Ken Wood has been working with water wells since 1961. He founded his Denton, Md., drilling and pump installation business, Lifetime Well Drilling, in 1968. Then, just over nine years ago, he started Lifetime Wells for Ghana, which has drilled more than 1,000 water wells for residents without drinking water in Ghana and Tanzania. “We had a rig for sale and a mission wanted to buy the rig and they asked if I would go to Ghana and show the locals how to drill, and I ended up there and never got out of it,” Wood says. This year, he has been selected to receive a National Ground Water Association (NGWA) Life Member Award, which will be presented at this month’s Groundwater Expo in Las Vegas. The award recognizes his special service in the furtherance of the groundwater industry. His son Ben now runs the business in the states, but Wood still goes to work every day and oversees business operations the nine months out of the year that he isn’t in Africa.