Editor’s note: Coastal Review regularly features the work of North Carolina historian David Cecelski, who writes about the history, culture and politics of the North Carolina coast. More of his work can be found on his website.

I first listened to a special group of interviews with African American community elders in Pamlico County almost 20 years ago, but I have never forgotten them. They helped me to see history as more than dates and wars, the rise and fall of the powerful, and the stuff of headlines.

They helped me to understand that history is all those things, but it is also the paths of our souls and the life of the spirit.

The oral history project was called “Preserving the African American Experience in Pamlico County, North Carolina.”

The project was led by Ms. Linda Simmons-Henry, a scholar, archivist and public historian whom I have known and admired for many years.

Ms. Simmons-Henry was uniquely well prepared to lead the project. At that time, she was the director of special collections and the senior archivist at Saint Augustine’s College in Raleigh.

She is currently the dean of the library and archives at Texas College, a historically Black colleges and universities in Tyler, Texas.

She is also a native of New Bern and has always remained deeply attached to the African American community there and in Pamlico County, just to the east of New Bern.

Over the spring and summer of 2007, Ms. Simmons-Henry and a talented team of local volunteers conducted oral history interviews with 20 of Pamlico County’s African American elders.

I found the interviews to be a rare treasure. Taken together, they are a compelling and intimate portrait of African American life in Pamlico County over most of the 20th century.

The whole tenor of the interviews is special. When you listen to them, you can tell that the project’s volunteers and the elders were people who knew and cared for one another.

In the voices of the project’s volunteers, I heard respect and reverence for the elders whom they were interviewing. I also heard a yearning to learn from their wisdom and experience.

In the voices of the elders, I heard a special kind of care. They talk about history, but they also sound like wise grandparents gently sharing love and guidance with those of a younger generation whom they know will need all the help they can get in this fragile, broken world of ours.

* * *

I first listened to the interviews back in 2007. The project’s volunteers had organized a banquet to celebrate and honor the community elders who had so graciously shared their stories with them.

I had been invited to say a few words at that banquet. To help me to prepare for the occasion, Ms. Simmons-Henry made a copy of the interviews for me.

At that time, the project’s volunteers had not yet transcribed the audio tapes, so I could not read transcripts of them. In a way, it was nicer: it meant that I had to listen to them, which I did, and it was a delight.

It made me feel as if I was sitting down with the elders and listening to their stories along with the project’s volunteers.

The interviews and transcripts are now available both at the New Bern-Craven County Public Library in New Bern and in the Southern Oral History Program’s collection at the Southern Historical Collection at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

* * *

The project’s oldest interviewee was a woman named Annie Rachel Squires. She was born in a little community called Maribel, on the Bay River, in 1908. At the time of her interview, she was 99 years old.

Ms. Squires and the other community elders shared stories about many different parts of Pamlico County’s history.

They talked about their teachers and schools. They spoke of childhood joys. They remembered long, brutally hard days of digging in potato fields and shucking oysters in the local canneries.

“All I know about my life was work, work, work,” I remember one woman saying, I believe in Vandemere, a small village in Pamlico County.

The community elders also recounted tales of the local struggle for voting rights and racial justice in Pamlico County.

Some remembered the landmark school desegregation lawsuit that black citizens in the coastal town of Oriental filed in 1951. Two or three recalled incidents involving the Ku Klux Klan.

Others told stories about serving in the Second World War and the Vietnam War. Yet others remembered the Great Depression.

My curiosity encompassed all of those historical subjects, but they are not what I remember most about the interviews.

What struck me most deeply about the elders’ words when I first listened to them back in 2007, and what I still find most unforgettable about them now, is how much they are a history of faith and the spirit.

* * *

For instance, I will never forget the project’s interview with the Rev. Kenneth M. Bell Sr., who at that time was still the minister at the Green Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Bayboro.

He was the only church pastor whom the project’s volunteers interviewed, but when it came to matters of the spirit, his words were very similar to most of the other elderly men and women that were interviewed.

Like Rev. Bell, they spoke of their faith and their struggles to know and understand God more fully.

They shared stories of Sunday schools and Bible study groups. They described a hunger to understand more fully what Scripture had to teach them about our purpose here on Earth, the nature of our existence, and what we are called to do for one another.

Rev. Bell was interviewed by Ms. Sandra Mae Hawkins, one of the project’s most devoted volunteers. At one point in the interview, she asked Rev. Bell what he considered the most important event in his life.

He did not hesitate for even a second.

He said it was the day in his boyhood that Mrs. N.F. Harper sang “Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior” at Green Hill Missionary Baptist Church and he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior.

* * *

When Rev. Bell spoke of Mrs. Harper singing “Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior,” he was remembering a worship service 60 or 70 years earlier.

Born in Bayboro in 1941, he was the youngest of 12 children.

When Sandra Made Hawkins talked with him, he explained that he had grown up in hard times. However, he did not linger on his family’s hardships or the things they did without.

Instead, he talked about his father, who was a farmer and a devout member of the local African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

His father was not the pastor of the church, but he had been a missionary. Rev. Bell explained that when his father was not in his fields, he strove to live the Bible’s teachings.

He visited the sick, lonely, and down and out. He cut firewood for elderly neighbors. After hog killings, he shared the meat with those who had none.

In the interview, Rev. Bell recalled that his father’s face had been disfigured in a hunting accident when he was a boy.

When I heard that part of his life story, I wondered if his father’s malformity had helped to teach him, and maybe his son too, to look at people’s souls, not on that which is only skin deep.

Rev. Bell remembered that people in Pamlico County often referred to his father as a prophet. He said that his father understood how to listen for God’s word, and again and again, God spoke to him. God made him promises, and those promises, Rev. Bell said, came true.

He was not describing the world that we watch on TV or read about in the New York Times: he was describing a world where miracles happened.

 “He never talked much to us except about the Bible,” Rev. Bell recalled.

He spoke with great admiration and appreciation for his father. On the other hand, listening to his interview, I also got the feeling that he felt as if his father may have left some important things unsaid.

* * *

I was also taken with the project’s interview with a gentleman named Charlie Styron. Mr. Styron was born in Oriental in 1933.

I wish I had known him. He spoke with a beautiful voice, full of kindness.

In reflecting on his life, Mr. Styron described how he had always worked with his hands. Listening to him talk about his life, I got the impression that there was not much that he could not do with those hands.

For many years, he had worked at a sawmill and a veneer plant. But at different times, he explained, he had made his living as a heavy equipment operator, a bricklayer, a carpenter, and an electrician.

After he retired, he said, he found his greatest joy in playing with his grandchildren. He kept active, too. At the time of the interview, he was still operating a lawn mower repair business out of his home.

Passersby often saw him singing hymns and praying while he worked on the lawnmowers.

Sandra Mae Hawkins was also the project interviewer who spoke with Mr. Styron.

When she asked him, “What have been some important events of your life?” he, like Rev. Bell, did not hesitate even for a moment: “Well, to be born from above, that was the most important event,” he told her.

* * *

The project’s interview with a woman named Eula Felton Monk also stood out to me. Ms. Monk had grown up in Mesic, a rural, predominantly African American community on the Bay River.

I had a good friend there when I was young, Ed Credle, who was Mesic’s first mayor. Listening to Ms. Monk’s stories gave me a special joy because they brought back memories of Ed and his neighbors whom I got to know in Mesic back in those days, good people, all.

When Ms. Monk was a girl, she recounted, her father had been the captain of a shrimp trawler. He worked on the Bay River and out in Pamlico Sound, but he also followed the shrimp as far south as Key West.

At the time of her interview, Mrs. Monk had been a teacher for 43 years. She had retired from teaching full-time, but she was still working part time as a substitute teacher in the local public schools.

When asked about her childhood, she recalled long days of working in the fields: chopping cotton, digging potatoes, picking tobacco.

Her family worked on local farms, but also traveled to fields as far away as Merritt, Arapahoe and Aurora.

She spoke of her schoolteachers with great reverence. She had endless admiration for how they did so much, and cared so much for their students, back in those days of Jim Crow when Pamlico County’s schools were segregated by race and so little was given to the African American schools.

Mrs. Monk said that she would never forget the great debt that she owed those teachers.

When the interviewer asked her if she was religious, she, too, was matter of fact:

“I believe in God and I believe in being a doer of His word…, (and I) try very hard to do those things daily that He says that I should do in His world.”

The interviewer then asked a question with a kind of directness with respect to faith and religion that I do not often see in oral history projects.

She asked if Mrs. Monk believed in Jesus Christ.

Mrs. Monk was not caught off guard by the question in the least, and her reply was direct:

 “Oh, yes I do, as my Lord and my Savior. He is my Savior. Yes.”

When the interviewer asked her how she put her faith into action in her daily life — another question I do not often hear in oral history interviews — Mrs. Monk turned to Scripture.

“Second Timothy 2:15 says to study to show thyself approved of God, not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. I study the word of God, and then I pray.”

