One late autumn day in 1956, Robert Dewey Ramsey, Jr. was a young man doing what he loved to do, hunting deer in the wilderness of backwoods Tennessee. The hunt was successful that day, and Robert came back from the woods with his deer. Later, he had the animal’s head and antlers mounted. He displayed them in his home throughout his life. During Christmas, Robert and his wife, Bobbie Mai, placed a sitting green elf atop the deer mount, legs dangling over its forehead, and adorned the antlers with tinsel. It became a hallmark of each holiday season for their children and grandchildren.
Robert was a veteran of World War II and an engineer. During a long and distinguished career, he worked for NASA for thirteen years and was part of the team responsible for helping get the Apollo project—and the first man on the moon—off the ground. Robert and Bobbie Mai were married almost 72 years before Bobbie died in 2017. Together, they raised six children, all of whom graduated from college.
Frank “Woody” Bridwell left his real estate business to his son in 2009 so he could begin making knives full-time.
Over time, Robert’s mount began to fall apart. He had it repaired a couple of times until he was told that it was beyond repair, but he still kept it on display. It had become a focal point of his home and family lore.
After Robert Ramsey’s death in January, 2019 at the age of 94, one of his twelve grandchildren, Ron Ramsey, himself a fly fisherman and outdoorsman, took possession of the sad-looking mount. Ron did not know exactly what he would do with it, but he knew he had to keep it in the family.
One day, some time after his grandfather had passed, Ron visited an outfitter’s store near Asheville. A display of custom hunting and skinning knives caught his eye. They were made by a man near Travelers Rest in northern Greenville County, South Carolina. Ron got the man’s name and contact information and left the shop with the glimmer of an idea.
Frank “Woody” Bridwell spent his young boyhood years on a hundred-acre farm not far from where he lives now. His grandfather was a farmer. His daddy was too, for awhile. He watched them make a few knives on occasion.
As an adult, Woody became a realtor. He settled into buying and selling and trading land and houses. He was good at it. He started his own business and was busy. Greenville grew and so did Woody’s business. The family farm where he spent his young boyhood was turned into a housing development long ago, and the sleepy gravel town-to-market road where he had often played was transformed into a paved, busy highway.
While he was a realtor, Woody began collecting knives, visiting knife shows, trading and selling knives and getting to know many of the knife makers.
In 1997, Marv Palmer, in Michigan, one of Woody’s favorite makers, announced that he was closing and looking to sell all of his equipment and stock. By that time, Woody’s interest in knives was serious. He didn’t have a shop, but Woody was ready to begin making knives. Woody called Marv. They already knew each other pretty well. Woody was a long-time admirer of this man’s work and had bought and sold a lot of his knives.
“I told him that I was interested in buying everything if he agreed to show me how he made one of his knives every step of the way from start to finish,” Woody recalls. “He agreed. And that is what we did. I got video—about an hour and a half long—of him making one of his knives from scratch. There are 73 separate steps in making one and I wanted to master them all and do it right.
“I was living in Tygerville at the time, and a good friend, Tommy Lee, lived just five miles away. Tommy was a well-known knife trader and a full-time knifemaker. He was really good at what he did. In 1998, we began making knives together whenever we could. I was real busy at work, but all my free time went into making knives that year. We must have made 300 knives. I learned a lot from Tommy.”
Frank “Woody” Bridwell quenches a blade to harden the steel.
By the time Ron Ramsey contacted him this past July, Woody had been making knives full-time for about ten years, finally leaving the realty business to his son in 2009.
When Ron asked Woody if he would make a set of knives with the antlers, Woody was hesitant. He does not ordinarily like to work with antler. It is sometimes hard to work, and he finds some of the antler available not suitable to his taste. Woody mostly just prefers using other materials for the straight forward knives that he favors and is known for making.
Woody examined the dilapidated mount. After Ron shared the story behind the antlers and how he wanted to share the knives that might be made from them with members of the family as a way of passing on the legacy of Robert Dewey Ramsey, Woody agreed to “see what he could do.”
About a month later when Ron and his seven-year-old daughter, Audrey, drove up to Woody’s shop one cool Saturday morning in August, it turned out that what Woody could do was rather a lot.
Twenty-two knives, each alongside custom-made leather sheaths, were displayed on a worktable covered in burlap near the mouth of Woody’s shop. Woody had fashioned handles from curly maple and the antler material for two of the knives. The other twenty had handles made entirely from the antlers. All were unique. They varied from nine- to ten-inch hunting knives to four small knives with blades maybe two inches or so. Woody had not originally planned to make the small knives, but he had become obsessed with trying to use every bit of the antlers that he could.
While Ron and Audrey examined the array of knives, Woody brought out a cloth pouch and shook out a handful of very small antler pieces and one relatively hefty piece that was two or three inches long.
“This is all that is left. I guess you could make that big piece into a corkscrew,” Woody remarked with a smile.
Pleased, Audrey and Ron soon packed up the goods in their car.
Ron and Audrey Ramsey examine the array of knives made from their ancestor’s deer antlers.
When asked if he was planning on giving these as very special Christmas presents this year, Ron replied happily, “Oh, I doubt if we could wait that long. I think we might have a special ceremony for Robert Dewey at the beginning of hunting season.”
Woody soon went back inside the shop to work. His employee, a young man he trained and whom he relies upon to help him, had been out sick a bit that week. There were other orders to fill and inventory to bring up. Woody bought a couple of plane tickets to Paris, France, for mid-September. For Woody, who is in his seventies, it will be his first trip to Europe. He has booked a table for three days at a well-known knife show there and is taking along his daughter, Bess, a junior in high school.
“I originally planned to bring 150 knives, but I think I may bring more,” says Woody. “If I do gangbusters, sell everything, I may take a little extra time and visit Normandy before I come home.”
