Services honoring the late Larry Strother, a North Topsail Beach alderman who “had an unwavering commitment to protecting the shoreline and a profound love for his community,” have been scheduled for early May.

Strother’s family will receive friends from 6-8:30 p.m. on Friday, May 1 at Snead’s Ferry Presbyterian Church, 776 NC-210, in Sneads Ferry. A celebration of life will be held at the church at 11 a.m. on May 2. A private family inurnment will be at a later time.

Strother died April 12. He was 79.

The native North Carolinian was an accomplished high school athlete who honed leadership skills as a teenager, according to his obituary.

He left college and enlisted in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, serving his country from 1965 until 1970. During that time, he received several awards and medals, including the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat “V” for meritorious service. 

Strother went on to thrive in a career in the real estate and construction industries.

As a North Topsail Beach alderman, Strother chaired the North Topsail Beach Inlet-Sound-Advisory Committee. He was also vice chairman of the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission.

“Larry understood the shoreline was more than sand and water — it was the heart of NTB, a source of livelihood, beauty, and connection for generations of residents and visitors alike,” his obituary reads.

A town release announcing Strother’s death last week states he was “a devoted public servant whose impact on our community will not soon be forgotten.”

“Throughout his years of service, he was a tireless advocate for the renourishment and preservation of our cherished beaches. His unwavering commitment to protecting North Topsail Beach reflected his profound love for this place and the people who call it home. He will be remembered not only for his leadership and dedication but for his kindness, his steady presence, and his deep-rooted passion for the community he served so faithfully. North Topsail Beach has lost a true champion, and his absence will be felt along every stretch of shore he fought so hard to protect.”

Strother is survived by his wife, Lori, two sons, Ryan F. Strother of Colorado Springs, and Christopher W. Strother, and wife Emily, of Athens, Georgia, six grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and multiple nieces and nephews.

Donations to the Snead’s Ferry Presbyterian Church’s building campaign, P.O. Box 758 Snead’s Ferry, NC 28460, are requested in lieu of flowers.

He was a lawyer, Vietnam veteran, military judge, retired Marine Corps colonel, commercial fisherman, photographer, volunteer, mentor, advocate and, to some, an adversary.

Above his extensive resume, above all else, Rick Dove was a family man, one whose devotion to his wife, children and grandchildren ran as deep as the waters he fought decades to protect.

Dove, one of the first Riverkeepers in the Southeast and the original Neuse Riverkeeper, died Aug. 22. He was 86.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Cotten Funeral Home in New Bern, the riverfront city Dove called home. Visitation will be held an hour prior to the service.

In professional circles, Dove was regarded as a no-nonsense, straight shooter who unabashedly took on any industry, whether it was concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, or wastewater treatment plants, responsible for polluting the Neuse River.

Advocating for water quality protections is a hard job, he would say. Polluters are powerful, well-connected and well-funded, he advised. Fighting for clean waterways requires thick skin and unyielding tenacity, he stressed.

“One of the things I remember most about Rick is that he did not sugarcoat things,” said Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider. “He said exactly how things are and that was incredibly beneficial for the folks who worked alongside him. We have a lot of tough Riverkeepers out there today because of how he taught.”

His connection to the water spanned back to boyhood, when he dreamed of being a fisherman.

Dove’s shot at doing just that came in the mid-1980s when he retired after 25 years in the Marine Corps.

He wasted no time tucking away his spit-shined shoes for what he described in a Sound Rivers publication as “the dirtiest clothes I could find and became a commercial fisherman.”

“Things were great until about 1990,” Dove said.

That was the year he and his son, Todd, who fished with him, started to notice their catch sick with sores.

Dove got out of the commercial fishing business. He couldn’t justify selling sick fish, he’d later tell people.

He returned to practicing law, opening R.J. Dove and Associates offices in Havelock and Jacksonville in 1991. Two years later, a job listing advertised in a local newspaper caught his eye.

It was a newly created position called Neuse Riverkeeper. In 1993, Dove became the first to bear that title, one he carried until 2000 when he became the Southeastern representative for Waterkeeper Alliance.