She also said:

“And the Bible says we should visit the sick…, the Bible says that we should reach out to those who are less fortunate than we are… and to love thy neighbor as thyself.”

She said that she strove to do all those things, though of course she acknowledged that she was far from perfect.

Then she said:

“I love God with all my heart and all my mind, and all my soul. And I would like to say, the greatest point in my life, the most important event in my life, is when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, when I became saved.”

* * *

As I listened to their voices, I found a comforting sense of familiarity in the way that the lives of the Pamlico County elders were entwined so tightly and so seamlessly with their faith and their churches.

I grew up just across the river from Pamlico County, and I found that their voices reminded me again and again of home and the lives of my family and the people around whom I was raised.

* * *

There was a kind of cadence to the stories of their lives, like a gentle heartbeat, held steady by their knowledge of themselves as spiritual beings and kept in time by daily prayer, Bible study, worship services, Sunday school, church suppers, choir practices, baptism, weddings and funerals.

So many little things in these interviews caught my attention, and they did so in a way that, even all these years later, they remained fixed in my memory.

Listening to the interview with Annie Squires, the 99-year-old woman I mentioned earlier, I could feel how her heart filled with joy when she played the piano at her church in Maribel.

She told the young woman who interviewed her that she had been the church’s pianist for more than half a century.

Likewise, in my mind’s eye, I could see Roosevelt Stokes Jr., another of the interviewees, as he made his weekly rounds among the frail and sick in Grantsboro’s nursing home.

He had never been a pastor or a missionary at a church, but he had his own ministry visiting those people who lived in the nursing home.

On the days of his nursing home visits, Mr. Stokes would stop and read the Bible to any of the patients who desired him to do so.

He would hold their hand, and often they would pray together. Sometimes one of the nurses would join them.

His words brought back memories for me, and maybe helped me appreciate what it was like for Mr. Stokes to read the Bible by those bedsides, and how much it might have meant to those who lay there. Because, now and then, I have been called on to read the Bible at a bedside, too.

* * *

I know these are just little moments, but even some of the passing comments in the interviews made a deep impression on me.

For instance, another of the interviewees, Emma Bell, recalled how, when she was a small child, her mother began every day by giving a Bible verse to her and to each of her brothers and sisters.

They would read the Bible passage at breakfast.

I could see them: a mother and her children, early in the mornings of what I am sure were busy days, taking a few minutes to recite Bible verses before going out into this stormy world of ours.

I also loved a little something that one of the other interviewees, Sabia Ruth Gibbs, said.

Ms. Gibbs grew up in Maribel. Way up in her 90s, she was one of the oldest people who shared her life story with the project’s volunteers.

All the same, when she was asked to pause for a moment and think about the long span of her life, one of the first things she did was reach far back in time, as if to another world, and describe the joy of singing in the choir at St. Galilee Missionary Baptist Church when she was a girl.

She remembered it like it was yesterday.

It was a memory, in her telling of it, that seemed to be made of pure light.

* * *

I doubt that I am much different from anyone else. When I am driving through the countryside, as I did last night, on my way to my family’s homeplace on state Highway 101, I go by all the homes and see the lights on and I wonder how the people that live there are doing, and do they feel loved, and, if they pray, what they pray for at night before they fall asleep.

I wonder about their prayers, and all that goes unsaid in life, and the whispered words we have between us and our maker.

At those times, I think about the quiet joys for which we show gratitude at that late night hour. I think too of the fears that go unsaid everywhere else, the dreams that we keep to ourselves, the hungers that can’t be put into words.

The interviews in “Preserving the African American Experience in Pamlico County, North Carolina” are an invaluable historical record of life on the North Carolina coast throughout the 20th century.

The more times that passes, the more special they will seem, the more important they will be.

I cherish them for that reason but also because they help me to remember that our path through life, our history, is partly what can be seen and heard and touched, and partly what cannot.

Part of an ongoing series on coastal North Carolina’s observance of America’s 250th.

Tensions began to brew between the colonists and Britain in the early 1760s after the Seven Years War, also called the French and Indian War, in North America. The British decided to impose new taxes on the colonies to recoup the funds that went to the war, but instead incited widespread protest.

Britain passed the Stamp Act March 22, 1765, and then in June 1767, the Townshend Act imposed duties on paint, paper, tea and other commodities. British troops attempted to enforce the Townshend duties in Boston October 1768, ultimately leading in March 1770 to the Boston Massacre that left five dead.

The British, to help the struggling United East India Co., passed the Tea Act in May 1773, allowing the company to import and sell tea to the colonies duty-free, undercutting the Dutch who had been smuggling tea in, and creating a monopoly.

Then, on Nov. 28, 1773, the Dartmouth sails into Boston Harbor, and three more ships were expected to arrive, all carrying chests of tea.

Over the next few weeks, colonists met to figure out a way to fight back. On the night of Dec. 16, 1773, around four dozen men impersonating Native Americans boarded the ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

Almost a year later, 51 women in Edenton took a more peaceful approach to protesting the tea tax by drafting a document explaining their boycott. The women committed to no longer drinking tea or wearing British cloth because of taxation without representation and sent the final copy to England.

“This action forms one of the earliest-known political actions written and organized by women in the American colonies,”  the Edenton Historical Commission explains. “The events of the ‘Edenton Tea Party’ today form an iconic moment in our nation’s history, when a community of women used their own voices to stand by their loved ones and risk the wrath of the Crown by protesting injustice.”

The women of Wilmington responded to British taxation with a similar protest in the spring of 1775, though little is known about the gathering to publicly burn tea.

Burgwin-Wright House and Gardens Assistant Museum Director Hunter Ingram told Coastal Review that the Wilmington Tea Party is an oft-overlooked event in the final days before the start of the American Revolution.

In the port city of Wilmington, the import of tea had ground to a halt by the spring of 1775.

The Continental Congress had forbidden tea from coming through the colonies’ ports, so it had become a scarce commodity, he said. That is why events like the Boston Tea Party and the Edenton Tea Party were so crucial to the cause of resistance.

“Tea was hard to come by and sacrificing it sent a message to those who were already hurting from the disruption of its trade,” Ingram continued.

The Wilmington Tea Party happened in the spring of 1775 and is only documented in one place: the writings of Janet Schaw, a Scottish woman who was traveling through Wilmington to visit her brother.

“She wrote a single line about her observations of the tea resistance in Wilmington, which she did not support. ‘The Ladies have burnt their tea in a solemn procession, but they had delayed however ’til the sacrifice was not very considerable, as I do not think anyone offered above a quarter of a pound,’” Ingram said. 

While the simple description doesn’t give many specifics, Schaw was clear in what the protestors did, Ingram said. “Burning the tea was unique, and it meant the women of Wilmington, even in the eleventh hour before the outbreak of war, were willing to set a precious privilege blaze in the name of revolution.”

The Burgwin-Wright House is the oldest and largest historic site in Wilmington, comprised of four of the eight remaining colonial structures in town, Ingram said of the house’s importance during the Revolution.

“We have three buildings from the city’s first jail, circa 1744, and the mansion home built in 1770 on top of the main jail building after the prisoners were relocated. It has sat at the corner of Third and Market streets for 256 years, and it has watched Wilmington grow from small-but-mighty port city into a thriving town that was, for a time, the most populous area in the state,” Ingram explained.

“The colonial era in Wilmington doesn’t always get its due, but the surviving home built for merchant and politician John Burgwin can tell that story –– and has been for generations,” said Ingram.

Ingram explained that that the Burgwin-Wright House had partnered with the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Wilmington Ladies Tea Walk Chapter to commemorate the 251st anniversary of the protest with the “Wilmington Ladies Tea Walk.”

The Wilmington Ladies Tea Walk event begins at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 26, at 224 Market St. the program will include remarks from a few historic organizations and officials and samples of a brand-new tea blend by Cape Fear Spice Merchants.

“Guests can walk through the gardens, enjoy a presentation about Janet Schaw and then join members of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Sons of the American Revolution as they walk, in a solemn procession, to river to burn tea in commemoration of this act of resistance on the eve of revolution,” he said.

The historic home is a good fit for the Wilmington Ladies Tea Walk because the site likely would have been “witness to that solemn procession into history, and the act of resistance that helped give Wilmington a reputation for rebellion even before the war.”

Schaw was also a Loyalist, as was Burgwin, and it’s “likely she would have visited the house during her time in Wilmington. This was a home built for a wealthy guest list, and Janet would have qualified,” he said.

Though the program is offered at no charge, registration is required. Call 910-762-0570 to register.

“If you can’t get in this year, we hope to make it a recurring event through multiyear A250 celebration,” Ingram said, referring to the state’s official celebration of 250 years of independence, America 250 NC, a program under the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Community health educator, community activist and environmental advocate Dr. Donald E. Ensley of Greenville died Friday, March 28, 2025.

