Just before Homecoming & Family Weekend, Perrine dropped off his unique donation to HSU: seven handcrafted coffee tables. The tables are all made with Humboldt-grown wood and correspond with the names of several campus residence halls including Tan Oak, Chinquapin, Pepperwood, Cypress, Maple and Madrone. Each table was then installed in a residence hall.
“A very LEED thing to do is to use hardwoods from where you are,” Perrine says, referring to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.
The tables are also unique because they are made with large, intact slabs of wood, versus cut planks. “As a big guy – who broke weak chairs during high school – I always like to ‘overbuild’ or err on the ‘strong’ side,” Jay says. “Slabs are appealing.”
Perrine retired from his position as a Regulatory Analyst at California Water Service Company in August 2008. After a visit with Danielle at HSU, it was by chance that Perrine and wife Madalyn, also retired, stopped at a farmer’s market in southern Humboldt County while driving back home. There, they found a local hardware store – Whitethorn Construction Hardwoods Division – with an impressive lumberyard.
In 2009, Jay and Madalyn drove to Humboldt again, from their home near San Jose, to visit with Danielle and spend a week in the community. Jay then took a few days to work on a Black Oak coffee table for his daughter. He made the table from wood at Whitethorn Construction and built it on location with support from the shop owner, Robert McKee.
After that initial project, Madalyn encouraged Jay to create more tables to donate to the university. When visiting, she always loved the chairs in the “J.” “She felt the redwood cutouts in the backs of the chairs lent a personality and were an example of the sense of community at HSU,” says Jay.
Jay always knew he would do something to support his daughter’s university before she graduated. “Humboldt didn’t give us a wish list,” he says, but he was grateful for the freedom to design his own, creative donation.
He is currently working on an eighth coffee table for the residence halls.