We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Abby Chandler a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Abby, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

So much! I have never had what many consider to be a real job. I have never been to a job interview where I was looking to be hired. But I didn’t have everything handed to me either.
My step-father, Mike, owned a picture framing company and hired me to help at only 15 years old. Over the 10 years I worked there, I eventually became the lead and kept everything organized for him. During that time, I also discovered an interest in filming and photography. My biological father bought me an SLR camera as a 16th birthday gift. My mother and stepfather bought me Adobe Creative Sweet as a Christmas present, but Mike opened it before Christmas to learn the software so he could help me understand it as easily as possible. He is now in the marketing industry and is still my “Adobe help desk” when I need to do something new.
When it came time for my husband, John, and I to open the brewery, my father offered to do anything we needed. Since my husband had just had major surgery to remove cancer from his sinus cavities and we had four children, two of them three years old, we asked him to run the tavern until things settled down. A year later, we offered to hire someone to replace him or even pay him for the job. He refused and continued to be at the tavern for every minute we were open until he remarried four years later.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I took a photography class in high school and loved it. Then, I added a video class that taught students to film and edit. We were able to broadcast our work onto a local channel. This was a big deal before YouTube! I filmed a local couple’s wedding that was done as a Civil War reenactment in conjunction with the channel, but they paid us! At 17 this was a big deal. We made the cover of the town crier (again, this was before you got your news on the phone) and booked a full white dress wedding for later that summer. This was before I was even in my last year of high school.
I ran CWC alongside my close friend for a few years but soon switched to doing it on my own. I married my husband and started a family. We went on a trip to Colorado in 2009 and realized how many kinds of craft beer existed. My husband was hooked! When we returned to Youngstown there was a disappointing selection that had made it to this side of the country. My parents bought us a Mr. Beer kit for Christmas that year. We started making beer in the kitchen and quickly moved to a bigger system in the garage. John was good at making beer, and it was a process he really enjoyed.
When it came to opening the brewery, we seemed to land some great news coverage as well. This time, it was because my husband developed cancer while opening Paladin. He had a 15-hour surgery less than a month before opening day, and the local news channels were very interested in sharing a good new story.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Opening Paladin Brewing for us was by definition a story of resilience. It started with the normal problem; finding a location, getting a loan, construction expenses higher than the quotes, equipment delays and all the other headaches that pile up.
Real headaches started to affect my husband, John, as well. We assumed they were from stress. Logical right? After seeing multiple doctors, one told him, “If it’s brain cancer I wouldn’t even want to know. It’ll kill ya anyway.” We ran into a fellow Little League dad who asked John what was wrong with his eye. He commented that it seemed to be bulging out of his head. After an x-ray, we knew why. A baseball-sized tumor was growing in his sinus cavities, and it was pushing his eye forward.
We made it to the Cleveland Clinic for the first biopsy less than a month later, and they had him scheduled for removal another month later. After a 15-hour surgery, I went to see him the following morning, and the doctor told me, “Your husband is paralyzed from the neck down” pause “medically.” During that pause I saw life as I knew it flash before my eyes! Thankfully, the medication wore off, as it was supposed to, and he moved from the ICU to a normal room and home about a week later.
Within days of being home he fainted, and I was sure he was dead, our 9-year-old, Luke, jumped out of a tree and broke him arm so badly it was pushing out of the skin and John told me he wanted to open Paladin in 3 short weeks. I protested, but he had sound logic: If we waited until after chemo, then it would delay it too long. We needed to open and start selling beer.
And open we did! With the help of family, friends, and the community, we opened with 4 beers on tap. John traveled to and from Cleveland daily for chemo and radiation for 6 weeks. Luke got one cast removed and replaced with a smaller one, and that one was removed as well. John had one overnight trip to Cleveland left, and Clark, who was 4 at the time, fell down one step and broke his femur. My mother-in-law had to drive us to the hospital because my husband was too weak to drive. I sat in the back holding my son’s leg, which I later learned helped prevent the bone from cutting his artery and causing him to bleed out internally. Thankfully, it was ‘just’ a body cast. It went from his nipples to his toes and kept his legs slightly bent and spread for six weeks. He needed PT to learn to use his legs again properly.
When 2015 came to an end, our Christmas card read, “Dad is cancer free, Clark is walking again, we are cast free and looking forward to a whole new year!”

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I started CWC Productions when I was 17 years old. A good friend of mine who was in the video production class with me was to be my partner. Like most things when you are in high school, that didn’t last long, but the break was a calm one. This isn’t the story of how we met but how we decided to name our company. Kristen came into 7th period class very excitedly with what she decided was the perfect name for our company. However, when she said CWC I was very confused since our initials were K.S and A.S. “Cuties With Cameras!” At 17, that seemed like a great idea. It was never registered as anything beyond CWC thankfully. After the first few years, I said it stood for “Creative with Cameras,” but now that my 18-year-old son is my main second shooter, I like to tell people it stands for “Chandlers with Cameras.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://paladinbrewing.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paladinbrew/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaladinBrewing/

Image Credits

As a photographer, I appreciate you including this in your questions. CWC Productions and staff can be credited for all photos.