A hundred-year-old makes wooden toy cars for children he will never meet

Bill Covington is a hundred years old and lives at Sulphur, in Louisiana. He has spent the last ten years in his workshop making small wooden cars, more than a hundred of them this year. They go into shoeboxes that are sent abroad. He is losing his eyesight and has not stopped.

4 October 2026

Bill Covington, aged one hundred, bent over a blue Delta bandsaw in his workshop, wearing a blue shirt and wire glasses, both hands flat on a pale board as he feeds it towards the blade, an angled lamp lighting the table — At the bandsaw. He traces, cuts, sands and glues, one board at a time.
Photo: KPLC

Somewhere abroad a child will open a cardboard shoebox and find a small wooden car inside, made by hand for nobody in particular. The man who made it is a hundred years old, lives at Sulphur in Louisiana, and will never know which child got it.

Bill Covington has spent the past ten years doing the same thing with his days. He traces the shape onto a board, cuts it on the bandsaw, sands it, glues it together, and starts the next one. He has made more than a hundred cars this year. They go to Houston River Baptist Church and from there into Operation Christmas Child, which packs shoeboxes of toys and necessities and ships them to children in other countries.

I just like to build it and give it away.Bill Covington, to KPLC

Why he keeps going

He is not paid and nobody is expecting the cars. Asked why he does it, he gave the answer of a man who has thought about it.

Just keep working. Don’t quit. You quit, you die. You gotta keep going. That’s the reason I’m making these cars.Bill Covington

He taught Sunday school until he was ninety-eight. He is a veteran of the Second World War. His wife Earlene was asked what she makes of him, and said: “He’s handsome. He’s handsome.”

A row of finished pale wooden toy cars standing on a dark polished table, their round wooden wheels in focus in the foreground, with Bill Covington out of focus behind them in his blue shirt — Some of this year’s hundred, finished and lined up. He is behind them, out of focus.
Photo: KPLC

The eyesight

The one thing slowing him down is his sight, which is going. He mentioned it the way he mentions everything else.

I enjoy it. I’m losing my eyesight. I won’t have to give it up sooner or later. I hope it’s a lot later.Bill Covington

He is still at the bench most days. The cars keep going into the boxes, and the boxes keep going out.

Carry a story in five words

We run a game called Long Story Short: one real news sentence a day, and you keep the five words that carry it. Today’s is below. Do play.

How to play

One real news sentence. The job is to keep the five words that carry the story and let the rest go, then guess. Blue means the right word in the right place, orange the right word in the wrong place.

Yesterday: A 13-year-old whose previous longest swim had been 10km swam 64km from Dhanushkodi to Thalaimannar and back, spending eighteen hours and fifty minutes at sea. The five were 13-year-old swam 64km at sea.

Play today’s on the full page ›

Everything here is from Devin Cruice and Morgan Babineaux’s report for KPLC in Lake Charles, published on 2 October 2026, including all of the quotations. The photographs are KPLC’s, taken from that report and used by permission.