February 18, 2026 by Tammy Cheek
After Bill Jackson, a 96-year-old resident of Morning Pointe Senior Living in Hardin Valley, retired from broadcasting about five years ago, he searched for something to keep him busy.
While dealing with the COVID pandemic, he also had double bypass surgery and was the caregiver for his late wife, Dorothy.
“I can’t just sit around here and watch TV,” he said.
“I wasn’t able to do the things I had been doing,” Bill recalled. “I was faced with ‘what do you do?’ So, I got into puzzles.”
Initially starting with jigsaw puzzles with his wife, Dorothy, “we’d put a puzzle out on the dining room table and work on it,” he said.
But, the pastime soon bored him. Then, Bill discovered three-dimensional puzzles.
On Amazon, “they had a laser-cut three-dimensional wooden puzzle,” he said. “I hadn’t even thought of anything like that.”
Now Bill builds intricate wooden three-dimensional puzzles — from little kiwi birds and ponies to globes, locomotives, architectural models and lights and other mechanical designs.
“The laser cuts them out so precise, you don’t even need glue,” he said.
As a child, Bill made balsa wood model airplanes, which he observed were made similar to the 3-D puzzles. He also was able to use prior woodworking skills.
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