Winterport resident Bill Dorrity’s father told him to always triple check everything.
“Check it twice, and then check it once,” said Dorrity. “So I’m always sure.”
It’s served him well, considering that over the past 17 years, Dorrity has hand-built nearly 5,000 little red wooden push carts for fostered, orphaned, sick or disabled children. At age 90, he has hardly slowed down, with 140 carts currently sitting in his garage, waiting to be painted and sent off to the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital in Portland and to other children’s disability centers in Maine, and another few dozen others ready to be assembled.
In fact, Dorrity says assembling all the elements of the carts — from cutting the wood with his table saw to assembling the wheels and screwing all the parts together — is what keeps him young. It’s what gives him purpose in life.
“I don’t think you’ll find a lot of 90-year-olds that keep as busy as I do,” said Dorrity. “I’m a tool. I’m God’s tool. I don’t build carts. I build happy children.”
The cart project began in 1999, when Dorrity, then living just outside of Charleston, South Carolina with his wife, Alise, visited Low Country Orphan Relief, where she volunteered. The social workers charged with placing the children with foster families would load up clothes, toys and other supplies for the kids into a big bag and send them off to their foster homes. Dorrity thought the kids could use something more substantial to carry their things — their only worldly possessions.
“I thought these kids could use a little cart to carry their stuff. So I went home and designed one,” said Dorrity. “It’s like a little red wagon. It’s the first thing these kids have gotten that’s theirs. In orphanages, all the toys are communal, but these carts are special, just for them.”
The carts are kid-height, with a plastic push handle inserted into holes in the wood on either side, made by a drill bit Dorrity had specially made at the Charleston Navy Yard. They’re also extremely durable, reinforced with heavy screws so they’ll withstand heavy play. Most of the materials are donated by local businesses — Dorrity has long partnered with Lowe’s Home Improvement stores in both Maine and South Carolina for lumber donations, and locally, N.H. Bragg and Color Concepts in Bangor and Patterson Custom Carpentry in Hampden have also helped.
“People keep coming out of the woodwork to help out. I always need help. There are always kids in need out there… it’s really all about them. It’s all about bringing a smile to their faces,” said Dorrity, pointing to a photo taped to his computer monitor of a blind child, beaming, after receiving his cart. “Look at that little fella. That’s why I do it.”
Dorrity has gone on to make carts for kids in need of all kinds, from children with cancer or other childhood diseases, to blind children, to kids that have been injured or whose families have suffered losses from natural disasters. His carts — each filled with a stuffed animal for each child — are now in every Shriner’s Hospital for Children on the east coast, at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and in countless other facilities.
Dorrity is a Maine native, and would be a graduate of Hampden Academy if he hadn’t left school early to join the service during World War II, where he was stationed all over the country in training facilities. After serving during WWII and, later, in the Korean War, he finished his degrees and returned home to Maine, where he taught physics at the University of Maine in the mid-to-late 1950s. In 1961, he accepted a job as a nuclear physicist with the Department of Defense and moved to Washington D.C., eventually retiring to South Carolina, where he lived until last year, when he returned home to the Hampden area to live with his daughter, Carolyn, and son-in-law, Jay.
Dorrity was a regular visitor to Maine throughout those years, including one memorable summer in the 1990s, when he sailed from Florida to Maine with his cat, Scratch, which became the subject for his book, “Scratch at the Helm.” Dorrity has many stories from a remarkable life — he’s been to 52 different countries on five continents, dined with presidents, built a fully-operable Model T starting with only an old frame found in a field somewhere, and once paid the equivalent of $180 to send hundreds of Chinese orphans to spend the day at the circus, during a two-year stint in the 1980s spent teaching in China.
These days, he’s likely to be found at his computer, managing his Facebook page and many email and phone contacts, eating breakfast at his favorite local restaurant, The Bacon Tree, in downtown Winterport, or — more than likely — in his woodshop at home. Just last week, he arranged for another shipment of carts to be sent to an orphanage in Long Island, New York.
“What God wants done, gets done,” he said. “That’s on every one of my emails. I’m just here to help.”
To donate materials including paint, screws, lumber and stuffed animals to the Carts For Kids project, or to inquire about cart donations to needy children, like Carts For Kids on Facebook, or email cdorrity72205@roadrunner.com.
