Machinist Daniel Long Retires after 33 Years at UAB
In 1992, a 22-year old man applied for a short-term job as a machinist. He was told the job would last five to seven years, max.
At the end of this month, that man, Daniel Long, will retire after that temporary job grew into a 33-year career as a tool and die maker at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Long leaves behind a legacy that includes thousands of custom-made parts and prototypes—from hardware built for spaceflight to artificial knees, hips and other joints, as well as countless other made-to-order products he fabricated in the Research Machine Shop in the School of Engineering.
“For more than three decades, Daniel Long has been an indispensable part of the research mission at UAB,” said Mark Banaszak Holl, Ph.D., the School of Engineering’s Associate Dean for Research. “He has the experience and the skill to work with the research staff to create functional equipment and key components of experiments, including from the most difficult-to-machine metals. That kind of support for the UAB research community resource is hard to come by.”
From Shop Class to Space Shuttle
Long, a native of nearby Pleasant Grove, Alabama, first applied to UAB to work on a protein crystallography project in the early 1990s. Larry DeLucas, O.D., then a researcher in the School of Optometry, had obtained funding for a project that would require custom hardware for experiments that would be performed on board the Space Shuttle.
“When I was taking shop classes in high school, I never dreamed that I would be making parts that would fly in space,” Long said. “But I knew my way around a machine shop, and growing up in the Birmingham area, I knew UAB was a great place to start a career.”
Since the funding for crystallography research was for a limited timeframe, Long said he took the job expecting that the position would only be guaranteed for a few years. Instead, DeLucas’s research evolved into the UAB Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering (CBSE) and eventually became the Engineering and Innovative Technology Development (EITD) research group. Through all of those transitions, Long’s skills as a machinist were as much in demand as ever with projects like building the EITD cold-stowage units that are currently in use on the International Space Station.
As his work on those projects became known around campus, other researchers sought out his services, and soon Long was fabricating parts for medical implants, animal enclosures, and all manner of contraptions necessary to conduct research and manufacture hardware.
“It has never been boring,” Long said. “If someone brings me a good design, we can find a way to make it. So I pretty quickly started getting work for implants, enclosures, space freezers…really more things than I can list. Every day it was something new.”
Rebirth through Tragedy
This cross is one of thousands Long has forged in memory of his wife, Rachel.Long’s work with tools was never limited to his day job. He also was a blacksmith on the side, making knives in his home shop. That hobby resulted in custom-made knives of various designs going to people across the country. But that hobby, along with everything else in Long’s life, changed in 2021.
On October 7, Long’s wife Rachel was killed in a car accident two weeks before the couple’s 27th wedding anniversary. “We were together six and a half years before we got married, and in all that time, she was more than my wife; she was my best friend.”
Long said he had a row of blades laid out ready to go in the fire on the day she died, and they have lain there ever since, untouched. Instead, he began shaping metal into small crosses in memory of Rachel.
He began giving the crosses to friends and then to strangers, each one accompanied by a type-written account of his and Rachel’s story. After his work was featured in local news accounts, his story spread, and as of this fall, he has distributed more than 2,500 crosses.
“It seems to mean a lot to people to get these crosses, and it means a lot to me to be able to share her story,” Long said. “People have sent me pictures of themselves with their cross from places all over the world.”
Starting a New Chapter
With his retirement date looming on October 1, almost three years after his family tragedy, Long says he plans to continue making crosses, and he hopes to spend more time with other hobbies he has picked up in recent years, like riding motorcycles with his two sons, camping and fly-fishing, and showing his restored 1931 Model A Ford at car shows and other events.
“I had planned to retire after 30 years, but after Rachel’s accident, I decided to stay on while I figured out what to do next,” Long said. “Now I think I’m ready to focus on the little things in life that I enjoy in life. It has never been about making money for me. It has been about finding the little things that make me and the people I love happy.”
Learn more about Long’s story in the links below:
Fox 6: Pleasant Grove man forges iron crosses in honor of his late wife
Al.com: Remembering Rachel: Loss and love are the fires from which these crosses rise
Alabama Baptist: Daniel Long forges crosses to share the gospel after tragic loss of his wife