Born and reared in rural Belhaven, Ensley was one of East Carolina University’s first African American faculty in the health sciences, and the first president of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, founded in 1982 by Todd Miller.

In a commentary honoring Ensley published earlier this month in Coastal Review, Miller wrote that Ensley was in hospice care, “preparing to leave behind a legacy that will forever shape the places and people he touched.”

Ensley earned his bachelor’s in geography and health education from North Carolina Central University, a master’s and doctorate from Michigan State University, and a master of public health from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Ensley joined ECU’s faculty in 1977 as an associate professor in the School of Allied Health and Social Professions’ Department of Community Health, eventually becoming chair of the department.

During his time at ECU, Ensley acted as assistant vice chancellor for community engagement, and director of the department’s graduate studies program in the School of Allied Health Sciences, according to the university. He retired in 2011.

In addition to the Coastal Federation, Ensley held leadership roles on the North Carolina Humanities Council, North Carolina Heart Disease and Stroke Task Force, and North Carolina Heart Association.

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

There’s a historic marker by the road as U.S. Highway 64 turns toward Manteo when approaching from the Outer Banks.

“ANDREW CARTWRIGHT Agent of the American Colonization Society in Liberia, founded the A.M.E. Zion churches in Albemarle area. His first church, 1865, near here. NC 345 at US 64/264 southeast of Manteo,” the sign reads.

The sign, though, only hints at the full story, saying very little about Cartwright the man, his efforts to bring the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion Church to Africa, the American Colonization Society or the times in which he lived.

The consensus is Cartwright was born enslaved in Elizabeth City, probably in 1834, and at some point before the Civil War he escaped and fled north.

“By the beginning of the Civil War, Cartwright and his wife Anna, were living in New England and Andrew had become a minister in the African Methodist Episcopalian Zion Church,” according to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources account of Cartwright’s life included on the highway marker description website.

Cartwright followed Union forces to North Carolina, and his presence on Roanoke Island is confirmed in an autobiography, “A brief history of the slave life of Rev. L.R. Ferebee.” Ferebee describes coming in contact with Cartwright at the Roanoke Island Freedman’s Colony, writing, “Some time in May, the same year (1864), Rev. Andrew Cartwright lectured the Sabbath School on the subject of Repentance.”

The Roanoke Island church was the first of the AME Zion houses of worship Cartwright founded in northeastern North Carolina. He would go on to organize and build 12 churches in 10 years throughout the region.

He was, however, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the relationship between races.

“By the end of Reconstruction Cartwright had become disillusioned about his future in America. He served as an agent for the American Colonization Society, and in 1876 accepted their aid to emigrate,” Walter Williams wrote in “Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa.”

In March 1871, Cartwright was named president of the Freedmen’s Emigrant Society. Later that year, the organization’s constitution and its preamble were published in the May edition of the African Repository, the publication of the American Colonization Society.

“Whereas, We, persons of African descent, see no prospect of our race ever enjoying the right that naturally indue to freemen—while we remain in this country,” the preamble begins.

The bylaws lay out the purpose of the organization in stark language, stating, “The design of the members of this Society being to aid each other to obtain a home in Liberia, where, by the help of God, we shall be able to enjoy peace and happiness and all our social rights and privileges, which we despair of ever doing in this country.”

That Cartwright was working with the African Colonization Society was significant. Formed in 1816, the mission of the society was initially to return free people of color to what is now Liberia.

When created, its membership included some of the most prominent white men of the nation. Sens. Henry Clay of Kentucky and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to the “Star-Spangled Banner,” were among its founding members.

The society enjoyed widespread support initially. Presidents Monroe and Madison supported colonization, although they were not members.

In the South, slaveholders saw the organization as a way to rid themselves of free people of color who were an ever-present reminder to their enslaved people that freedom was possible. In the north, abolitionists saw the African colony as a viable way to give free people of color a new start in life and avoid the issue of equality between the races.

Although initially popular and well-funded, the society did not have the resources to support a colonization effort in Africa. Nor were the American immigrants welcomed in Liberia. Compounding the problems, by the 1840s the coalition of abolitionists and slaveholders was falling apart. Abolitionists increasingly saw the society as a way for slaveholders to retain their property and slaveholders were unwilling to free enslaved people and return them to Africa.

Nonetheless, the society remained a viable organization into the 20th century and didn’t dissolve until 1964.

If white America saw the society as a practical solution to racial tensions, most Americans of African descent had no desire to go to a continent they’d never seen. In 1849, Frederick Douglass, writing in the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator observed, “I have as much right in this country as any other man…Our connection with this country is contemporaneous with your own. From the beginning of the existence of this people, as a people, the colored man has had a place upon the American soil.”

Yet there was an undercurrent of support among some African Americans as reconstruction ended and Jim Crow laws began to take effect.

“Despite financial and ideological limitations, sentiment favoring the evangelization of Africa did begin to grow among the black denominations after the late 1870s,” Williams wrote in “The Evangelization of Africa.”

The emigration movement was, Williams noted, “a nonreligious movement that pulled the church leadership into involvement.”

The call to return to Africa for Cartwright was, evidently twofold. He had become convinced that equality between the races was not possible in the United States, and a belief that he would bring the AME Zion church to Africa.

The 1877 annual society report wrote that “twenty-one promising emigrants embarked at New York on the barque ‘Liberia,’ and that … Rev. Andrew Cartwright … expect(s) to join the Liberia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.”

Initially Cartwright’s missionary work was not done under the authority or supervision of the AME Zion church, nor did the church provide funding for his work.

“Even though he had no financial support or authority from denominational leaders, he organized A.M.E.Z. congregations among the Americo-Liberians,” Williams wrote.

Cartwright was a master at presenting the best picture of his work possible.

“I find the young people take great delight in a church ruled and governed by colored leaders or black bishops,” he told readers of The Star of Zion, the publication of the AME Zion church.

“Rev. Cartwright sent such positive reports back to the denomination moved the 1880 Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion to take permanent action for the support of African missions,” Leroy Fitz wrote in “A history of the African American Church.”

That support was short-lived.

“The intensity of interest among A.M.E.Z. leaders in Africa did not last long, and within a few years Cartwright’s salary was reduced by half, to only four hundred dollars annually…The church’s lack of response toward missions was partly due to Cartwright’s lack of progress in Liberia. He was a poor administrator, and had not expanded the mission,” Williams wrote.

Cartwright’s relationship with the American church leaders was frayed. In 1896 the AME Zion church appointed John Bryan Small Bishop for Africa. His visit to Liberia did not go well.

“Small was not impressed with Andrew Cartwright, and he found the A.M.E.Z. Liberian mission in ‘poor condition,’” Williams wrote.

Reacting to the lack of support and what was apparently a damning report from his superior, Cartwright lashed out in the Nov. 12, 1896, edition of The Star of Zion, a publication of the AME Zion church.

“What has A. Cartwright done to be treated like this, after working so long in America; walking and wading, Winter and Summer, and building so many churches—twelve in ten years—then went to Africa, crossing the ocean eleven times in the interest of Zion. I know better than anyone what I went for,” he wrote.

Cartwright remained in Liberia until his death in 1903.

“Elder Andrew Cartwright fell quietly into the arms of death between twelve and one o’clock p.m., Wednesday January 14, 1903 at his residence in Africa. He was born on March 15, 1834 in Elizabeth City, N.C. and was raised in the same State. He was not an educated man, but had a little learning,” according to his obituary.

Capt. John Mallette grew up fishing, but didn’t come from a fishing family.

Born and reared around Sneads Ferry and the Topsail area, he said his mother worked in real estate in Wilmington and his father was one of Ocean City’s original developers and bought a home there in 1950.

Ocean City was established on Topsail Island in 1949 and was “the first place where Black people could have oceanfront property” in the state, Mallette recently told Coastal Review.

The motel had a pier, and “I pretty much lived on the pier fishing as a little kid,” he continued.

“There was a lady who had One Stop Bait & Tackle in Surf City — Betty Warren, she’s long passed away now — but she would babysit me, basically, and I would sit there and help sell seafood and head shrimp and filet flounder. And then her husband, Preston, would take me out shrimping in the waterway with him, and that’s how I got started commercial fishing and just never stopped. I just grew into it, and started running boats.”

From there, he became a captain and spent several years piloting various commercial, private and charter vessels in Central and South America, Australia and Hawaii. While a fishing guide on a private island near Turks and Caicos, he learned his mother was ill and returned to the U.S. in 2008 to take care of her.

These days he co-owns Southern Breeze Seafood Co. on U.S. Highway 258 between Richlands and Jacksonville. He delivers fresh seafood all over the state, including to a handful of universities such as Elon and North Carolina Central.

“Wednesday, Thursday, Friday I’m on the road for the most part,” he said.

Stories like his are the backbone of an ongoing NC Catch Initiative to highlight African American contributions to the North Carolina Seafood Industry. Established in 2011, NC Catch is a nonprofit organization that aims to educate consumers about the state’s seafood industry.

