Saved by the trade: Welding gave her purpose and a family

Welding saved Cheyenne Gregory’s life. Literally.

Today, Gregory is a hardworking second-year apprentice out of Local 455 (Sheffield, Alabama), and lately you can usually find her working nights on the job at Tennessee Valley Authority’s Colbert combustion turbines. When she’s not on the job, she’s at the hall brushing up on her skills, or she’s hanging out with her boyfriend A.J. or catching up with her mentor Zach and his family.

She has plans for her future. Her future looks bright and the sky’s the limit.

It didn’t always look that way.

Gregory was born and grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. To say she was raised in a harsh environment is sugarcoating what she endured. Things were bad. Gregory was removed from her home at age 17 and placed in foster care; and, as she has said publicly, if a child is placed in the foster care system, it’s because the situation is pretty dire.

Those were dark days for the teenager. Very dark. So dark that a future looked impossible, and Gregory believed there was no alternative but to end her life.

It was at this lowest point in her life that she discovered welding.

She loved it immediately.

“I felt calm,” she says. “Welding literally saved my life. I was at peace in such a dark time of my life. I felt like nothing else mattered except me and the project at hand.”

Welding had reignited her spark for life with a calling and a dream to pursue.

So, at age 18, she emancipated herself (Alabama maintains guardianship to age 19) and went to welding school in Florida. Eight months later and inching toward her dream, she earned her welding certificate. Shortly after, she returned home from Florida but with just $70 in her pocket and nowhere to go.

She turned to a friend. While Gregory was in foster care, she had become best friends with a coworker, Madison, as they hostessed at a restaurant. Now, in her time of need, Madison and her family invited Gregory to move in with them. And they encouraged her while she applied for job after job. Later, she would ask Melissa and Joe Gregory to officially adopt her, which they did.

“A lot of people are like, why would you want to be adopted at age 21?” she says. “To me, it doesn’t matter. You can find your family at any age. I found mine at 21. Blood doesn’t make you family. It’s connection, and love and care.”

That was just the first real family she found.

After months of applications, Gregory finally landed her first job. Nonunion. No surprise, she wasn’t treated well.

“It really made me re-think if this was what I wanted to do,” she says.

So, she joined a union. Not the Boilermakers. The environment there was an every-man-for-himself culture where it was common for brothers and sisters to throw one another under the bus. Six months later, rather than having her back, that union kicked Gregory out after she was part of a mass-firing on a jobsite.

“At that point, I really didn’t know if I wanted to join another union or where I wanted to go or if I even wanted to weld anymore,” she says.

But someone at that union saw Gregory’s talent and knew Zachariah Hamilton, District Training Instructor for the Southeast and President of L-455. That person called Hamilton.

“They called and told me Cheyenne had some things going on her life, but that she welds really great and recommended we have her come in,” Hamilton says. So, he called Gregory and put her in a booth to see what she could do.

“She showed extreme amounts of talent,” he says. “I knew there was something different and something had gone wrong in her life, but I never asked about it. I just did what I do.” Which was to start prepping her to be a Boilermaker.

Gregory was skeptical. After her treatment nonunion—and especially her treatment from the previous union—she was hesitant. But she decided to give it one more chance because when she met Hamilton, she knew there was something different about the Boilermakers.

“I felt like I was home,” she says.

Gregory had found her second real family.

Hamilton says Gregory worked hard to get up to speed and pass her welding tests, and when she didn’t pass, she worked harder the next time.

“Zach had more faith in me than anybody’s ever had in me,” Gregory says. “He pushed me to be what I am today, and he showed me that Local 455 could also really be a family for me.”

Then came a call from L-455 Business-Manager/Secretary-Treasurer Tres Howard: Could Gregory go to a job at TVA’s Cumberland City plant as a tube welder? She says she wanted that job because she was a “broke apprentice.” The problem was, she hadn’t passed her tube welding yet.

“Tres said, ‘I know that, but you test Thursday, so I suggest you pass,’” she recalls. She practiced some more, tested, passed the test and went to Cumberland City, Tennessee.

She quickly discovered it wasn’t just at the hall, but also on the job that her Boilermaker brothers and sisters wanted to help her learn and to grow her skills. When she and her boyfriend A.J. (also a L-455 Boilermaker) travelled to Colorado for a job with L-101 (Denver), she was pleasantly surprised to discover they were just as welcome there as Boilermaker brothers and sisters as they are at home in Alabama, Tennessee and anywhere else they travel with the union.

“I enjoy the work. I get to learn a lot,” she says. “I’m able to ask questions without feeling like somebody is going to get mad at me. They take the time and the patience to train you and make sure you have what you need to be successful.”

Hamilton stresses the importance of journeymen serving as good mentors to apprentices: “We have to be. What we do is the most dangerous work in the industry.”

Gregory says she calls on Hamilton and her other Boilermaker siblings for life advice and an ear to listen, as well as for the technical advice.

“It’s just a phenomenal feeling to know that you have people there for you and to know that you can go to any of them and be like, hey, I just need someone to talk to, and they’ll listen,” she says. “So, it’s not just about learning on the tools.”

Hamilton adds that he and his family have become close friends with her, and he considers Gregory to be a good mentor to his own 13-year-old daughter.

“That’s how close we’ve gotten with her,” he says. “And now she’s gotten tough in the field, and she can talk to other girls and say, ‘this is a big girls’ industry’ and give them advice to get through it.”

In fact, in addition to her work on the tools, Gregory has now spoken at TVA events, the recent Boilermakers CSO conference and was even a featured speaker at the 2025 Tradeswomen Build Nations Conference, where she shared her story in front of nearly 6,000 tradeswomen and allies.

“I really feel like I’m in a place I can call my family—and they’re my brothers and sisters, and I wouldn’t change it for anything,” Gregory says. “Where I stand today is where I belong, and I’m proud to be a Boilermaker.”