Larry Baldwin distinctly recalls his first impression of Dove after taking the job of Lower Neuse Riverkeeper in 2002.

“I first got to know Rick and it’s like, dang, this guy’s going to be tough to deal with,” Baldwin said. “At that point he still had a lot of the Marine in him. Not that that was bad, but it was just different and, with Rick, it was either you’re going to get into this full-speed ahead or you might as well not get in it at all. Rick would take you at face value, but you also had to prove yourself. You couldn’t just tell him, ‘This is what I am.’ He wanted to see it and he had a way of seeing it, even when you didn’t know he was looking. He could really kind of sense who you were. If you came at Rick trying to overly impress him, you were fighting a losing battle.”

But the sometimes gruff-speaking mentor quickly became a friend, and Baldwin got to see a side of that Dove perhaps revealed only to those whom he was closest.

Dove was a prankster at heart. He was, not surprisingly, also a good arguer.

He was a private man, reserving conversation about his family unless and until he was asked about them. He rarely spoke of his time as a Marine, but faithfully met with a group of fellow Marine Corps veterans well into his golden years.

If he loved you, you knew it. He and his wife, Joanne, shared 60 years together.

“His top priority was the love of his life, Joanne Dove,” Rider said. “His commitment to his family was incredibly important to him.”

They raised two children, Todd, who preceded them in death, and a daughter, Hollyanne.

“Everything for Rick came back to family,” Baldwin said. “That was his reason for being. He loved his family and seeing him and Joanne together, you could tell they just had fun.”

Dove was a “very warm” person, one who was as tenacious on the racquetball court as he was a waterkeeper, Baldwin said.

“I am a blessed individual for having spent almost 23 years with him,” he said. “I’m not sure it has hit me yet. Never has there been somebody in my life that impacted me the way Rick impacted me, and still does. There’s never been one like him and I don’t think there ever will be. In my point of view, we have the obligation to continue what Rick started and what he continued to do. That’s my promise to not just him, but to myself, that we’re not going to let his legacy end just because he’s not here.”

A noted wildlife biologist and zoologist involved in researching North Atlantic right whales and credited for his work to conserve manatees, sea turtles and other endangered species has died.

The Clearwater Marine Aquarium announced Tuesday that Dr. James “Buddy” Powell, chief zoological officer at the aquarium and executive director of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute, or CMARI, died Saturday, July 19, after a brief illness.

Powell, along with other CMARI scientists, collected more than 20 years of aerial survey data on North Atlantic right whales, an endangered species with only 360 individuals remaining, according to the announcement. Working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, CMARI’s data from wintertime, daily flights from North Carolina to Florida, the only known calving areas for this species, led to ship speed reduction, expanded habitat protection and halted whale mortality in the Southeast, the organization said.

For more than 50 years, Powell approached conservation issues using science and education and resulted in coastal protected areas in Florida, West Africa, Belize and Cuba.

“Buddy’s passion for marine research and his unwavering dedication made a lasting impact — not only on our mission, but on all of us who had the privilege of knowing him,” said Clearwater Marine Aquarium CEO Joe Handy. “Buddy was an integral part of our CMA and CMARI family. His intelligence, warmth and leadership will be deeply missed.”

For 20 years, CMARI researchers and staff were involved in rescuing and releasing manatees, along with other organizations in the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Partnership. Powell long dreamed of making the Clearwater Marine Aquarium a home for manatees and spent years chasing that dream, navigating government funding and rallying private donors.

The CMA in August opened its Manatee Rehabilitation Center and welcomes manatees in need of care.

A native of Crystal River, Florida, Powell’s work began in the 1970s with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as a biologist and manatee specialist. In 1986, he moved to West Africa where he studied manatees and forest elephants for the Wildlife Conservation Society. He moved to Belize in the 1990s to manage WCS’s Glover’s Reef Marine Research Station.

Upon his return to Florida, Powell administered the state’s research program on marine mammals and sea turtles for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. In 2001, he became a vice president at Wildlife Trust where he oversaw the aquatic and national divisions. Powell also conducted research with North Atlantic right whales and the recently discovered Rice’s whales.

