"Red" Rohrbaugh and his tea kettles played a role in movies made in Georgia.

Mr. Rohrbaugh retired from Eastern Airlines and wended his way into blacksmithing. Then, on a lark, he decided to become an extra in movies being filmed in the Atlanta area.

Family photo (ENLARGE)

'Red' Rohrbaugh and his late wife, Katherine, staff his booth at the Georgia Renaissance Festival, where he sold copper and other metal pieces that he'd made in his blacksmith shop.

"He had a kind of unique look and a unique voice, so they would pick him right off the bat," said his son, Mike Rohrbaugh of Alpharetta.

Filming 1994's "The War" with Kevin Costner, Mr. Rohrbaugh brought tea kettles onto the set that he had fashioned on his forge. The movie makers used them as props in the period movie about the Confederate prison in Andersonville, his son said.

Mr. Rohrbaugh was an extra in "Getting Out" starring Rebecca De Mornay and was the cemetery caretaker in 1995's "Fluke" starring Matthew Modine, his son said. Thereafter, Mr. Rohrbaugh had fun telling new acquaintances, "You didn't know I was a movie star, did you?"

He was better known as a blacksmith and for the copper and other metal pieces he created and sold at craft fairs such as the Georgia Renaissance Festival in Fairburn and Powers' Crossroads Country Fair and Art Festival in Newnan.

The funeral for Glenn E. "Red" Rohrbaugh, 83, of Union City, formerly of Fairburn, is 11 a.m. Tuesday at Parrott Funeral Home. He died of respiratory failure Friday at Piedmont Fayette Hospital.

Mr. Rohrbaugh was a brick and stone mason when he went to work for Eastern in the 1960s. He retired as supervisor of fueling and cleaning at age 57. For a second income, he hobbled a few of the family's horses as he learned to shoe them, then became a professional farrier, a term he did not like, his son said.

Horseshoeing put Mr. Rohrbaugh at the forge and that led to fashioning iron and copper decorative and useful pieces — knives, tea kettles, cups, ladles, trivets, pots, pot hangers, fireplace tools, weather vanes, gates, hooks, hinges and latches. His cutouts of cats, dragons, pigs, unicorns and other animals were crafted from patterns drawn by his late wife, Katherine Rohrbaugh.

"When he did the fireplace sets," his son said, "his signature was using the horse's hame for a holder."

Hames, the curved pieces of a workhorse's harness, have brass knobs that complement the metal of the tool set stand, he said.

Mr. Rohrbaugh liked working with copper and would add everything from a rainbow to antique to a verdigris finish to his pieces, which ranged from primitive to polished.

"He enjoyed the Renaissance Festival more than anything," his son said. "They live together for a month like a band of gypsies out there."

When he tore himself away from his black-smithery barn, Mr. Rohrbaugh would go fishing or pile the neighborhood children into the back of his pickup truck and take them to a field for a game of flag football, his son said.

A World War II Marine Corps veteran, Mr. Rohrbaugh saw action at Okinawa and Guadalcanal and was a tent mate and lifelong friend of Bum Phillips, former head football coach of the Houston Oilers and New Orleans Saints.

"He could tell some of the funniest stories about the hardest times in his life," said his friend Tom Sizemore of Stone Mountain. "It was fun to be with him.

"There was a lot of the devil, in the good sense of the word, in Red."

Survivors include another son, Eddie Rohrbaugh of Blairsville; a daughter, Harriett Rohrbaugh of College Park; and two grandchildren.