By the time they arrived at a small watchmaking school in this town south of Wilmington, Del., the nine military veterans had taken some hard knocks. Some had knee or back injuries from wear and tear, or ringing in the ears from the roar of plane engines. Some struggled with P.T.S.D., a legacy of gunfire, explosions or other trauma.
Leaving the military had presented its own challenges. In interviews, several of the students described feeling lost and lacking purpose, unsure about what they wanted to do next -- or what their bodies would let them do -- and how they could best fit into the civilian world.
Then, in one way or another, they learned about the Veterans Watchmaker Initiative (V.W.I), a not-for-profit organization that since 2017 has offered honorably discharged veterans tuition-free training in an old-school skill that is very much in demand.
"It's like being given a second chance at life," said Zachary Scoular, who left the U.S. Marine Corps last year after eight years of service and, at 27, is the youngest member of the class.
The students had come from all over the country, span more than 30 years in age and served in four different branches of the military. To earn a spot, each veteran had to pass aptitude tests and spend six weeks learning to become a quartz watch technician at the school.
The V.W.I. program is not the first venture to match military veterans and watches. It was modeled on the Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking, which opened in 1945 in New York City and offered free training to disabled World War II veterans. The school closed several decades ago, but Bulova is one of several watch companies that supports the current program. (It donates 10 percent of the proceeds from the sale of its VWI Special Edition Hack Watch, lists the school among its authorized service centers and has provided it with a large inventory of vintage watch parts.)
Mr. Scoular, who is from New Milford, Conn., said he received a Hack Watch for his birthday in March, which prompted him to check out the program. He had been interested in timepieces since childhood, when his maternal grandfather took him to flea markets to look for them, so he immediately applied.
"To be able to pursue a passion as a career is special," he said. "It's an opportunity that not many people get in a lifetime."
Moving Through
One day in late September, not quite two weeks into the 18-month course, the students were using jeweler's saws to cut out sets of brass clock hands that they had designed. A few days before, they had worked on coins -- painstakingly cutting Lincoln's head out of a penny, for example.
Eva Smith, a 60-year-old Air Force veteran from Minnesota, said she was a bit intimidated at first by some of the assignments, but "with the right teaching, you can move through stuff that you would never have thought possible."
The curriculum includes making tools, crafting watch parts and eventually, servicing all sorts of mechanical timepieces, starting with century-old pocket watches and gradually working up to modern calibers. It also teaches watch history, and students report to the class on different topics so they become adept at talking about watches, said Sam Cannan, the school's co-founder, board chairman and chief instructor.
Toward the end of the program's classroom instruction, the students build their own mechanical timepieces and then spend three months in internships at the school's service center.
"They really have a broad spectrum of training when they leave here. They're not afraid to touch anything," Mr. Cannan said. Almost 80 veterans have graduated from the quartz technician program, he said, and 17 of them also completed the full watchmaking course.
Mr. Cannan's path to horology was similar to some of theirs. As a Baltimore police officer, he suffered a severe back injury on the job in 1978 and had to retire.
He had always been mechanically inclined and liked to tinker (he recalled taking apart a Roy Rogers watch when he was 10 or 11), so he began studying watchmaking. He attended the Bulova school, and then the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors School of Horology in Pennsylvania (which he headed in 2007 and 2008). He also trained at the Watchmakers of Switzerland Training and Educational Program, best known as WOSTEP, and at the Swiss movement company ETA.
After he had lost his first career, Mr. Cannan said, watchmaking gave him a way to make a good living. Now, he added, he can afford to donate his time to provide opportunities for others.
When he evaluates applicants, he said, he looks for raw skill, such as dexterity and eye-hand coordination, but above all he looks for heart: "You're going to be frustrated. You're going to break things. But if you fight through this and you become proficient at it, I mean, the world opens up for you on the other side of this."
That sense of possibility is very real for Joey Tucker, 39, a Navy veteran who graduated from the watchmaking program last year and is the school's second teacher, working with Mr. Cannan.