In 2008, Powell co-founded the Sea to Shore Alliance, a research, education and conservation organization, to improve the health and productivity of coastal environments for the endangered species and human livelihoods that depend on them. In 2019, Powell joined CMA as vice president of research and conservation when Sea to Shore Alliance merged with Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Powell remained executive director of Sea to Shore Alliance doing business as CMARI after the merger.

Powell was pivotal in creating the Right Whale Festival in Fernandina Beach, Florida, during the past 17 years. Co-hosted by Clearwater Marine Aquarium and NOAA Fisheries, the festival is held each November to celebrate the arrival of North Atlantic right whales as they migrate to the waters around Amelia Island from November through April. Each year, the event educates more than 25,000 people about these critically endangered whales and the efforts to protect them.

He was recently involved in research on Rice’s whales, a new species found in the Gulf of Mexico. He also helped begin the CMA Speaker Series in 2023, bringing Dr. Sylvia Earle, world-renowned oceanographer, to CMA in May.

Powell is survived by his wife, Maureen, and daughter, Morgan “Catherine.”

Powell received his bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from the University of Florida, his Master’s in marine affairs from the University of Washington, and his doctorate in zoology from the University of Cambridge in England.

He was the recipient of the prestigious Pew Award in Marine Conservation in 2000, has been featured on “Champions of the Wild” and National Geographic’s “Wild Chronicles” documentaries, and has been honored with multiple awards and certificates. Powell has authored two books, numerous scientific publications and popular articles.

Topsail Beach Mayor Morton Blanchard, a longtime resident and public servant of the Pender County town, died Sunday afternoon, according to a town release.

“Mayor Blanchard leaves a huge voice in the Town of Topsail Beach,” the release states. “His leadership, wisdom, and compassion will be greatly missed by all who knew him.”

The husband, father, and grandfather was appointed mayor about five months ago after former Mayor Steve Smith died last September.

Blanchard moved to Topsail Beach in 2004, though he’d been going to the island his entire life up to that point. The Wallace native’s family bought property on the island in 1956, about seven years before Topsail Beach was established.

Blanchard bought property in the town in 1998. He attended Western Carolina University and Wake Tech, where he studied electronics and refrigeration. He operated Blanchard Refrigeration, a commercial refrigeration company, since 1976.

Prior to their move to Topsail Beach, Blanchard and his wife of more than 40 years, Patricia, also a Wallace native, lived in Rose Hill for 31 years, raising their two sons, Joe and Benjamin.

He served 12 of those years as a town commissioner and chaired the Rose Hill Chamber of Commerce for three years.

Blanchard served as a Topsail Beach commissioner for more than a decade.

“Mayor Blanchard had a passion for serving his community and has worked on many initiatives for the Town but worked especially hard on trying to bring public sewer service to residents and property owners,” the town release states.

A celebration of his life is planned for 7 p.m. Saturday, March 22, at the Historic Assembly Hall in Topsail Beach. Padgett Funeral Home of Wallace is handling the arrangements.

Steve Smith made it a point to go outside the boundaries of the Topsail Island town he served for nearly a decade to educate himself on coastal issues up and down the North Carolina seaboard.

“He was all the time keeping up with information as it became available at all different levels — state, federal, local,” said North Topsail Beach Mayor Pro Tem Mike Benson on Monday. “He was always doing his homework and had his background figured out before he brought issues forward. So, most of the time he was right. He also knew things that were going on in Virginia and South Carolina and how some of their policies might be good here.”

Smith, who was serving his second mayoral term in Topsail Beach, died “peacefully” Friday, according to a town news release. He was 73.

His death, “leaves a huge void in the Town of Topsail Beach,” the release states. “His leadership, wisdom, and compassion will be greatly missed by all who knew him.”

Topsail Beach Mayor Pro Tem Morton Blanchard said Smith was a “consummate mayor.”

“He was a better politician than I’ll ever be. He knew how to get to the legislators and get this little town money,” Blanchard said in a telephone interview Monday afternoon. “Through our time together I’ve been upset with him a few times, but he always managed to stay calmer than me. He was a good friend. Personally, he loved this beach as much as anybody.”