Mallette and NC Catch President Barbara Garrity-Blake, a cultural anthropologist who teaches fisheries policy at the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, are heading up the project, “Recognizing African American Participation in the North Carolina Seafood Industry.”

The project is the center of a new traveling exhibit, “African Americans in North Carolina Seafood,” that will debut March 9 at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

Garrity-Blake told Coastal Review that NC Catch wanted to highlight the diversity of people and roles within the seafood supply chain.

“The seafood industry is made up of men and women of various races and ethnicities who harvest, process, transport, buy, sell, and cook North Carolina seafood. We are focusing on Black contributions because African Americans have a history and legacy in North Carolina fisheries since Colonial days, from herring to menhaden, blue crab, mullet, shrimp — all of it,” she said.

For the project, people from the Black seafood business community and researchers worked together to compile narratives, video and oral histories of Black fishers, wholesalers, chefs and others working in seafood to increase recognition of African American participation in the state’s seafood industry. These currently are being housed on the NC Catch website.

Garrity-Blake said that Mallette is a “perfect co-principal investigator because he delivers seafood all over North Carolina and knows so many people in the industry. Right away he had a list of Black practitioners for us to interview,” and the “stories we are documenting are so compelling.”

Among those who shared their story for the project is Tyrone Hightower of Apex Seafood. Also on the NC Catch board, he quit a career in veterinary science to sell seafood at triangle-area farmers markets because he loves interacting with people, Garrity-Blake explained.

“He had a tough time breaking in at first, but Brett Blackburn, a major seafood distributor out of Carolina Beach, helped him out and taught him ‘fishermen’s language,’ like what shrimp counts mean,” she said.

Another is a young shrimper named Nate Ellison, who lives in the unincorporated Carteret County community of Merrimon. He “talked about his determination to maintain working waterfront access at the end of Silver Dollar Road, which was infamously sold out from under his family,” Garrity-Blake continued.

A husband-and-wife team who fish out of Hertford, Herman and Quinetta “Mermaid Q” Manley of Crackn Crab Seafood are featured as well. They “had their crab pots cut, their boat sunk, and their business shunned. But they stuck to their guns and eventually earned the respect of the community. Today they crab, fish, and sell seafood in low-income neighborhoods to help combat food insecurity,” she said.

Project’s early days

Garrity-Blake and Mallette connected during the 2021 North Carolina Seafood Festival, held annually the first weekend of October in downtown Morehead City.

Mallette said he was there to give a cooking demonstration for Got to Be NC, a marketing campaign for North Carolina products under the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and they “just started a conversation.”

Garrity-Blake told Coastal Review that during this conversation, Mallette shared his experiences as a commercial fisherman out of Sneads Ferry, which she said she found interesting.

“Since the last menhaden fish factory in North Carolina closed in 2005, you don’t meet a lot of African American fishermen. Long story short, Capt. John joined the NC Catch board, and we applied for a NC Sea Grant’s Community Collaborative Research Grant — pairing researchers and practitioners — to do this project,” she said.

Mallette also recognized that “African American commercial fishermen are few and far between. And it’s always been that way. The question is, why?”

When he was the captain of larger vessels while traveling around the globe, he said only a few of the American captains were Black. “It was me and maybe two other guys. Literally the only ones.”

So, they started exploring and researching, looking into stereotypes like “Black people can’t swim” and “little things that people would actually take to heart, “Mallette said.

While talking with the old fishermen and fish house owners he grew up around, “It was never, ‘we didn’t have Black shrimp boat captains or Black guys running the boats, because they were Black.’ They tried to give them the jobs, but they wouldn’t do it because a lot of their grandmothers and moms would be like, ‘That water ain’t for us. You stay on the dock,’” Mallette recounted.

They’d pack fish or head shrimp but wouldn’t actually go out on the boats, “and it wasn’t that they didn’t have the opportunities given to them, a lot of it was they were just always told that that wasn’t for them.”

Mallette said he never understood that either, especially once he began traveling.

The best fishermen were Black when he was in Central and South America, the Caribbean, and West Africa. “All through the Caribbean, your commercial fishermen are Black,” he said, but not in the United States. “It’s the one place you just don’t see it.”

About the exhibit

During the exhibit opening that begins at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 9, visitors will have an opportunity to listen to a panel discussion, and a cooking demonstration with Chef Ricky Moore of Saltbox Seafood Joint in Durham, Chef Jamie Davis of The Hackney in Washington, and Chef Keith Rhodes of Catch in Wilmington.

The public is welcome at no charge and are asked to register online ahead of the event.

“NC Catch’s mission is to raise awareness about the superior quality of North Carolina seafood and the importance of supporting the people, families, and communities who provide consumer access to it,” Garrity-Blake said. “Through the lens of North Carolina’s African American seafood legacy, we are ‘taking it to the people’ so they can enjoy the exhibit, hear firsthand stories about Black experiences in seafood, and taste what it’s all about.”

Core Sound’s Exhibit Curator Pam Davis Morris told Coastal Review that the museum is proud to host the opening exhibition and is glad to have provided a supporting role in its development.

“This exhibition dovetails in well with and builds upon previous work produced by the Core Sound Museum such as the popular Menhaden Fishery exhibition, The Local Fisheries Knowledge Project, Community Exhibit displays and many other oral history and artifact-driven projects,” Morris said. “Built as a traveling exhibition, this display will not only be shown at the Core Sound Museum but will travel to other sites as well.”

The exhibit is a kick-off for the NC Catch Summit taking place March 10 at Carteret Community College in Morehead City. Also a no-charge event, the daylong program will look at the state’s fisheries and seafood industry. Register online to attend.

NC Catch held a preview of the exhibit at the University of North Carolina Wilmington Tuesday, followed by a “Chef’s Takeover” cooking demonstration with Davis, Rhodes, and Mallette. 

Garrity-Blake said Wednesday after the event that it “went great.” The program was well attended, there was good discussion and the “food was fantastic.” Mallette prepared shrimp and crabmeat etouffee, Rhodes made a “Soul Bowl” with salmon, black-eyed peas and plantains, and Davis prepared fried catfish with ham hock gravy.

Eight distinguished North Carolinians have been chosen to receive the state’s highest civilian honor, the North Carolina Award, two of which have strong ties to the coast.

The North Carolina General Assembly established the award in 1961 to recognize significant contributions to the state and nation in the fields of fine arts, literature, public service and science. The awards have been presented annually since 1964.

For their contributions to science are environmental attorney, photographer and advocate Tom Earnhardt and astronaut Christina Koch, who grew up in Onslow County.

“Over the past six decades, the North Carolina Award has been given to many remarkable North Carolinians,” said Reid Wilson, secretary of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. “This year’s awardees join an illustrious list of people who have benefitted North Carolina through their impressive accomplishments in public service, literature, science, and the arts. This year’s event will benefit our neighbors in Western North Carolina who were harmed by the devastating storm.”

Gov. Roy Cooper is to present the awards at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14, in the Raleigh Marriott City Center. All proceeds from ticket sales for the awards ceremony will go to the North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund for Hurricane Helene recovery. Event tickets are by invitation only.

The information below from North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources has been edited.

Science: Tom Earnhardt

Earnhardt’s career includes time as an assistant attorney general at the N.C. Department of Justice, assistant secretary of the N.C. Department of Administration, and as a professor at North Carolina Central University School of Law.

In 1971, Earnhardt was one of the first attorneys hired at the N.C. Department of Justice in the “new arena” of environmental law. While working with the late Jim Holshouser, who served as governor from 1973 to 1977, he played a key role in helping to preserve critical natural areas, including the New River in northwestern North Carolina and the southernmost Outer Banks, today’s Cape Lookout National Seashore.

He is a board member of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review and Earnhardt has also served on the boards of numerous natural resource organizations, including The Nature Conservancy, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and the North Carolina Botanical Garden.

He is the writer, host and coproducer of the long-running PBS series “Exploring North Carolina,” which highlights the importance of our natural heritage in the life of every North Carolinian.

Science: Christina Koch

Christina Koch, who grew up in Jacksonville, was selected to be a NASA astronaut in 2013. She set the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman with 328 days in space, participated in the first all-female spacewalk, and was a flight engineer on the International Space Station for Expeditions 59 through 61.

Koch is a graduate of the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics and North Carolina State University. Before becoming an astronaut, she worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland as an electrical engineer, contributing to instruments for various NASA space science missions.

Throughout her career, Koch has engaged in educational outreach, technical instruction, and volunteer tutoring, demonstrating her dedication to inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers. As part of the Artemis II mission scheduled for 2025, Koch will become the first woman to participate in a lunar mission.

