AVON – For the last few years, Stephen Mitchell has diligently worked on his vision to create the Maine School of Masonry. First, he bought the original Lauri Toy Factory on Route 4 and converted the space into a classroom, lab and offices.

Then, he offered masonry courses through adult education three hours a week for 10 weeks. But now, he is ready to start recruiting full-time students.

Finding young students interested in the trade required a bit of creativity. So, he turned to the Opportunity Center of North Franklin County Inc., which helped secure a couple of grants.

A $5,000 grant from the Maine Community Foundation purchased a large, reinforced trailer and some tools. A second grant from Sugarloaf/USA was used to purchase tools. Now, he has enough materials to offer 27 tech schools from all over the state the opportunity to have a free week of instruction on basic masonry for up to 16 students. There’s no cost to the school or the teacher, Mitchell said.

He has already visited a couple schools and plans to go to Region 9 School of Applied Technology in Mexico and Forster Regional Applied Technology Center in Farmington before the school year ends. Another couple schools have been signed up for September.

While the schools reap the benefit of his instruction, it’s also an opportunity for him to recruit interested students for a one-year mason apprentice program at the school in Avon.

While Mitchell plans to be out recruiting students – he needs five full-time students for next fall – he has a teacher at the school and runs a contracting business with two masons. The business supports the school, at this point, but he hopes to make the school pay for itself. In time, he wants up to 12 students and has started a project to make part of the building into a temporary housing space where students can stay if they don’t want to find other housing.

Over the 10 months, students would spend four days in school and a fifth day doing something in the masonry field, he said. He wants to encourage students to volunteer their services on that day.

“The trade of masonry is a gift,” he said, “and I want the students to give back to the community through what they are learning.”

Based on the number of hours in school, he said, the 10-month program at Maine School of Masonry is worth two years of apprenticeship. Normally, it takes three to four years of apprenticeship to become a mason, he said.

Mitchell, a 1973 masonry graduate from Northern Maine Vocational Technical Institute, had to “promote myself” to a contractor in order to get a chance to apprentice, he said. Out of the 16 graduates in his class, there are only two still in masonry.

“Approximately, 2,000 masons leave the trade each year with only 300 new masons coming in to replace them,” he said. “While people find money to save an old brick building, there’s never money to save the trade that created the old brick building.”

While explaining the work available for a mason, Mitchell said he prefers to be a residential mason where he can be creative and feel his work. A commercial mason, he said, concentrates on producing so much work everyday that they wouldn’t be able to see their own work in the scheme of the project.

Mitchell, who does his work all by hand, wants to also encourage that creativity within his students.

More information about the school is available at www.masonryschool.org, or by calling 639-2392.