A native of Portsmouth, Virginia, Smith’s childhood was that of a typical military brat, moving from duty station to duty station.

The family’s final post was Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, where Smith left as a high school graduate for the halls of East Carolina University, earning a Bachelor of Science in 1973.

More than 40 years later in 2016, his alma mater honored him with its Outstanding Alumni Award, one of the most prestigious awarded by the university and that recognizes alumni for “outstanding and uncommon achievement in one’s profession, civic affairs and/or politics.”

Smith’s career in business and industry in the United States, Southeast Asia and Africa spanned nearly four decades.

He retired in 2011, moving with his wife, Edna, to their home in Topsail Beach.

It would become evident Smith had no intentions of living a life of complete leisure once the couple settled as permanent residents in the small Pender County beach town.

He was first elected to the town’s board of commissioners in 2015, holding that position for four years before running for and winning the mayor’s seat in 2019 and again in 2023.

He would come to serve on countless boards and committees, “a visionary leader who had a passion for serving his community,” according to the town release. “His commitment to preserving the town’s unique character and natural beauty was evident in his many accomplishments over the years.”

During his time in office, he chaired the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC, and, in 2019, served on the North Carolina Beach, Inlet and Waterway Association’s Board of Directors.

Smith was known for his calm, easy disposition. It wasn’t uncommon to spot him sitting in the audience at quarterly North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission meetings, the locations of which rotate among the north, central and southern areas of the coast.

Benson, a fellow member of the TISPC, somberly recalled in a telephone interview Monday morning the man he considered to be a friend.

“Steve had such a positive outlook on life,” he said. “He would call you and say, ‘how are you today?’”

Kerri Allen, coastal management program director and coastal advocate with the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Wrightsville Beach office, said that Smith was kind, dedicated, “and always willing to think outside the box and try innovative solutions when it came to coastal resiliency.”

“He genuinely cared about his community and always put them above any personal or political agenda,” she responded to Coastal Review in an email Monday. “He was a true leader, and had a way of making anyone and everyone feel welcome and valued. His passing leaves such a void in the Topsail community.”

Benson highlighted a number of contributions Smith made over the years, including leading the TISPC in support of state funding for beach nourishment projects on Topsail Island and Coastal Barrier Resources Act-related issues, supporting the North Carolina Marine Debris Action Plan, helping secure funding approval for Surf City’s proposed federal coastal storm risk management project, and, more recently, leading local efforts in conjunction with the Coastal Federation up to the state level in support of a ban on abandoned vessels in coastal waters.

In addition to his wife, Smith is survived by his son and daughter-in-law, two grandchildren and a brother.

A service is scheduled for noon Thursday at Emma Anderson Memorial Chapel in Topsail Beach with a reception to follow at the town Assembly Building.

Blanchard said the town board is expected to meet next week to select a mayor. A date and time for that meeting is to be determined.

“We’ve got a good team down here,” Blanchard said. “I don’t think we’ll miss a lick. Whoever gets [mayorship], it’ll be daggone hard to fill his shoes.”

Coastal engineer James William “Bill” Forman Jr. died Sept. 30. He was 73.

His family plans a private service.

Forman was president and founder of Arendell Engineers in Morehead City. His obituary in the Carteret County News-Times noted that he “was well known for his work in civil and coastal engineering and left his mark on various projects up and down the East Coast.”

John Wade is vice president and co-founder of Arendell Engineers. He said Forman’s death is a big loss to the coastal engineering community.

“It’s a huge loss for us as a business and for me personally. I’ve been working with him for 13 years now and business partners for the past nine and still had tons to learn from him,” Wade told Coastal Review.

The company is small, with only one other engineer on staff.

“We’re a small firm, so this is really quite a blow,” Wade said.

Wade said that Forman was upset that he would not get to see the continuation of his living shoreline work. “That was kind of his baby,” Wade said.

Forman was born to Doris and James William Forman on Dec. 18, 1949, in Roanoke, Virginia, and reared in Fairmont, West Virginia. He attended Fairmont College in West Virginia before joining the Air Force. While serving, he started working towards his civil engineering degree at North Carolina State University. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering and a master’s in coastal engineering in 1979.

