Legos help man find youth again

Dan Parker tried working in the grownup world. That was before he was laid off three times from engineering jobs.

“I decided that’s it –– I’m never going to work for somebody else again,” said Parker, who is now his own boss and getting paid to do what most people think ends after childhood: Design and build Legos displays.

The 41-year-old Federal Way man’s work (it’s hard to call it that, he admits) has been exhibited at Seattle Center, SeaTac Mall and at Puget Sound-area community festivals and events. He also has been requested by the Legos vice president to build displays for Legoland, a theme park in Carlsbad, Calif. for fans of the interlocking, multi-color plastic pieces.

Parker’s wife gets some good-natured ribbing from her co-workers at Boeing when they learn he’s a fulltime professional Legos designer. Meanwhile, he’s laughing all the way to the bank.

“I’m starting to make a living at this,” said Parker, who negotiates fees when he’s hired to create a Legos attraction for the Federal Way Family Fest, Des Moines Waterland Festival, Meeker Days in Puyallup and the Gig Harbor Maritime Festival, some of the events that are filling his schedule more and more as his reputation grows.

The self-described “typical engineering geek” used Legos when building machine models in his old engineering jobs. Now he has a Legos workshop in his home that’s adored by his 8-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son. “They feel like they’re in toyland,” he said.

He feels the same way sometimes. “I can retreat to being a kid again,” he said.

Even though he’s cashing in on it, “this is like a hobby for me –– a creative outlet,” Parker said. “Everybody needs a hobby. For me, if it wasn’t this, it’d be pottery or something else.”

Every display is different. “I’ll never do the same thing twice,” Parker said.

Last October, Seattle Center commissioned him to do a display with a holiday theme. “I knew I could do a typical Victorian, WASPish Christmas scene, but after Sept. 11, I saw this as a way to pull people together,” he related. So he incorporated cultures from around the world and included Hanukkah, Ramadan and the Chinese New Year. He spent 500 hours putting together the approximately 18,000 pieces.

He didn’t do it alone, but the largest display he’s built covered 3,500 square feet and included cities and a working train. He supervised a team of 20 people who put thousands of hours and countless pieces into the display that was part of a charity event for Northwest Harvest.

Parker is far from alone in his zeal for Legos. There’s a national organization, the Legos Users Group Network, with its own Web site (www.lugnet.com). And he’s spreading the word to children by teaching Rotary-sponsored Legos classes to Seattle innercity kids.

“People like me go off the deep end, I guess,” Parker said.

Hey, it’s a living.

Editor Pat Jenkins can be reached at 925-5565 and editor@fedwaymirror.com.

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