GEORGETOWN, Ky. (LEX 18) — Building a business takes a lot of steps. Well, in this case, you could say it takes a lot of bricks. Duane Keaton has always loved Lego bricks, and he’s incorporated it into a business.
“My first set probably got when I was like six or seven years old,” Keaton said. “It was my mom that kept buying Lego sets for me every Christmas, every birthday.”
Duane and his wife Dacian run a brick learning center on wheels. It’s called the Brick Mobile, and the two travel to communities around Kentucky for events, parties, and education opportunities.
Duane showed off a few of his lesson plans. He shared one teacher asked him to develop a lesson that would incorporate circuits.
“The lesson would be can you build a scene that requires lights,” he said, flipping a switch that turned small LED lights on. “They construct a scene of a person, you know, proposing or whatever like that, or maybe from a favorite story.”
“I’m making sure they understand something about parallel circuits and series circuits.”
Duane also has a challenge for students to build a tower that can stay standing while a machine simulates an earthquake.
The Brick Mobile brings fun family moments to others, but the journey for the Keatons started during a much harder time in 2018.
“It began with my mom passing away,” Duane said. “She was one of those people that was always there, always supporting, always encouraging.”
“We lost her in February of 2018 and then my wife had her cancer surgery in October of 2018 where she lost her voice, which meant that she also had to lose a lot of things from her life like she loved swimming, she loved singing.”
Tragedies continued hitting the Keatons in 2019.
“I ended up losing my dad and our own daughter got sick quite often,” Duane said. “It really made me rethink my life, the priorities.”
“I would spend 40, 50, sometimes 60 hours a week at school, teaching. I just I wanted to be home. I wanted to be with my family and I wanted to be with my wife and I wanted to somehow figure out how can we work together.”
Duane decided to step away from teaching, and that’s when Dacian had the entrepreneurial idea to start the Brick Mobile.
Just like a pile of pieces become an incredible structure, the Keatons have truly built beauty out of bricks, and they’re not done yet.
“Our slogan has been, ‘we bring the bricks to you,’” Duane said. “Underneath that it's, ‘we bring the joy.’ Again, it's the chance to create, it's the chance to build, it's the chance to play honestly.”
The Brick Mobile has summer programming available starting in June. You can learn more on their website, or by visiting the Brick Mobile Facebook page.
