Darryl Reeves

In July, 2025, at age 74, master blacksmith Darryl Reeves took his education mission to a new, wider audience through 10 days of lectures and demonstrations in Washington, DC.

For millenia, the blacksmith was revered as a crucial member of the community. They were magic. They tamed fire to meld and shape iron into the tools of peace, war and defense. 

Darryl was trained in welding at a New Orleans area shipyard, but he saw a future in a craft that was rapidly falling to forgotten pages of history. 

“Blacksmiths went away with the industrial age,” he says, pointing to the 1920s as the time of  “the last of the trained blacksmiths.” Darryl picked up the torch.

Since then, he restored the massive and ornate gate at Chalmette National Cemetery. He restored the fence around Jackson Square in the New Orleans French Quarter. Following drawings from the 1790s, he built the fence at the Cabildo on Jackson Square.

Darryl continues to make magic. And that magic can be found in more than the metalwork he creates. It’s in the apprentices that work with him and learn from him. The real magic is in the way Darryl is assuring that this ancient art – his craft and trade – will outlive him and the rest of us too. 

His apprentice, Karina Roca, says “I came into this to learn how to blacksmith and weld, but what I have become is an advocate for historic trades.” She came to the right person. Darryl is always studying the craft. “Even as a master blacksmith, he still refers to himself as a student,” Karina says. “I love that his knowledge is so wide and huge. Studying under him is a real honor.”

And we are really honored to recognize Darryl Reeves as a Peoples Health Champion.