His work included projects with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and Coastal Federation scientist Lexia Weaver.

“He was such a sweet, nice man. He took a liking to me with the community college project and is one of the few engineers that was always open to recommendations on living shoreline design and actually incorporated them into his work. He would contact me often to get advice on marsh plantings and living shorelines at other locations,” Weaver told Coastal Review.

Donations can be made in his honor to the Jimmy V. Foundation or Hope is Alive Addiction Recovery.

Wilmington-area environmental advocates and others are mourning the recent death of educator, lawyer and political activist Robert Henry Cutting Jr.

Bob Cutting died Aug. 23 at 75. He was on the University of North Carolina Wilmington faculty in environmental law from 1991 to 2015.

Born May 13, 1948, and reared in Brea, California, Cutting was a longtime board member of the North Carolina League of Conservation Voters, he authored numerous publications on environmental law, climate justice and public policy, and he fought against air and water pollution.

“Bob had two passions in his professional life: service to the law and protection of the environment. Those passions came through in his teaching and his scholarly work. He was a leader in showing students the importance of the human dimension aspect of the environment,” UNCW biology and marine biology professor Larry Cahoon said in an announcement by the university.

In California, he was the founder of the Santa Barbara Environmental Defense Center. According to his obituary, his writings on pollution and conservation were instrumental in building a case for the Clean Air Act.

He graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara in 1970, and earned his law degree at the University of California, Davis in 1973. He began his legal career with Legal Aid, before joining the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s office. He later opened his own private practice.

He married Sally MacKain in 1987, and they moved to Wilmington in 1990. He’s survived by wife Sally, sons David and Henry, brother Richard, and sister-in-law Reba.

KILL DEVIL HILLS — Murray Bridges, the visionary Outer Banks fisherman who remade tiny Colington Island into a behemoth of the soft-shell crab industry in North Carolina, died Tuesday morning after being infected by the Vibrio bacteria two days earlier while tending his crab shedders.

Bridges, who owned and operated Endurance Seafood Co. off Colington Road since 1976, was 89.

“One week ago, he was setting peeler pots and fishing them,” Willy Phillips, a close friend and a fellow crabber, told Coastal Review Wednesday. “So, he fished to the end. That was Murray — his work ethic was incredible.”

A native of Wanchese, Bridges was instrumental in establishing soft-shell crab as a profitable shellfish product in North Carolina, while also insisting on the highest standards.

“There’s people that come along and transform the industry, and he was one of them,” Phillips said. “He was really kindhearted and hardworking. His example should be a guiding star because of the dedication to his work, his family and his industry.”

Bridges had woken up at about 2 a.m. Aug. 20 with a scratch that he had assumed was from a spider bite, his granddaughter Heather Bridges told Coastal Review by phone.

At about 3:30 a.m., he went out to check the crab shedders, she said, which were filled with water pumped from the nearby sound, and his family noticed the scratch on his arm.

“It was a little swollen place on his wrist,” Bridges said. “We didn’t think much of it.”

But by noon, when his daughter checked on him, he was delirious, and she immediately took him to the health clinic, Bridges said. He was then taken to Outer Banks Hospital and quickly transferred to Norfolk General Hospital. But by evening Aug. 21, the infection had spread to his elbow, then to his shoulder. It was too much for his heart, and Murray Bridges died the next morning.

“It really was amazing how quickly it progressed,” his granddaughter said.

The bacteria, Vibrio vulnificus, is naturally occurring in warm, brackish waters, but people with liver disease, diabetes, or compromised immune systems, or who are older than age 60 or men over age 40, are more at risk of getting infected. It is known as one of the fastest-growing bacteria in the world.

Bridges’ case is the second confirmed Vibrio death in Dare County since July.

According to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, prior to Bridges, a total of three people in the state had died of Vibrio infections in July. Dare County health officials reported a total of nine confirmed and two probable cases of Vibrio in Dare County since 2018, not including Bridges. Of them, three cases were reported in July, one of them a confirmed fatality of a Nags Head man who was cut by a crab pot in Buzzard’s Bay in Colington.