Fine Arts: The Avett Brothers

Brothers Scott and Seth Avett and their longtime friend Bob Crawford lead the folk rock band The Avett Brothers. From Concord, their partnership began when the two brothers merged Seth Avett’s high school band, Margo, and Scott Avett’s college band, Nemo, and released three albums as Nemo. After the group disbanded, Scott and Seth continued to write acoustic music together.

In 2001 stand-up bassist Bob Crawford joined the Avetts, and the band released its first full-length album, “Country Was” in 2002. The band has been nominated for three Grammy awards and been nominated for and won several awards from the Americana Music Association, including Duo/Group of the Year and New/Emerging Artist of the Year awards in 2007.

Literature: Frank A. Bruni Jr.

Bruni has been a prominent journalist for more than three decades, principally at The New York Times, where his various roles have included op-ed columnist, White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief and chief restaurant critic.

He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar and wrote for the student paper, the Daily Tar Heel.

As the Times’s first openly gay op-ed columnist, in 2016 Bruni was honored by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association with the Randy Shilts Award for his lifetime contribution to LGBTQ equality. Bruni is the author of five bestselling books including the most recent, “The Age of Grievance,” an examination of America’s political dysfunction and culture wars.

He became a full professor at Duke University in 2021, teaching media-oriented classes in the Sanford School of Public Policy. Now living in North Carolina, he continues to write his popular weekly newsletter for the New York Times and to produce occasional essays as a contributing opinion writer for the newspaper.

Fine Arts: William Henry Curry

Curry has had a “trailblazing role” as an African American in classical music, and is currently the music director and conductor of the Durham Symphony Orchestra.

From 1998 to 2016, he was the resident conductor and Summerfest artistic director of the North Carolina Symphony. During his career, he has conducted some of the world’s greatest orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the major opera companies of New York, Chicago and Houston.

Curry is also a composer, and his works have been played by many of America’s finest orchestras. He has been a mentor for young musicians at the Peabody Conservatory, the Baltimore School of Arts, and many music schools in North Carolina.

Public Service: Dr. Harold L. Martin

Martin served as the 12th chancellor of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University from 2009-2024. He is the first alumnus to lead the institution.

His more than 40 years experience in education made him a key figure in N.C. A&T’s growth to become the largest of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, and one of the country’s top public research institutions.

His prior roles include senior vice president for Academic Affairs for the University of North Carolina System, and held leadership roles at Winston-Salem State University, where he served as the 11th chief administrator and seventh chancellor.

Since the award’s inception, more than 300 notable men and women have been honored by the state of North Carolina. Past recipients include William Friday, James Taylor, Etta Baker, Charles Kuralt, Maya Angelou, Lee Smith, Eric Church, Selma Burke, and Branford Marsalis.

As a young adult right out of high school, I had just finished what I hoped would be my last summer suffering in the hot farm fields harvesting tobacco.

It was late August and I headed to Hammocks Beach State Park near Swansboro to cool off in the waters off of Bear Island. A secret spot, available only by boat, that I had heard about, but never been to. Arriving late in the day, the ranger that was piloting the passenger ferry told me it was the last run of the day. Instead of sending me on my way, he invited me ride to the island with him.

Docking on the sound side of the island, he gave me 20 minutes, just enough time to run the trail to the ocean. I bodysurfed a couple of waves, admired the magnificent beach and sand dunes, then raced back to the dock. The ferry returned to the mainland with a load of sunburnt, sand-crusted beachgoers and I headed off to college. Little did I know at the time, that this ranger would become someone that I admire, respect and have been fortunate to call a friend.

Four years later, in the fall of 1980, I am a newly hired ranger at Fort Macon State Park. I hadn’t forgotten the kindness of this ranger and now, as a ranger myself, I was eager to repay the debt. During my first few months at Fort Macon, I heard a number of stories about the superintendent at Hammocks Beach, Claude Crews, and his stature only grew.

The following summer, I was assigned to help out at Hammocks Beach for a few days due to staffing issues. I jumped at the chance to meet Superintendent Crews, commuting the 35 miles from Fort Macon to Swansboro. To get me familiarized with Bear Island and its park operations, Crews took me on a thrilling boat tour of the soundside backwaters along with a four-wheel-drive excursion on the island.

This was a man in his element. His knowledge and passion left a lasting impression on me, along with a hidden desire to one day follow in his footsteps.

Superintendent Crews had been the guardian of Bear Island long before I formally met him as a fellow ranger. Off the beaten path and accessible only by boat, Bear Island was, and still is, one of the crown jewels of the North Carolina State Parks system. A pristine barrier island of natural and cultural significance, how the island became a state park, is in itself, an amazing story of a colorblind friendship and generosity.

In 1914, the renowned, pioneering neurosurgeon William J.C. Sharpe went on a duck hunting retreat with the Onslow Rod and Gun Club in the marsh waters of coastal North Carolina.

He stepped onto a boat piloted by his guide, John Hurst. Cultures collided as Hurst, an African American and the son of an enslaved man, met the Harvard-educated, internationally distinguished medical doctor. This “chance encounter,” as Dr. Sharpe described it, ignited a close friendship that lasted for decades and created an enduring legacy.

In the brain surgeon’s autobiography, Sharpe described Bear Island as such, “… a four-mile stretch of Atlantic beach, wide, level, and firm enough to permit the landing of airplanes — another Daytona.”

Dr. Sharpe also owned many acres on the mainland, a “peninsular wonderland” known as “The Hammocks.” He purchased the properties as his personal retreat sometime around 1920 and recruited John Hurst and his wife Gertrude as caretakers of the land. This was a bold decision in the heavily segregated South near a town that had a reputation as a “sundown town,” meaning Black people were not allowed after dark. Pressured to remove Hurst as the property manager, Sharpe notes in his book, “I refused to make the change.”

An advocate of civil rights, Sharpe was deeply disturbed by the injustices of segregation that deprived African Americans of basic rights. Later in life, he wanted to gift “The Hammocks” properties to the Hursts for their years of loyal service and friendship. In discussions with Gertrude Hurst, a retired school teacher, a plan was hatched to gift the property to the North Carolina Teachers Association in 1950.

Recognizing the need for recreational and educational opportunities for African Americans along the coast, the teachers association formed the Hammocks Beach Corp. The corporation managed the property providing a “resort” where African Americans could freely enjoy going to the beach, swimming, fishing and camping. It essentially served as its own segregated private park.

Looking for long-term management and protection of Bear Island, the Hammocks Beach Corp. negotiated with the state for the island to be included in the state park system. In 1961, Hammocks Beach State Park became one of only three state parks in North Carolina exclusively for Black people. The other two being the Reedy Creek section of the William B. Umstead State Park and the Jones Lake State Park.

Accustomed to hard work

Born in 1941 in Wake County, Claude E. Crews grew up accustomed to the hard work associated with running the family farm. After high school he attended Shaw University with an interest in elementary education. However, he had a chance encounter that changed his course.

One day while at his grandfather’s farm, a state engineer showed up to do some work for his grandfather. The two started talking and the engineer suggested that Claude apply for a job with the Division of State Parks, and the rest, as they say, “is history.”

Crews first donned the proud colors of the gray and green ranger uniform in 1963 with an appointment at the then-recently christened Hammocks Beach State Park. It was now on his shoulders to carry on the legacy of Dr. Sharpe and John and Gertrude Hurst.

Nine years had passed since deadly Hurricane Hazel swept over Bear Island in 1954, and its devastation was still visible when Ranger Crews stepped onto the island for the first time in his official capacity. The overwash and salt spray from this Category 4 hurricane scorched the island as if by wildfire. The island was barren with dead trees and grasses and new vegetation was struggling to take hold.

Ranger Crews put his farming expertise to good use, planting thousands of native trees and shrubs. Many of the live oak trees you see on the island today were carefully nurtured by Crews, planted from tiny acorns.

Prior to the availability of commercially manufactured sand fencing, ranger Crews collected boatloads of wax myrtle branches from the mainland and brought them to the island. Here, he fashioned his own version of sand fence to tame the blowing sand. This ingenious fencing slowed down the sand, piling it up, creating dunes that rebuilt the primary dune line.

Ranger Crews then teamed up with Karl Graetz of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service to plant hundreds of thousands of individual sprigs of sea oats and beach grass to stabilize these growing sand dunes.

Bear Island was alive and green again.

Face of the park

As a young man with a new job, Crews went about his work managing the seasonal park operations, which included operating a passenger ferry service, bathhouse, concession stand and swimming area. He was the personnel and financial officer, maintenance man, mechanic and custodian.

As he began his park career, the dark cloud of segregation was still overhead and a Black man was still in charge of “The Hammocks.” Crews was not a local, yet, but he was now the face of the park. How would he be received by the community?

When Crews started at the park, Gertrude Hurst was still alive and living on
The Hammocks. He was a regular at the Hursts’ dinner table, enjoying her cooking. She attributed her longevity to eating fish every day, and Crews, who was not a fish eater, soon learned to love fish.

