Gavel News from Iowa

I'm in Iowa for the next several days visiting family for Christmas. This morning, this article in a local paper about an Iowa City gavel maker caught my eye:

It all started in the early 1990s when Iowa City letter carrier Chester Schulte attended one of his union meetings here.

“They can be kind of noisy at times,” he said with a grin, “and the president was trying to get their attention, but he didn’t have a gavel.” 

So Schulte, a lifelong woodworker hobbyist, headed to his shop, turned a proper gavel and gave it to his union leader. “It helped at future meetings,” he told me. 

Word of the gift spread, mostly through union associations in Iowa and beyond. Today, he figures he has made nearly 700 distinctive gavels over the years for groups and individuals nationwide who wanted a finely crafted tool for calling a meeting to order. 

. . .

Now at 70, Schulte has been retired for several years but is still making his exquisite gavels from native Iowa hardwoods. 

He recently stopped by Congressman Dave Loebsack’s office in Iowa City and dropped off a specially crafted oversized gavel with the idea it might be used in Washington, D.C., at some point to call the U.S. House of Representatives to order. 

“It was huge,” Gloria Stutts, the woodworker’s wife, reported. “Formidable.” 

Chester declared his ultimate dream would be to provide a nice gavel for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Just about every courtroom I have appeared in has a gavel, but I have rarely seen any judge use them. I am not aware if any of them are Schulte's creations, and the fact that Schulte chooses not to sign or initial his gavels means I may never know.

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