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description From Modern Maturity's "Front Lines/F.Y.I." section, November-December 1998 issue. Modern Maturity is the magazine of the American Association of Retired Persons, circulation 20.5 million — the largest circulation magazine in the USA The Building blocks of a fun career By Jack Jackson Daniel Krentz fell in love in front of a department-store window in 1962. With a box of Legos. His love affair started as a hobby — an antidote to his monotonous days as a postal sorter in Denver, Colorado. Then, in 1969, Krentz approached Samsonite, Lego's manufacturer in the United States, and asked for a job. As a test, the company invited him to design three Lego houses. Lego's head of product development interviewed Krentz — known as "a good customer in Denver" — and hired him on the spot. By 1970 Krentz was at the company's headquarters in Billund, Denmark, designing Lego models for a living. "They say that as soon as Daniel moved to Denmark, Lego sales in the U.S.A. dropped considerably," jokes Jens Nygaard Knudsen, Krentz's boss for 15 years. "That first day he came to work it was winter, and he came in summer clothes. he hadn't given a thought to what it was like in Denmark. He thought only about building with bricks." Every day since then, Krentz has looked forward to going to work. "Remember that yellow castle?" he asks. The 900-piece castle, which hit the market in 1977, was one of Krentz's first models. "I worked a lot with the adventure theme," he says. "Themes of good and evil. The Wild West. The future." After work, Krentz goes home to his private Lego collection, which fills two rooms. Several times a week, he leads a building club. he founded it in 1995, a few years after the death of his wife, who was a co-worker at Lego. "I could sense that some kids in the neighborhood were about to make some trouble," he says. "They were bored. I was alone. I had a lot of Legos." He unlocks the door to club headquarters: a workman's hut outside of a Lego factory. "It's a mess," he warns. Inside, three bags of potato chips and five plastic bottles of cola sit by a Lego mountain village. A miniature city is also under construction, complete with shopping center. At Lego, Krentz is known for building enormous, intricate models, such as the giant Buddha he created in yellow with room inside for two-inch Lego figurines. "He used thousands of bricks for that one," Knudsen says. "The boss was flabbergasted." After scores of projects over nearly 30 years, Krentz constructed prototypes for a Legoland theme park scheduled to open in Carlsbad, California, in spring 1999. he is currently designing models for a Lego hobby magazine. "Daniel will never grow up," Knudsen says. "That's something we should all be happy about." Copyright 1998 AARP Modern Maturity. Used by permission. |
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