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Adrian Nichols: He Knows How to Help

Adrian Nichols’s career trajectory has taken him from motorcycle repair to electronics, but it never included carpentry.

“Just figured it out myself,” he says, adding. “Maybe it’s in the genes. Both my grandfathers were carpenters.”

Adrian has built everything from a table and wooden baskets for the Chester Food Program to a Little Free Library at his house. A Little Free Library is an outdoor installation that stocks books which passers-by can take without cost and, if they wish, contribute books of their own.

Adrian’s Little Free Library has three shelves for books (one more than most of the small structures have) as well as a sign hanging from an edge of its roof: Read Books and Drink Tea. As the son of a British mother who loved tea, he does both.

Adrian got involved with the Chester food program, a project of the Chester Community Partnership chaired by Kim Megrath, when he volunteered for Grow-a-Row, the volunteer initiative that encourages participants to grow fresh vegetables for food bank recipients.

Adrian and his wife Beth grew the produce, mostly tomatoes, in a container garden on the porch. Adrian attributes the success of the plantings to Beth.

“I wouldn’t say I have a green thumb,” he admits.

Growing the vegetables led to greater involvement in the local food program. Adrian built a display table to set out the produce; he stored the display table at his house between weekly use.

“There was no place in Town Hall,” he says. “I put things up. I took them down,” he says.

He also made the baskets for other Grow-a-Row participants as well as for a local farm that grew vegetables for the food program and for a local market.

In addition, Adrian built shelves for Dignity Grows, an initiative that provides men’s and women’s toiletries, a month’s supply in each bag, that the Chester Community Partnership gives out.

Adrian also built a new donation box for Chester Town Hall for people to contribute food to the Community Partnership food program. The old box was cardboard.

“Some people thought it was for garbage. They needed a nice box,” he says.

Adrian wanted to have the word “Donations” written on the box by a heat transfer process. It was unsuccessful because the box had been painted. Instead, he cut out letters and affixed them. Asked if painting the letters might not have been easier, he disagreed.

“I’m not much of a painter; I’d rather cut,” he explains.

Although Adrian was born in England, he left at three months. His father, an American, was serving in the United States Air Force. Following his father’s military postings, Adrian has lived in Louisiana, California, Florida, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Paris. He attended high school in Florida and upon graduation he decided to join the Navy. The papers were all ready to be signed when the recruiter had a surprise for him. He couldn’t join up because, as a result of his English birth, the recruiter had concluded Adrian was not an American citizen. (Adrian has since become a naturalized American citizen.)

Instead, Adrian did what a friend of his was doing: He went to motorcycle repair school, and afterwards got a job at a motorcycle repair shop in North Carolina. One of his brothers, not born in England, did join the Navy and was stationed in Connecticut. Adrian came up for his wedding and met the bride’s sister, Beth French, who had grown up in Chester. Adrian and Beth have now been married 44 years.

Adrian quit his job in North Carolina and moved to Connecticut. First, he worked at a motorcycle shop in Middletown. Later, through family, he heard that, an electronics company, then with offices in Chester and later Westbrook, was hiring.

He had always liked electronics and discovered he was good at the work—so good in fact, that the company asked him to become a trainer. That gave him pause.

“I was shy and nervous,” he says.

But he discovered an ability to explain to others how to troubleshoot the systems.

The company sent him and Beth and their daughter Katie to England.

“It was cheaper to send me there then to send six people here,” he says.

The family returned to the United States after the events of 9/11. Adrian joined Whelen Engineering, where he worked for the last 16 years of his professional life. He is now retired.

In England, Adrian first became involved with what has become an ongoing and serious hobby for both him and Beth: birdwatching. Their goal, as it is for many birdwatchers, is to amass a list of sightings of 500 different birds. They are both at around 450 now.

Adrian and Beth live in a log cabin in Chester that he bought as a kit. He did much of the assembly himself, excluding things like foundation, well, and septic system. He has also made some furniture for the house, but he is not the deciding factor in décor.

“If Beth doesn’t like it, I don’t like it,” he says.

Adrian’s first name is far more common in England than in the United States. Over the years he has become used to letters addressed to Ms. Adrian Nichols. Once, in a doctor’s waiting room, one of office employees called what Adrian assumed was his name for the next appointment, but he wasn’t the only one who stood up. A woman in the waiting room rose as well. The employee asked which of them was the person called.

“We both were,” Adrian recalls.

Spelling would have cleared the matter up. He was the male Adrian but she was the female Adrienne.