Builder Has New Job, New Outlook

Roger Claassen, out of work much of last year as he recuperated from a heart attack and routine neck surgery, has set his life on a different course this year.

The Anaheim resident, now fully recovered, will start a new job, and he doesn’t plan to let it consume him as his previous construction jobs have done.

“Lying there with a collar around my neck and my chest laced up, I knew my life definitely had to change,” said Claassen, 47. “I wasn’t going to be able to go back to doing the same sort of physical things I’d been doing.”

After working in the construction industry for almost 20 years on projects like Bear Country in Disneyland, Claassen began doing home repairs and woodworking on his own in 1995. Since construction work continued to be slow, he decided to return to school for retraining.

But before he could enroll in classes, he scheduled routine neck surgery in March to correct a previous injury. A few hours after surgery, he was back in the operating room for a triple bypass operation.

“While I was waking up in the recovery room after my neck surgery, I told them my chest hurt and then I went right back to sleep,” he said.

A month later Claassen’s wife, Gail Wilson, 43, also had minor surgery. The couple, married for 22 years, spent time recovering together.

Claassen said he spent most of the remaining year taking naps and thinking about his life.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time looking back with 20/20 hindsight,” he said. “I didn’t have any resolutions this year because I did so much changing this past year.

“Probably the biggest thing is that proverbial ‘slow down and smell the roses’--take a little more time to enjoy the moment because you never know what’s going to happen,” he said.

But he and Wilson may have to work hard at slowing down.

This month Claassen starts classes in horticulture at Fullerton College and a job at the California Institution for Men in Chino, where he’ll help inmates build and install cabinets for the facility.

Wilson already has started substitute teaching in the Anaheim Union High School District and is returning to Cal State Fullerton to get a teaching credential.

“It’s going to be a totally different life this year,” Claassen said. “Certainly more intellectually stimulating than staring at each other. And I’m actually going to be collecting a paycheck from someone.”

Claassen said he’s going to make sure this year won’t be all work. For instance, he hasn’t taken his 1972 Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle out for a spin in more than a year.

“The closest I can come to a resolution is not to let so many things slide by because of obligations,” he said. “Basically, not miss the roses.”