The welcoming friendship he received from her went a long way toward his broader acceptance by the locals, regardless of their race. But there was more: Crews’ character and calm demeanor were also key. He went about managing the park without any serious racial issues. Crews stated to me, “racial issues were not really an issue when I arrived at The Hammocks, any issues in the past had already been addressed by Mr. Sharpe.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1963.

In July 1964, with the passage of the monumental Civil Rights Act, the formerly segregated Hammocks Beach State Park was now open to all visitors regardless of skin color. In the first few years after the act, park visitors continued to be mainly African American.

Park Service administrators were a tad nervous when Ranger Crews hired white lifeguards to protect the ocean swimming area. Fearing racial conflicts, trips were made to Swansboro to inspect park operations. It was clear that Crews’ leadership and calm reassurance were respected and any worry of problems was unwarranted.

After a few years at the coast, Crews was briefly stationed at Jones Lake State Park in Bladen County before returning to Hammocks Beach. In 1966, Uncle Sam called his number and he was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He pulled his two-year hitch and his job at Hammocks Beach was still waiting for him, but now, officially as the park superintendent.

After integration of Hammocks Beach, the beauty of the park was now a lure to all. This hidden jewel was beginning to be found. Crews guided the park for the next 13 years.

Understaffed and underfunded, Crews and Ranger Jesse Hines, along with some seasonal help, somehow managed to always get the work done. If an engine on the ferry broke down, they had to fix it. They prided themselves in switching out motors in under an hour, keeping the ferries on time. As a captain licensed by the U.S. Coast Guard, Crews piloted the ferries when seasonal captains were unavailable – an issue attributed to the low pay.

With files and a clipboard in hand, Crews also took on the administrative work while on the boat during the 10 minutes of down time between trips while at the dock.

For decades, the North Carolina State Park system struggled with woefully inadequate budget appropriations. Specialty positions such as resource management and educational interpretation were pie-in-the-sky aspirations. A ranger had to have the interest and desire to initiate these duties on their own.

One summer morning Superintendent Crews got word that a nesting loggerhead sea turtle was flipped over on its back and unable to return to the ocean. The turtle was rescued and this awareness led to one of the longest research programs documenting sea turtle nesting in the state.

In 1981, Crews was promoted to a senior level superintendent position at Cliffs of the Neuse State Park near Goldsboro. Leaving Hammocks Beach, he took the same leadership skills to “The Cliffs,” managing it for 16 years before retiring in 1997.

In retirement, Crews didn’t just kick up his heels and sit around drinking iced tea on the porch. He continued serving his community as he had been doing for decades while working at Hammocks Beach and Cliffs of the Neuse.

More than 40 years ago, Crews, who has a deep interest in youth sports, became a charter member of the Swansboro Century Club, which supports school athletics. He was a fixture at hundreds of high school and middle school football and basketball games, keeping a steady hand on the clock as the timekeeper and official scorekeeper.

For close to 20 years, he worked as a district coordinator with Onslow County Parks and Recreation, organizing and managing youth basketball programs. In 2021, the school system honored Crews for his contributions to the community by naming Swansboro’s middle school gymnasium the “Claude E. Crews Annex Gymnasium.” In a newspaper article recounting the event, words like “role model, dependable, selfless, dedicated, respected and friend” were used to describe his commitment to public service.

Crews continues to support the park where he started his career, serving as treasurer, board member and member of the park support group, the Friends of the Hammocks and Bear Island.

I, too, eventually became the superintendent at Hammocks Beach State Park, my dream job. During my years at the park, I was frequently asked about Crews by park visitors who remembered him from his time at the park.

“Where is Superintendent Crews?” they would ask with a smile on their faces.

These included his old friends wanting to catch up and say hello and some people just wanting to tell me a story about his kindness. Parents showed up with their children, hoping to introducing them to Superintendent Crews. A true ambassador of North Carolina State Parks, people still ask about Crews today.

Recently, Crews was honored by the North Carolina Coastal Federation with a Pelican Award for “Leadership and Dedication to Coastal Protection, Recreation, and Cultural Resources,” a well-deserved honor to recognize his contributions to our coastal heritage.

There is a Bob Dylan song where he sings in search of dignity. “Searching high, searching low, Searching everywhere I know.” Finally, he sings, “Have you seen Dignity?”

Dylan may not have found dignity, but I can point him in the right direction. Claude Crews, a man of character, dignity and grace, a person whom we would all do well to emulate.

Editor’s Note: After Sam Bland retired from his position as superintendent at Hammocks Beach State Park, he joined the staff of the North Carolina Coastal Federation. During his time as a coastal specialist in the 2010s, he would periodically write about his time in the field for Coastal Review. Now traveling the country, Bland drops a line every once in a while to share a new adventure with his readers, such as the following:

In northwestern Wyoming, just south of the town of Jackson, a 20-mile stretch of road makes its way through the mountains down to the town of Alpine.

It’s a gorgeous drive any time of year with towering mountain hills covered in pine, fir, cottonwood and aspen trees. Identified as the Snake River Canyon, Grand Canyon of the Snake or Alpine Canyon, the river slithers right beside the road.

The upper part of the river runs slow enough in the canyon that beavers dam off braids of the river, forming placid ponds and wetlands beneficial to all wildlife. Gradually, the grade of the river begins to drop and the velocity of the water picks up the pace.

During our travels out west into Wyoming, Idaho and Utah, my wife, Bright, and I have driven this road many times.

We look for the beavers and otters swimming in the ponds, the moose in the willows, elk in the meadows and mountain goats high on the steep cliffs. Much of the landscape on both sides of the road are public lands, part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest.

Every few miles, there are access areas for hiking, camping, fishing and picnicking. One access area sign caught our eye, but we would always drive past. The sign simply stated, “Lunch Counter” with the word “Kahuna” underneath it.

The use of the word “kahuna” on a national forest sign in Wyoming was quite intriguing. A Hawaiian word, kahuna is used to signify a professional expert, such as a doctor.

During my years of surfing the North Carolina coast, I would occasionally hear the word being called out as a big swell began to roll in. In late spring, fascinated by the sign, we drove down to the Lunch Counter to see what was cooking.

Arriving in the parking lot, we saw a man in a full wetsuit with a surfboard tucked under his arm disappear down a wooded trail towards the river. Wait, what? This looked so out of place in cowboy country. We dashed down the trail, and from an overlook we could see the Class III rapids of the Snake River.

The serene beaver pond waters of the upper river were now a raging whitewater serpent. In the mist of the aquatic chaos was a lone surfer riding the face of a large, standing wave. We now understood, the Lunch Counter and Kahuna referred to the rapids.

The Snake River Canyon was formed millions of years ago with tectonic plates butting heads, creating thrust-fold belts along with glacial gouging and erosion by the river itself.

At some point, geologic forces created a flat shelf with a large boulder lodged against it in the riverbed. Perhaps a massive flood rolled the boulder into just the right place. Prior to reaching the Kahuna and Lunch Counter rapids, the width of the river narrows with small granite walls on each side. It is here that the water shoots through like a firehose against the rocks creating the standing wave.

The wave is seasonal though, peaking in late spring and early summer due to melting snowpack. North of the Snake River Canyon, the flow is controlled by the Jackson Lake dam in Grand Teton National Park.

In early spring, the gates of the dam are cracked open to keep downstream reservoirs topped off for agricultural irrigation. Snowmelt from streams and creeks below the dam spills into the Snake River, causing the river to gush a high flow rate of 14,000 cubic feet per second.

Water flowing over the Lunch Counter at 7,000 to 13,000 cubic feet per second creates a wave tempting enough to lure a surfer into the maelstrom. Dam control, snowpack and daily temperatures dictate when and for how long this river surfbreak will last.

The flow can be variable. Thus, the wave may last for a month, a few days or not at all.

The Lunch Counter was first named in the 1960s by David Hansen, a local whitewater rafting guide. Out on his raft, with the undulating walls of waves looming ahead, he has been quoted as saying “if we are going to eat our lunch, it’s going to be right here.” The unique quote has become the identity of the Lunch Counter ever since.

It wasn’t until 1978 when a trio of brave whitewater rafting guides eyed the wave with envy, scrounged up a surfboard without an ocean in sight, and gave it a try. Surfing on the Snake was born. Like a siren, the wave continues to taunt, tempt and seduce surfers today.

Bright and I made our way down the worn gravel trail to a water-smoothed granite shelf along the river. Almost a dozen wetsuit-clad surfers were scattered about. Adorned with booties, gloves and a 5/4mm taped wetsuit, they were protected from the frigid 40- to 50-degree snowmelt.

One surfer was on the wave while another was drifting downstream after being bucked off the watery horse. Six surfers were sitting in a lineup on a rocky bench waiting for their turn on the curl as if kids patiently waiting for the music of an ice cream truck.

Watching the surfers, the first thing that hit me was that the power of the water is coming at you, not from behind like an ocean wave. What an adjustment for the mind and body for an ocean surfer.

