With heart, hands and soul, Elvis Mortley makes good things happen

The Creole dialect, made of broken French patched with the Queen's English and other languages, has a musical rhythm unlike anything else. Elvis Mortley's voice carries only faint traces of it now, 29 years after he left Trinidad, a sun-dappled island off the coast of Venezuela.

Elvis Mortley EVAN WILLIAMS / FLORIDA WEEKLY But Mr. Mortley's Creole spirit, in the form of inventiveness and patchwork individualism, is fully intact.

At age 18, he brought it with him to the "cold, concrete establishment": New York City as it appeared to the young immigrant. He was the lead singer in a Calypso band there and auditioned for parts as an actor, while living in Brooklyn and working as a delivery driver. Even though the acting didn't go any further than a part as an extra on an early episode of "Law & Order," for Mr. Mortley, it was an exciting time.

Those adventures began a life that has spanned jobs on land (a long-distance bus driver) and sea (a deck hand for a tugboat in Virginia). Seeking a warmer climate, Mr. Mortley moved to Fort Myers in 2004, started an automotive detailing business and married a real estate agent.

When both their careers were hit hard by the recession, and with two children at home, Mr. Mortley was forced to reinvent himself yet again.

The first thing he turned to was his natural creativity. The other was his hands.

He wanted to build things or patch things up. "To break a wall down and build it up again, to hang a door — to me, that is true creativity," he said.

After mulling over the possibilities, he enrolled in the carpentry program at Lee County High Tech Central. He graduated last January, but liked the school so much that he enrolled again, this time in the plumbing program. He planned to use the resulting combination of skills to help his wife remodel houses.

After class one day last week, he held out his hands and smiled with pride and amazement at brilliant utility. He squeezed them into fists and flattened them out. They looked almost as smooth and unlined as his face, even though he's 50 years old.

"All you need is your hands and the will to use them," he said.

The tips of his fingers were lightly dusted with sawdust from working on his new forte: Adirondack chairs, most commonly used for lounging somewhere outdoors or on a patio.

The breakthrough happened last summer, when he adopted the chair's form and structure, after seeing one left alone and unwanted on the side of the road. He took it back to his teacher Richard Schaefer's class.

Going by that roadside model, he remade the chair in a blueprint of his own exuberant design. It's oversized, with extra-thick slabs of southern yellow pine fanning out into a contoured back and seat, seeming to hug the body.

"I call it the Big Man," he said, "the Grand Marshall of the Adirondack."

Since the chair's inception, Mr. Mortley has turned his garage at home into a woodworking shop. He's had some success selling the chairs for $150 each, although he's never advertised them. (To inquire about a chair or for auto detailing, he can be reached at 464-5665).

As a parting gift to teachers like Mr. Schaefer, Mr. Mortley plans to leave behind a master work when he graduates from HTC's plumbing program in January: a full-size wooden bicycle. It is to be a symbol of what he can do with his hands, and an expression of thanks and gratitude to the school.

"People don't realize the gold they have in this community with (HTC)," he said. "It can really help people get their act together."

Apparently, so can Mr. Mortley. He adopted one of the other students last Christmas, a 21-year-old who had been living in a group home and diagnosed with "heavy things," Mr. Mortley said, like schizophrenia. His teachers say he's doing better in class since living with Mr. Mortley's family.

"I consider him like my little brother," he said.

With his celebratory and generous disposition, Mr. Mortley wants more of all of it: a bigger house with room for more adopted brothers; more space in his garage for woodworking.

He also wants more land for a garden to grow collared greens, papayas, tomatoes, cilantro and lettuce. Sometimes he brings baskets of the produce to The Rock, a Christian church he attends on Fowler Street.

A new Elvis Mortley CD is in the works as well, a mixture of gospel music infused with Calypso rhythms and old influences such as The Rolling Stones and James Taylor.

Mr. Mortley's songs, like a cast-off Adirondack chair, often arrive unannounced.

"I'll be walking down the street," he said. "I'll hear the bass line in my head, the melody. It could be a happy song or a sad song or whatever."

Then, as is Mr. Mortley's way, he makes the songs his own.