Tuesday afternoon. Tabitha Johnston

One of the perks of becoming a business owner, according to Bradley, was being able to expose his and his wife’s four children to some unique experiences.

“All of my kids — we have three daughter and a son — grew up in museums,” Bradley said. “My son was 13 when he built a mount for the gate to the Alamo that’s at the Bullock Texas State History Museum.”

This experience left a lasting impression on them, which can be seen to this day.

“They all grew up working, and they’re all still self employed,” Bradley said, mentioning he developed a tremor which contributed to his decision to retire 10 years ago. “We worked the museum business in its prime, which was the ’80s and ’90s, when they were building a lot of new museums. After a while, corporates began to get the great idea that museums can make money, and so there was a change there. We started doing sports museums and other kinds that weren’t really museums. Mounting somebody’s sweaty T-shirt is not the same!”

In the end, everyone involved with Sanders Museum Services agreed that it should close.

“We all quit. It was time!” Bradley said.

While Bradley indicated he feels no sorrow over his children not continuing the business, he does hold onto one aspect of his legacy, which he hopes to see his children and 10 grandchildren continue for many years to come — the Timber Frame Folly. The Timber Frame Folly was built 30 years ago, in front of an amphitheater in the woods behind the Sanders Museum Services building.

“We had a space in between jobs at one time, so we took down a 200-year-old barn down near the Potomac River,” Bradley said, noting the barn’s beams were then left on his property.

Around 1993, local timber framer Al Thomas began caring for his mother Aggie, who had Alzheimer’s disease.

“He took care of her for five years, which is a 24/7 job, so he brought her down here. It was just a nice little amphitheater at the time. He brought her down here, because he could watch her and let her be free,” Bradley said. “Since he was here, he decided to go ahead and cut a frame out of those beams. He cut the timber frame on the ground and then put it together and raised it with about 20 of us. It became a gathering place.”

According to Thomas, an even larger number of community members stepped in to help with the project.

“Fifty or so intrepid souls, who were mostly Shepherdstown folks, stood in the warm morning sun with ropes and pike poles in hand, anxiously awaiting the command to lift the almost one-ton red heart pine timber bent that lay pre-assembled at our feet,” Thomas said. “The massive wall was fastened together by the age-old traditional method of hand tool-crafted tenon and mortise joinery, held with wooden pegs. We raised the other bent with that same can-do aplomb.”

Community members then pitched in to complete the structure with a wood roof, which was replaced with slate in 2005 and topped off with a copper cupola.

“With the help of each other, we built us a folly! A structure with no stated purpose,” Thomas said. “What was it for? I didn’t know. It had been timber frame therapy — a tonic, an anti-depressant up against Mom’s Alzheimer’s, which we had been dealing with for over a year with no end in sight.

“From the destructive chaos of Aggie’s Alzheimer’s grew the offshoot of random elements — a gathering of free souls with tools and materials and with a semi-sense of purpose, which blossomed into the Timber Frame Folly motto, ‘Creative chaos for the common good!'” Thomas said.

Today, the folly continues to live on as a place for free souls to gather to socialize, meditate and perform.

“It’s held for 30 years,” Bradley said. “It’s a place you can come down to and be safe. It’s beautiful here in the summer!”