Just to get to the wave was an endeavor in itself. First, you must jump off a rocky cliff with the surfboard underneath you, landing into a lower trough of water created by the uneven stream bottom. This trough, what the surfers called “the seam,” would then drift them into position below the standing wave.

Here, the current would pull them up and into the wave. Paddle, paddle, paddle in the whiteout of foamy madness before you are chewed up and spit out. Most of the surfers would quickly find the sweet spot at the base of the wave where they would lay on the board, adjusting their balance to keep the board forward on the wave. Then they would pop up, and if the surf gods are willing, ride a river wave.

Some surfers would just chill in the pocket of the wave, occasionally drifting up the face and back down. Off to the right of the wave, the pulsing waters would create a bit of a swell that allowed some surfers to drift to the right with a quick rip to the left, fanning the water up like a rooster tail.

Unlike ocean waves, some of these rides lasted for minutes. The more experienced riders would, at times, voluntarily bail on the wave, granting others a chance to catch the Snake. But more often than not, surfers were victims of a cold face-plant due to wandering concentration. Wipe out here and you are treated to another ride, rag-dolling down the rapids and tossed like a salad.

Here, the surfers are on high alert, keeping an eye out for hazards such as a tree branch hurling toward them like a water javelin. They also have to share the break with the hundreds of kayakers and rafting boats charging into the wave seeking their own thrill.

Whitewater kayakers in their short, stubby boats would back into the wave as well. Paddling to stay in the curl, they would dance on the wave, spinning circles much to the delight of the cheering surfers. A train of rafts might come along, aiming straight for wave.

Like a powerful bronco, the wave would try to throw them out of the boat under a shower of cold river rain.

We watched about a dozen surfers of various skill levels ride the standing wave. A few were still learning this break, but, for the most part, all the riders were solid.

One in particular, Amanda Studdard, originally of Portland, Oregon, was one with the wave.

Studdard’s movements on the wave were smooth and sure, taming the current surging under her board. She was calm and at peace on the wave while the chaos off the river surrounded her — a true soul surfer. At times, she would break away from the Zen of it all. Drifting higher and to her right on the wave, she would then make a slashing left turn gouging the wave with her stick. A wall of spray in her wake added to the watery mayhem.

A lover of river surfing, Studdard was on her lunchbreak, sneaking in a few rides. An appropriate thing to do while at the Lunch Counter. She has been hooked on river surfing ever since she dropped in on a wave at a human-made break in a waterpark in Bend, Oregon. Her occupation allows her flexibility to work remotely and drift down to the Lunch Counter each year — an idyllic life shared with her two dogs Loki and Laska along with her playful kitten, Violet. Her feel and connection with the wave were obvious, what she describes simply as “magical.”

Studdard was joined by her friend, Natalie Catania. After tasting the wave four years ago, she has returned each spring to get her fill. Catania, without hesitation, leaps off the bank, drifts the seam perfectly into the face of the wave and springs onto the deck of the board, making it look so easy. After learning to surf on river waves, she prefers them to ocean swells. Even her board is designed for river surfing.

She explained that with the evolution of river surfing, board shapers are now designing specifically for the river waves. An ocean board will do, but a board carved to meet the distinctive aspects of the river will provide better performance. Freshwater is less buoyant than saltwater, thus, a river board needs to be thicker to provide better lift. They are also wider and shorter, 4.5 to 6 feet in length. Different river waves might also require a uniquely shaped board, resulting in a surfer having a number of boards in their quiver.

Having ridden a number of other river waves, the Lunch Counter always coaxes Catania back to Wyoming. “It’s a raw experience,” she said. “Even though it is intense, you find a state of bliss.”

When I think of some of the famous surf breaks, places like Mavericks, Pe’ahi (Jaws), Banzai Pipeline, Teahupo’o, and Nazare come to mind. Now, I will need to add the Lunch Counter to the list.

River surfing is gaining popularity throughout the world with breaks in Germany, Austria, Norway, New Zealand and Canada. The Lunch Counter is thought to be one of, if not the, best natural river surf break in the United States.

Surfer Today has listed it as one of the best river surfing waves in the world. American Surf Magazine has it on the top of their list of best river surfing destinations in the U.S.

You would think with such a heady reputation that the surfers would be territorial. Quite the contrary. The vibe is peaceful, welcoming, encouraging and supportive. Compared to ocean lineups where I have seen punches thrown, this was a breath of fresh mountain air. Even the few youngsters who were cutting their teeth on this river wave were given the same respect and opportunity as the adults. And these grommets could shred.

While the melting of the snowpack diminishes and the gates of the reservoir dams are cranked down, the wave will subside as if a low tide. By mid-July, the wave will retreat into the riverbed, hibernating, waiting to roar again next spring.

As the wave-creating snow blankets the mountains this coming winter, the surfers will grow hungry — hungry with an appetite that can only be satisfied by a seasonal special found only at the Lunch Counter.

Since 2013 Steve and Sally Gudas have been organizing and hosting a Flat Top Cottage tour in Southern Shores, giving people a chance to see and experience, if for a brief time, an iconic part of Outer Banks architectural history.

This year, that tour was Saturday, and more than 1,000 came out — a record attendance, the Gudases said. It was 1,013 to be exact, compared to 2022, “when we had 722,” Sally Gudas told Coastal Review Wednesday.

Built over a 15-year span beginning in the late 1940s, the houses were simple structures. Designed for a summer vacation, the homes were concrete block construction. There was no foundation really, just a concrete floor on sand. And there was no insulation.

“When, we come in here when it’s cold, it takes one full day to get it warm, including the fireplace. Thank God for that,” Steve Gudas said Sunday, having been too busy to chat during the tour.

The houses were designed by Frank Stick, an artist, real estate developer and, to many, a visionary with a knack for self-promotion. In 1946, Stick had just purchased the 2,600 acres that now comprise Southern Shores, and he had the idea that to sell each lot and home for one flat price.

But to do that, he needed something that was easy to build and used as much locally sourced material as he could get his hands on. The sand came from Outer Banks beaches, until the federal government made that illegal in 1955. The structural beams, the cabinets — any interior wood — were all juniper, which at the time was readily available and the cheapest wood to be had.

Frank Stick also, as his son, David, wrote, “… introduced a completely new cottage style for the Outer Banks … What he came up with was flat-top structures of varying sizes and shapes, using concrete blocks as the primary building material.”

Related: Frank Stick finds success, designs signature Banks cottage

Tours of the homes were held this past weekend and revealed just how varied the flat-top design could be, and how the structures – each uniquely named – evolved over the decades.

Sea Breezes, built in 1956, was originally a duplex, but the common wall was removed some time after it was built, and a sliding pocket wall was put into place. This modification allowed the house to be used as either two, two-bedroom cottages or a single, four-bedroom home.

Pink Perfection, built in 1952, is a rambling four-bedroom Flat Top. Unlike almost all of other Flat Tops, it was neither designed nor built by Frank Stick.

Aside from the obvious design element, there are among the Flat Tops several similarities. Among them, in almost every house, the original juniper beams and trim have been retained. Outside, almost all have wide soffits.

Very few are still in the original owners’ hands. Ashbel Falconer is an exception. The Falconer Cottage his parents purchased in 1955 when he was 4 is situated on a side street, atop a low rise that, at one time, had an unobstructed view of the ocean. Not anymore. Live oaks and other houses block that view now.

“The only thing that was here was sea oats and sand spurs,” Falconer told Coastal Review recently. “It was all sand.”

The tidy homes are a labor of love for the owners, as Falconer noted with a laugh.

“They are maintenance hogs.”

Steve Gudas shares that sentiment. “When you own it, you’re just invested in it,” he said.

Preserving a legacy

Matt Neal, owner of Neal Contracting of Kitty Hawk, has been in love with Flat Tops since his family lived in one when he was a child.

“In the late ’80s, early ’90s, we lived in one for a period of time in Kill Devil Hills, and so it’s always been a childhood memory of mine,” Neal said recently.

He now owns a Flat Top built in the 1950s in Southern Shores, although he describes it as “full-flat roof —  a low, sloped, single shed-style roof.”

His experience in restoring reflected the challenges other owners know from simply maintaining one. “It’s a challenge,” Neal said.

“It was fun in a way,” he said.

“I would take juniper out of the interior closets and use it to refurbish the cabinets. And I had to take the juniper off the wall in the bathroom to update the wiring and then put it back,” Neal explained. “That house had a slab (floor) that had no vapor barrier. We were able to get the old linoleum up, put a vapor barrier on top of the slab (and) put cork flooring down and keep … original doors and hardware. And it still has the original windows.”

The homes are also vanishing. While unclear how many there were originally, some estimate as many as 300, Sally Gudas told Coastal Review that number seems high.

“I don’t think it’s 300,” she said. “I’ve been asked that question. I just really don’t know. But I am working on it.”

