When asked what kept him at the UI for 30 years, Tim Wood said it was because it was an interesting place to work. As a pipe fitter/steamfitter in Facilities and Services, Wood said his job “(took) me everywhere from the pig farm through working on the president’s house. If you can imagine the maintenance on your own home, multiply that by a million. That’s what it takes to maintain this place.”
Of the hundreds of buildings on campus, there’s not one that Wood hasn’t worked in, on or under – from rooftops to the network of steam tunnels underground.
The challenge of making myriad systems work – from the aging systems in the near-centenarian buildings on the Quad to the high-tech systems in the microelectronics facility that require high-purity piping and have no margin for error – and the array of environments that he worked in – from Abbott Power Plant to Veterinary Medicine – kept his job interesting, Wood said.
And while some people might view the historic buildings on the Quad as archaic, Wood has a particular fondness for them.
“They have a lot of age but the heating systems of the early 1900s were simple – easy to work on, less problems,” Wood said. While today’s computerized systems have their advantages, they are far more complex to fix when things go awry, he said.
“There were a lot of interesting projects too, especially when you worked with faculty members on their research,” Wood said. “I did a job one time for Ty Newell, a professor in mechanical engineering. We assembled all these solar panels and installed them on the roof and ran stainless piping down into the building’s penthouses, where they had water heaters and furnaces, and they did research on it. That was a neat job.”
Wood spent the majority of his career as a journeyman. During his early years on campus, he’d get his job assignments each day, and might find himself fixing leaks or addressing complaints about no heat somewhere on campus, until he was finished with the list of jobs or was needed elsewhere.
But for the last 21 years of his career, Wood was assigned to north campus, the area from Green Street northward to University Avenue.
Wood became interested in his trade after working around pipe fitters while he was employed by a subcontractor for Illinois Power Co. He applied for an apprenticeship through United Association (Plumbers and Steamfitters) Local 149, took a year of classes at Parkland College – where the curricula included welding, blueprint reading and math – and began a four-year union apprenticeship working at the university in 1979.
About retirement, he said: “It’s very nice but it’s awkward. When you cross that threshold, and get up in the morning and wonder, ‘What am I going to do?’ I’ve got so many things I’d like to do, it’s kind of overload.”
Since retiring, Wood has been busy with projects that he didn’t have time for while he was working, such as putting a new roof on his family’s home near Tolono, various carpentry projects and pruning trees.
Wood also works alongside his father and brother harvesting the crops on the 600-acre family farm near Sadorus. “I enjoy being outside,” Wood said.
The rain has hampered their harvest this year, and the Woods have spent some late nights in the fields on the days that the weather has allowed them to work. Despite the weather, Wood said he expects the yield to be good this year.
Wood and his wife, Debbie, a nurse at Provena-Covenant Medical Center, graduated from Unity High School in Tolono in 1976. Their two sons, Toby and Tyler, are attending Parkland College in Champaign studying agriculture and architecture, respectively.
The Woods enjoy traveling. Two years ago, they took a leisurely motorcycle trip through the Blue Ridge and Smoky mountains. They also visited Alaska, California, the Caribbean and Mexico, and would like to visit Ireland. But with two sons in college, their suitcases may stay put for a while, Wood said.
