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Sheffield’s Davidson led the way for girls in tech courses

Rena Davidson was the first girl to take welding at the Warren County Career Center.

Well, at that time it was the “vo-tech.”

Davidson, who graduated from Sheffield in the early 1980’s and took welding in her sophomore, junior, and senior years, said that it was when the letter introducing vo-tech classes to students and their families came home that she decided she wanted to learn to weld.

“I don’t know why,” said Davidson. “I had no background in welding. No one I knew was a welder. But I really, really wanted to learn how to do it!” Davidson said she asked her mother before she started class, “what if there’s no other girls in there,” and her mother laughed. “Well, I think you can deal with that,” her mother told her in no uncertain terms. Davidson agreed.

Davidson said that no other girls ever took welding in the three years that she followed the program, and she was okay with that. “I just always got along better with the boys in my class anyway,” Davidson said. She wasn’t intimidated at all, she said to break the gender barrier on the first day of welding as a high school sophomore.

The boys, she said, were a little less sure. “They all looked shocked when I walked in the room,” laughed Davidson. No one had told the boys that a girl would be their classmate, she said, and they definitely weren’t expecting it. “They were like, ‘there’s a girl in here. What’s a girl in here for?'”

She said that the tradition at the time was for senior welding students to dump newcomers to the welding program in the “bird bath,” the circular, stone, footpedal-operated handwashing sink that students in the shop used daily. It took a while for the senior boys to work up the nerve to stick Davidson in the bird bath, she said, and when they did it took four of them to get it done. But they finally gave her the official initiation, she said, and she was part of the group.

School administration, said Davidson, had no problem enrolling her in the welding program as the first and only female to give it a try. “They did tell me that I could try it and that if I didn’t like it I could quit,” said Davidson, but she said she never had any intention of quitting, and the desire to quit never did strike her. And while her work was every bit as good as any of her male classmates’, she said, the welding teacher did push her harder.

Davidson said she learned stick, mig, and tig welding throughout the program, and that tig welding was her favorite. “There’s no spark with tig welding,” explained Davidson, adding that tig welding is used for chrome and aluminum, for working on automobiles. She always wanted, she said, to open a fabrication shop making parts for motorcycles. Her favorite projects in the program, Davidson said, were making trinket boxes and bending sheet metal to be welded.

But, Davidson said, that never happened. Though she completed the program and was every bit as good at the craft of welding as the boys in her cohort, “life got in the way.” Davidson said she ended up getting married, having kids, and working at the Head Start program in Warren County for seventeen years.

“The plan was only to do it for ten years,” she said. But like life, said Davidson, seventeen years just sort of happened.

Davidson said that she does regret not turning welding into a career. But, said Davidson, she’s looking forward to getting a second chance. Her daughter Laura, said Davidson, has recently decided to follow in her mother’s footsteps and learn welding. Like her mother, Laura shares an interest in and the ambition to learn unique skills.

Davidson said she’s excited not just to teach Laura to weld, but also just to get her hands back on the torch. “Can I lay that bead the way I used to,” Davidson said she’s excited to find out. “I wonder if it’s just like riding a bike.”

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