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A 100-year-old toymaker.
Hal Yoak of Garden Grove, California is an unusual wooden toymaker. He loves the art so much, that even at 100-years-of-age, he spends each day creating wooden toys in his garage.
Knowing his toys bring joy to many others gives this retired Pacifica High School biology teacher a wonderful sense of purpose.
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"I used to make cabinets for kitchens and things like that," he told KABC 7 News. "I would do repair work. I did an awful lot of repair work."
"Before retirement, I made canes. I'd tell people to collect pictures and the resume of their lifetime, the highlights of their lifetime," Hal said.
"Then I'd carve their history in the cane or the walking staffs. I did that for years. I sent them all over the world."
Today, his work is toys.
But as a young man, his life was much different.
As many men did in the World War II generation, Hal served in the military, in his case, the Navy.
And he married a lovely lady. "She was beautiful, yes indeed! I can't imagine how I ever got her." But after a long-life, she passed away in 2014.
Today, making children's toys occupies his time and his heart and each Christmas those toys sell out as people line up far beyond his driveway to buy them.
As for his longevity:
"I sit out here in the cold in the wintertime and the hot in the summer. It just keeps me going," Hal said.
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