Peterborough Town Library Director Corinne Chronopoulos stands next to the table Carl Von Mertens built in the library’s conference room. —STAFF PHOTO BY BILL FONDA

Carl Von Mertens (right), his son Tod (left) and grandson Ezra take a break from building housing for teachers on Cristobal Island in Panama in 2019. PHOTO COURTESY FRANCIE VON MERTENS

Carl Von Mertens works on the Perkin Observatory at Dublin School. —PHOTO COURTESY FRANCIE VON MERTENS

After Anna Von Mertens and her husband Chris Anderson moved from Berkeley, California, to Peterborough 15 years ago, they moved into in a house her father Carl built on a piece of land he and her mother Francie Von Mertens preserved.

Later, Carl and Francie moved into a house next door.

“That was another gift, just to have him so close by,” Anna said.

Carl Von Mertens died Aug. 20 at the age of 82 after a three-year battle with cancer, and Anna said it feels disorienting to be living in a world without him.

”It looks identical, but it’s completely different than the universe I lived in,” she said. “He was a wonderful man and a wonderful dad. He just expressed unconditional love.”

Because his family moved a lot during childhood – roughly every five years, Francie said – Carl never really had a hometown until coming to Peterborough approximately 45 years ago.

“He loved Peterborough, and he left a mark here,” she said.

That mark, in Peterborough and elsewhere, can be seen through the projects he built at his home and his son Tod’s commercial workshop on Vose Farm Road in Peterborough. 

“Without a project, he really didn’t know what to do with himself,” Francie said. 

And not knowing about something was not a deterrent.

“Way back when, I got into weaving,” Francie said. “He made me a loom and he made me a spinning wheel. He knew he could figure it out.”

Those projects started as a high-schooler with a cider shack in the orchard at Darrow School.

“Rarely has he not been making things, big and small,” Francie said. “You can’t go into a room at Dublin School without seeing his work.”

Carl taught math and physics for 25 years and then served on the board at Dublin School, and Head of School Brad Bates estimates he built close to 80 tables and desks on campus, as well as the school’s Perkin Observatory. The woodworking shop at the school was named the Carl Von Mertens Woodworking Shop in his honor, and the family asks that any memorial contributions be made toward the shop’s addition.

“He believes strongly that kids should learn to use their hands and minds and do woodworking,” Bates said, adding that Carl is the reason woodworking is one of the most-popular subjects in the school.

Bates, who arrived in 2008, not long after Carl had retired as a teacher, said the school has gotten many calls from students and alumni since Carl’s death.

“Some kids said he saved their lives by putting them on the right path,” he said. “We’re still in quite a bit of shock. He knew every teacher and most of the students. His enthusiasm would strengthen us when we hit a rough patch or wanted to take a project.”

One of Carl’s grandchildren graduated from Dublin School, the second is a sophomore and the third will be starting as a freshman this year.

“I just see Carl in his grandchildren so much, so we’re honored to have them at the school,” Bates said.

Francie said her husband loved seeing the progress Dublin School was making.

“Brad (Bates) is a visionary,” she said. “He’s had such a transformative influence on the school.”

Setting the tables at the library

Carl’s work at Peterborough Town Library came as the result of a Dublin School connection, namely a shop teacher who Peggy Van Valkenburgh ran into while hiking through the woods. She was in charge of the furniture committee for the library’s renovation, and he recommended Carl.

She said they grew close almost immediately.

“Just from the very beginning, he was super on-board in helping the library any way he could, super generous with his time and his handicraft,” she said.

Carl built every table and every freestanding shelf in the library, including the large table in the conference room.

“That one was a really special table,” Van Valkenburgh said.

Because the table was so large, it had to be brought into the conference room in pieces and then assembled. Carl was unable to get under the table to put it together, so Van Valkenburgh did it.

“He guided me and we put the table together,” she said. “It was a total honor.”

Van Valkenburgh said it would be hard to imagine someone more generous.

“This man’s skills were top-notch and we were the beneficiaries of his generosity and his skills,” Van Valkenburgh said. “He just exuded all the right things.”

According to Francie, all of Carl’s projects, which also included tables, benches, storage shed and a faux nesting chimney for chimney swifts for the Harris Center in Hancock and conserving Fremont Field as town conservation land, were on a volunteer basis.

“He didn’t waste brainwaves on ‘Is this rewarding?’ He just did it,” she said.

And she said he never talked about his projects. 

“He never had to say, ‘I did this,’” Francie said.

Even though Francie said, “Hanging out with Carl was not easy when it came to a work gang” because he would keep going after other people wanted to stop, he loved being part of them.

“He was a man of few words, but he liked to do things, and he liked to do them with people,” Francie said.

Carl’s projects weren’t confined to the Monadnock region. He worked on building projects in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, and along with community centers and housing for nurses and teachers in Uganda, Trinidad and Panama.

“He’d pack up his tools, get in the plane with some pals and work with some local people as well,” Francie said.

On his last trip, Tod, Anna and his five grandchildren went to Cristobal Island, Panama, in 2020 to build a hostel.

“We never thought that would have happened,” Tod said. “That was the peak of his recovery.”

“He was very clear that he thought both my brother and I are the greatest,” Anna said.

 Tod said it was a blessing to move back to Hancock – coincidentally, he and Anna moved into their houses the same night – because he got extra time with his father later in his life.

“I just think of those bonus years with him,” he said.

Tod said he has been thinking about the cycles of life, how in the last few weeks of his father’s life, he would help him deal with his nightmares the same way Carl taught him how to take control of his dreams as a child, or how when he was a child, he would break tools and make messes in his father’s shop, and then his father did the same in his.

“Life really does come full circle,” he said. “There’s a magic in that, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

One of his father’s biggest gifts, Tod said, was the confidence that “there’s nothing you can’t build yourself.”

At the end of his life, Anna said she and her father loved to do The New York Times Sunday crossword together and talk about science.

“We would just discuss the cosmos,” she said. “He and I even started a science club with friends. We would eat pizza and talk about science. We just loved marveling at things together.”

When Carl worked at Tod’s shop, he had his own bench in the corner.

“It’s going to become a shrine,” Tod said. “It’s going to be hard to reuse that space. His spirit is ever-present in the shop.”

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