MAN ON A MISSION/from page 29 Davis gains much support from his church members at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in York, Pennsylvania, and creates Waters of Love For Ghana. Davis begins cold calling water well drilling companies seeking to purchase a used drill rig. On the third call Davis reaches out to Lifetime Well Drilling, where it coincidentally has a used 1980 George E. Failing Co. 1250 mud rotary drill rig for sale. Ben Wood, son of Ken, takes the phone call and arrangements are made to purchase it. In January 2006, Ken Wood drives the drill rig 120 miles where the church congregation is waiting to celebrate its arrival. The York Daily Record is even on hand to cover the event. Church members ask if he is willing to help them drill a water well. He is reluctant due to his busy workload, but he donates a water truck, air compressor, and other equipment. Two weeks later Wood is attending a bank seminar in Kiawah Island, South Carolina. The keynote speaker is coincidentally from Ghana. He talks about walking two miles to a dirty pond twice a day just to get water so he can take his medication. Wood knows he met this man for a reason. “If that’s not someone talking to you, I don’t know what is,” he recalls. “I said ‘I’m on board’ before telling the wife.” Wood returns home and sets up Lifetime Wells For Ghana Inc., an organization that drills water wells in villages lacking access to clean water. Many get water from rivers and become infected by diseases such as Guinea Worm Disease and River Blindness. Thousands die each year from drinking contaminated water from ponds or hand-dug wells. “You see the kids hauling the water up and down the road . . . you would not let your dog touch the water, it’s that bad,” he says. Each trip costs between $50,000 and $70,000, in addition to supplies for the wells that can run as much as $8000 each. One of Wood’s passions in life for more than 40 years has been harness racing. Although he initially thought his father, Steve, was a “sissy” for buying a 30/ November 2013 Water Well Journal
“He has gone all out. This is his life calling. Once he started this, he won’t stop. I know that.” sulky in the late 1960s, he realized it’s much like riding a horse. He begins to enjoy it, making a couple of bucks but more than anything has fun. He has owned a small stable of horses ever since. Wood expands his drilling in 2011 to Tanzania, located on the east coast of Africa. He needs funding to send another rig to Ghana and is forced to send one piece of equipment at a time. But a horse he coincidently bought a couple months earlier wins a $150,000 race, and he uses the winnings to send all of the equipment. One horse, Anders Bluestone, won a little more than $800,000 in two years of racing. Five horses have made Wood more than $500,000 over the years. Wood doesn’t view the winnings as his and pours it into supporting Lifetime Wells For Ghana. “Those things do not happen in the racing business,” Wood asserts, “and it’s happened over and over at different times for different horses. You can go 100 years and maybe this will happen once, but this is too much. That’s all not coincidence.” ood doesn’t plan on retiring. Much of what he was going to retire on has been spent on Lifetime Wells For Ghana anyway. No matter. He feels it’s a privilege to serve in Africa. “I plan on croaking before I retire,” he says. “I work out every day. I don’t know how long my heart is going to hold up. I don’t enjoy sitting around.” He recently celebrated his 70th birthday on October 22 after returning from Tanzania. In his lifetime he’s survived multiple heart attacks. Three days before leaving for Tanzania last September he was forced to undergo coronary artery bypass surgery. Three weeks later he was in Tanzania. He walks a track nearby his home and rides a stationary bike to get the
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heart rate pumping before lifting weights. He has become more serious about working out in the last six months. “For the last six or seven years we’ve been doing this, and I’m in pretty good shape. He can work as hard or harder than me when we’re over there,” says Ben, who is 45. “When he gets over there, it’s like somebody is watching over him and pushing him even harder.” The son of a dairy and grain farmer grew up five miles between Denton and Ridgely, Maryland, 70 miles east of Washington, D.C. Wood and his three siblings worked the 200-acre farm, trying to make ends meet. It was rough living. They used an outside bathroom into their teens. Wood bought a 50-acre farm in 1966 for $25,000 three miles down the road from where he grew up. He worked long days at a small water well drilling business for 10 years to remain debt free after the purchase. He worked so much he worried others. “People said I was going to kill myself,” he says. “We were taught to work growing up.” He began his own business, Lifetime Well Drilling, in 1968 and incorporated it the following year. The firm ran five drill rigs with more than 20 employees before the housing collapse in 2008; since then it has run two or three rigs with 12-13 employees. A recent highlight was drilling a well for the Wounded Warrior Project in its area this past spring. A few years ago Wood handed the business to Ben. Ben’s daughter, 21year-old Shelby, has also made the 11-hour trip to Ghana with them. “We’re not doctors or lawyers or anything like that,” Ben says, “but we can make a big effect on a lot of people with what we can do drilling wells.” Wood and his wife, Betsy, 71, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on January 25. She can’t travel to Africa for health reasons but supports him. “Not many women would put up with her husband spending the money I’m spending and living humbly,” Wood says. “We don’t live very large, but we have more than what we need.” The two met at a jousting tournament in Queen Anne, Maryland. Wood picked Betsy, who at the time was a jousting waterwelljournal.com