Heather Bridges said that the doctors had told the family that by all indications, her grandfather had a Vibrio infection, but she said she was not aware whether it had been confirmed.

Phillips, 73, former owner of Full Circle Crab Co. in Columbia, in Tyrrell County, said that Bridges was proud of his service in his younger years as a merchant marine and then as a chief engineer on tugboats, when he “sailed,” as he called it, before he moved back home to his native Wanchese and started commercial fishing.

But his major contribution was how he built the lucrative soft-crab industry from the ground up in Colington, seizing on the opportunity after learning about peelers from a North Carolina Sea Grant program, and seeing how Virginia and Maryland fishermen were making money with soft-shell crabs.

Then through dint of his energy, innovative intelligence, and strict quality control, Bridges and Endurance Seafood Co. had birthed an economically viable industry during the traditional fishing off-season on the Outer Banks.

“The mark of a good fisherman is to be aware, to be able to move when you get that gut feeling that there’s something afoot,” Phillips said.

At the time, there was a small soft-shell crab industry on Core Sound, but on the Outer Banks, the peelers were only sold to a few local eateries. But Bridges recognized an untapped source of income, and eventually developed the techniques to produce a high-quality product, scale up the volume and create demand for it at the largest fish market in the U.S., earning a reputation along the way as a sharp businessman.

“The soft-shell crab industry is relatively new, within the last generation,” Phillips said. “Murray was able to hook into the markets in New York. He began shipping to New York as soon as he had the volume to do it.”

Buyers would show up every year at Ensurance Seafood, and start wrangling with Murray, and later also with his daughter Kristina, better known as Kissy. Whether or not Murray Bridge’s folksy Outer Banks brogue caught them off guard, New York buyers soon learned that Bridges was a steely, albeit honest, negotiator.

“You didn’t cross him,” Phillips said. “He had a long memory.”

But dealers appreciated that Bridges could be counted on to provide a quality product.

“It was still the case that they’d come down and pay homage to Murray,” Phillips said.

Initially, Bridges would ship live crabs packed in seaweed gathered locally, Phillips said. But he took the time to learn from other fishermen in Virginia, and, through trial and error, how to pack, how to set up shedders, how to sort the crabs by size and sex.

Soft-shell operations are intensive, seasonal operations that require around-the-clock work when the crabs start molting their shells. But done well, they can be quite profitable. Also, when there’s a bumper season, peeler crabs can be fresh frozen and shipped later.

“The crabbers really jumped on it because it provided an additional source of income early in the year,” Phillips said. Even such a short season could produce 25% or so of a fisherman’s annual income. But the workload is like a nightmare version of finals week, requiring the crabs be checked every three hours for about 10 days straight during the molting period. They then have to be packed alive and shipped.

“It’s incredibly intense,” said Phillips, who had run his own shedding operations for more than 40 years.

“There’s many a relationship that’s been busted apart because of the soft-crab industry.” But for Murray Bridges, his family operation has maintained the pace for 45 years and stayed together.

Over time, Bridges perfected the shedding operations, changing shedding tanks from the water to the land, and setting up elaborate systems with lights and pumps, according to “The Crabfather of Colington,” published in 2018 by Southern Cultures, a product of the University of North Carolina Press Center for the Study of the American South. He learned how to pack the live crabs in waxed cardboard cartons, between layers of parchment paper and covered in ice to keep them as fresh as possible when they’re shipped, the article said.

As the business grew, Bridges started buying peelers from other crabbers in Dare County, but he continued to set his own crab pots. The crabs are put in the tanks until they molt. And at the height of the season in the spring, six members of his family worked on the operation, according to the article, keeping an eagle eye on water temperature and the condition of each crab, waiting for the brief time it sheds its shell, handling up to 5,000 dozen crabs a day.

Heather Bridges, who is the daughter of Otto Bridges, Murray’s son who died in 1987, said she always will remember her grandfather constantly working or busy doing one task or another. No one should be surprised that when he died, he still had pots in the water — he fished pots every day. Whatever vacations he took, she said, “they were few and far between.”

