Dennis Holloway on Training

Interview excerpts with Dennis Holloway, a bricklayer and restoration instructor with the International Masonry Institute. Holloway is a second-generation bricklayer and trains apprentices on such famed buildings as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in New York.

Not everybody makes it in the craft. What happens is some people find out for various reasons that [brick and stone] isn't what they thought it was. It could be .. it could be from being afraid of heights. It could be because the hard labor isn't what they thought it was. There are a lot of reasons why people don't end up staying. A lot of times people come in because they hear of the good wages that you get as a union worker. But money isn't everything, and I try to tell these guys that, that if you don't have a passion for what you are doing, find something else to do, because this is one trade if you don't like your work it is going to show when you work. And you are going to be unemployed. You can't get up every morning if you don't like doing it.

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