Having completed the program, Mr. Tucker said, he knows he could get a job almost anywhere, working with his hands and his brain but also doing something meaningful. Recently, for example, he refurbished a watch that the owner received as a graduation gift from his dad long ago and that he now wants to pass along to his son.
"You really get to see the impact that you're having on a lot of people, and that just checked all the little boxes in my head," he said.
Eric Preciado, 30, said he received multiple job offers when he finished the course last year, and he accepted one at Patek Philippe's U.S. service center in Manhattan.
Mr. Preciado said that, before the course, he had not known anything about watchmaking and certainly never set out to work for a prestigious brand. For him, the V.W.I. program was part of a personal journey to "put myself together as a human being."
"It's way more than watchmaking," he said. "It's a community. It's a brotherhood."
Helping Hands
About 2008, several people in the watch industry began talking about providing jobs or training for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Susan Musman, who works in after-sales customer service at Radcliffe Jewelers in Baltimore.
Mr. Cannan became involved a couple of years later, she said, stressing that he was the one who had both the vision of a school and the tenacity to make it happen. (Ms. Musman and Mr. Cannan are the school's co-founders, but Ms. Musman now is just an adviser.)
V.W.I was incorporated in 2011, but it took Mr. Cannan several years to find a suitable property: a boarded-up former ambulance station in Odessa's historic district. New Castle County, which owned the 4,200-square-foot building, was willing to lease it for $1 a year if Mr. Cannan agreed to renovate it. (V.W.I. recently received county approval to buy the property.)
The school, which was renovated by volunteers, is full of donations, including watchmaking equipment from Swatch Group and Tiffany & Company. And it relies largely on donations and grants for its operating funds, though it has received about $300,000 in state funding, Mr. Cannan said.
A few years ago V.W.I. bought a house next door and then another one across the street, so it can offer student housing for $3 a day, and a local soup kitchen provides lunches a couple of days a week. (As for spending money, all the students receive some disability income from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Mr. Cannan said.)
The school has added two outbuildings on the property, including a service center named for R.T. Custer, the co-founder and chief executive of Vortic Watch Company in Fort Collins, Colo. (Vortic, which turns antique American pocket watches into wristwatches, issues an annual Veterans Day military edition, donating $500 from each sale to V.W.I.)
Mr. Custer, 34, said he was motivated to help out of respect for those who had served their country and admiration for the program, particularly as it stands to help mitigate the industry's aging work force and shortage of skilled labor.
"If we don't do something about it now," he said, "when I'm in my 70s and I want to take my watch somewhere to get fixed, there might be no one left to do it."
The Craft's Appeal
In separate interviews, several of the current students said they found working on watches to be absorbing and therapeutic.
"It gives me peace of mind," said Israel Colón, 58, who had spent years in law enforcement in Philadelphia before joining the Army and serving in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009. He sustained a traumatic brain injury, he said, leaving him with some cognitive issues and difficulties in focusing.
"Believe it or not, when you're working on a watch, time stops," he said. "You're in the zone, and time just goes away." And Aaron Bright, who left the Marines after he developed a spinal cord disorder, said V.W.I. opened the door to an occupation that would allow him to cope with his pain.
"I had to find something that I could do from home that wasn't going to hurt my back," said Mr. Bright, 31, adding that he had since started developing an interest in watches. His mobility support dog, a Tamaskan named Saya who has been by his side since 2015, napped in the corner, next to his bench. (Mr. Cannan calls Saya the resident watch dog.)
If Mr. Cannan had his way, he would be training watchmakers at a much faster pace, but he needs a larger facility and additional instructors. Land has been donated in nearby Middletown, Del., for a new school that could accommodate more than 50 students at a time. The estimated price, he said: $10 million.
"My goal is to get that built before I leave this world," he said. He envisions turning the current school site into a permanent watch service center that would employ disabled veterans as well as produce income, reducing the school's dependence on donations.
For now at least, Mr. Cannan said he planned to continue passing along his knowledge of watches and his love of the craft to new groups of students. A good watch, he tells them, is art in motion -- essentially a living thing.
"You just have to understand it," he said. "If you learn how to listen, that object in front of you will tell you exactly what's wrong with it. All you have to do is know how to listen."