“I’m 37,” she said. “It was hard to keep up with him.”

Phillips said that Murray’s family provided his “ace backup team” that kept his business humming. Bridges was a generous man, who shared information he’d learned with other fishermen without hesitation, Phillips said.

Today, thanks largely to Murray Bridges, soft-shell crabs, whether fried or sautéed, are one of the most popular offerings at Outer Banks restaurants, and Outer Banks peelers are renown along the East Coast for their quality.

“He had a great life,” Phillips said. “He did what he wanted. He left a trail of good will and happy folks.”

Richard Steven “Rick” Shiver, a former manager and supervisor with the state’s environmental agency office in Wilmington, died earlier this month. He was 74.

Shiver, who died May 1, was employed at the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, and its predecessor, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, from Aug. 1, 1973, until his retirement July 31, 2011. He was an environmental program manager and an environmental program supervisor III during his tenure with the agency.

He was also an active member and supporter of the Lower Cape Fear River Program, an academic-government-industry-community partnership administered by the Aquatic Ecology Laboratory at the University of North Carolina Wilmington Center for Marine Science.

Shiver was born Sept. 1, 1948, in Quantico, Virginia, to Clements Wright Shiver and Marian Brock Shiver. He was preceded in death by his father.

He is survived by his wife, Sharon “Nickie” Shiver; mother, Marian Shiver; brother, Wayne and his wife Lydia Shiver; son, Matthew Shiver and his partner, Sarah Zachary Sloan and her children, Evie and Emily; son, Joshua Shiver and fiancée, Morgan Cooper; grandchildren, London Marie Shiver and Lillian Kaye Shiver; niece, Erin Lubin and nephew, Brian Shiver.

His funeral was Tuesday in Wilmington.

Condolences may be sent to the family at www.coblegreenlawn.com.

William “Bill” Addison Hurst, 87, a lifelong resident of Masonboro Sound and waterman, died Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023. He and his family have been longtime supporters of University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Department of Biology and Marine Biology.

His service was to be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Masonboro Baptist Church. A private graveside service will be held.

He is the son of UNCW founding faculty member Adrian Hurst, whose portrait hangs in Friday Hall, a center of research and education for the biology and marine biology department on campus.

The family helped UNCW Department of Biology and Marine Biology establish a nearly 30-acre estuarine research sanctuary just south of Hewletts Creek in the late 1980s to support student and faculty efforts to protect and understand tidal creek systems, according to a 2015 news item from the university. The family has allowed UNCW Department of Biology and Marine Biology professors and students to use their property as a field site for research for many years.

He was born on Sept. 27, 1935, along with his late twin sister, Betsy Hurst Lake. Hurst loved fishing the waters of Masonboro Sound and Hewlett’s Creek. He was a master craftsman, building boats for himself and others. He was also a master of the lost art of net making. He loved to tell stories some of which he wrote about in Growing Up On Masonboro Sound, his obituary states.

He was featured in an article, “Endangered Species, Bill Hurst’s Hewlett’s Creek,” in the November 2014 issue of Wrightsville Beach magazine and in “Portrait of a Fisherman,” an article in Salt Magazine.

Hurst is the main subject in the recent documentary “Tidal Alert” where he tells his story of growing up a third-generation fisherman. The film is available at www.kevacreative.com.

Hurst was rescued on New Year’s Day by two teens after he fell out of his boat while fishing.

He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Lillian Williamson Hurst; stepson, James Hall and wife Nancy and their two daughters, Andrea Armistead, her husband Dan and children Harrison and Bailey, and Melinda Hall and her husband Brooks Westbrook; a daughter, Susan Hurst Alford and husband Jack Alford; a sister, Patsy Hurst West and husband Eddie; and many well-loved nieces and nephews.

In addition to his twin sister, he was predeceased by his parents, Adrian and Betty Hewlett Hurst and sister, Margaret Hurst Clyburn.

Memorials may be made to Masonboro Baptist Church. Condolences may be shared with the family at www.andrewsmortuary.com.