She has a reasonable guess as to how many are still standing in Southern Shores.

“I think we’ve identified 25,” she said.

There are attempts to preserve the structures. The town of Southern Shores created a Historic Landmarks Commission that evaluates homes more than 50 years old. If a house meets the criteria, property owners get a reduction in their town property tax.

To date, there have been five Flat Tops added to the program, although additional property owners have submitted applications.

Tax incentives alone, however, are not enough to save the buildings. With property values in the millions along the oceanfront, the economics of preservation may not add up when a property is passed to two or three sibling heirs.

There is increasing concern that the Flat Top legacy will be lost.

Architect Chris Nason of the Kill Devil Hills-based Beacon Architecture and Design is a Southern Shores resident who has for the past seven or eight years been documenting Flat Tops in town.

“It was just a first impulse,” he told Coastal Review. “So we’ve got this moment in time. Let’s just measure it, take pictures.”

Initially Nason wasn’t sure what he would do with his documentation, but since he began the project, it has become a historic record and teaching tool for his interns.

“It was a good learning experience for them. You can learn to take measurements on a small house. It’s a perfect learning experience,” Nason said.

As an architect, Nason would like to see as many of the houses saved as possible, but he acknowledged that it can’t always happen.

“I am both realistic and aspirational about encouraging folks to keep them,” he said. “These things don’t meet any codes. They’re oftentimes too low. They don’t meet the flood zone. There’s all sorts of reasons not to keep them, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try, and where we can’t keep it, it’s great to come back with something that is inspired by what was there,” he said.

To date, Nason has measured and created elevations for 34 homes, many of them no longer exist. He has created a website documenting his work, and is hoping more can be done with it.

“Eventually our goal is to do a book on it and put these plans in a book and do some photography with it. That’s still in the works,” he said.

Neal, in addition to restoring the home he owns, is also working to preserve the legacy and has built three homes based on the Flat Top design.

He characterizes the concept as Usonian, which is a Frank Lloyd Wright term to describe a single-story, flat-roofed home with wide eaves using as many locally sourced building materials as possible.

Building a home for the 21st century meant taking the original concept and bringing it to modern standards and efficiency.

“It’s always astonishing to me what people were willing to accept back then, but they’re not willing to accept it this time,” he said. “But it works. I’s very functional and very utilitarian. It’s a throwback to the quietness in sort of a more out-there living of the Outer Banks.”

Post has been updated.

The Governor’s Medallion Award was presented last week to 17 individuals and three organizations, including three from the coast.

North Carolina’s highest award for volunteer service is presented annually by the N.C. Commission on Volunteerism & Community Service. The ceremony this year was May 6 at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.

“North Carolinians are known for their generosity and these award-winning volunteers are some of the most generous people you can imagine. They give their time, talents, and energy to strengthen their communities through volunteering,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement. “I’m so grateful for their compassion and dedication, and I encourage all North Carolinians to find ways to volunteer.”

Two volunteers and one organization from the coast were awarded the 2024 Governor’s Medallion for Volunteer Service. They include:

• Deborah Swick of Dare County, who volunteers with numerous organizations including helping pick up roadside trash and protect sea turtle nests.
• Daniel Kopchick of New Hanover County, who volunteers at Lower Cape Fear Lifecare where he provides support to hospice and dementia patients and their families.
• Safe Haven of Pender Inc. of Pender County, whose volunteers and its thrift store support and provide resources to domestic violence victims in Pender County and surrounding area.

Recipients are nominated by members of their community and then selected by the N.C. Commission on Volunteerism & Community Service, known as VolunteerNC, and housed within the governor’s office.

“We were excited to honor these extraordinary volunteers from across North Carolina who work selflessly and tirelessly to make our state a better place,” said VolunteerNC Executive Director Briles Johnson. “Medallion award recipients serve their communities in so many ways, combating food insecurity, assisting the elderly, tutoring and mentoring youth, providing mental health services and more.”

Recipients across the state include the following:

• Guy Graybeal Jr. of Ashe County who volunteers with Ashe Outreach Ministries.
• Sonya Reid of Burke County who volunteers at the American Red Cross.
• Librado Mendoza Sosa of Chatham County who volunteers with Student Action with Farmworkers and mentors college students by facilitating a 10-week summer internship program.
• Mercil Hurt of Cherokee County who has lived a life of service by volunteering for over 50 years by serving seniors and youth in her community.
• Bountiful Blessings Food Pantry of Gaston County. Volunteers with this organization offer nutritious food and support services to individuals in the Greater Gaston County area.
• Laura and Sandy Gabel of Granville County who volunteer with Area Congregations in Ministry, a nonprofit food pantry.
• Susan Tolle of Iredell County who started the first Out of Darkness Suicide Walk in the county.
• Dr. William and Cindy Hall of Lee County who provide free medical services through their twice-weekly mobile health clinic.
• Vivian Poole of McDowell County who volunteers at the the county senior center.
• Bud Frank of Mecklenburg County who volunteers 1,000 hours a year with the American Red Cross.
• Pamela Tudryn of Orange County who volunteers at the SECU Family House at UNC Hospitals.
• David Post who volunteers with many organizations in Rowan County.
• Carmon West of Transylvania County who volunteers with the Lake Toxaway Fire Rescue Inc. 
• Dr. Drew Polly of Union County who volunteers at the county’s schools.
• NAMI NC Helpline Responder Team of Wake County.
• Donna Phillips of Wayne County who volunteers across multiple organizations.
• Claudia Juarez Reyes of Wilson County who volunteers at Seeds of Hope and Amexcan.

The 2025 Governor’s Volunteer Service Award nomination form will be available this fall. Nominations are submitted to the county award coordinator in the county of volunteer service. Visit volunteernc.org for more information.

Coastal Review regularly features the work of North Carolina historian David Cecelski, who writes about the history, culture and politics of the North Carolina coast. Cecelski shares on his website essays and lectures he has written about the state’s coast as well as brings readers along on his search for the lost stories of our coastal past in the museums, libraries and archives he visits in the U.S. and across the globe. 

At first light we gathered at the Friendship Holiness Church, down on the edge of the great swamp country that makes up the headwaters of the Lockwoods Folly River.

The church is in the heart of a community called Piney Grove, which is in Brunswick County, North Carolina, between the little town of Bolivia and the Green Swamp.

This was just a few days ago, on the Monday morning of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The day broke chilly, but the only clouds that I could see in the sky were far to the east, over the Atlantic, and they were a breathtaking shade of red.

I remembered the words in Homer’s “The Odyssey”: “Child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn.”

I always love going to Piney Grove. My friend Marion Evans is the keeper of the community’s stories and she’s a fantastic local historian, as well as just a really special person.

Marion had invited me to spend the day with 25 or 30 of her family members as they went in search of the community’s history in the local woods and swamps.

Their ancestor, Caesar Evans, had escaped from slavery during the Civil War and fought for his freedom in the Union army. After the war, he and his family had worked and saved until they could buy 228 acres there in that central part of Brunswick County.

 I highly recommend a visit to the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington to see Marion’s wonderful short film about the life of Caesar Evans and the birth of Piney Grove. It’s running continuously as part of the museum’s Monument exhibit thru March 31. 

You can also learn more about Marion Evans’ remarkable work on Piney Grove’s history in my story “A Day in Piney Grove: A Journey into Brunswick County’s Past.” 

That land became the community of Piney Grove, and with the exception of me, everybody there that morning was one of Caesar Evans’ descendants and a son or daughter of Piney Grove.

I just felt lucky to be there. It’s a wonderful family, and I was excited to spend a day with them.

We had a number of goals for the day. First, we were hoping to find the site of an old tar kiln that was run by the Evans family at least in the early 20th century and probably quite a bit earlier.

Marion’s sister Melissa had found the site of the tar kiln marked on a 1913 survey chart of the family’s land. She had brought the survey chart to the church with her.

The family was also hoping to find several other sites that their elders had told them about when they were young.

Those sites included the community’s old cart road, two or three burial grounds, a haunted spot or two (so the old people said), a shingle mill’s tram road, and a low-lying place deep in the woods that the community’s elders had simply called “The Hole.”

According to Marion’s grandmother, The Hole was a place of refuge down in the swamps. Before we left the church, Marion explained that it was “the place where they used to hide.”

Everybody except for me seemed to understand exactly what that meant without any explanation, but I had to ask.

Vinnie Joyner, one of Marion’s cousins, explained The Hole to me: In the old days, he said, they took shelter there when the nightriders came.

He explained that their ancestors always had a plan for evacuating the community’s children quickly to The Hole and for defending themselves once they were there.

Some of the ladies made a wonderful breakfast for us in the church’s annex, then we headed out into the woods. Nearly everybody was on foot, though two of the guys did ride their ATVs until the woods got too thick for them.

We had the survey chart to help guide us, but we relied more on the young people.

Most of the young guys and at least one of the young women were hunters and knew those woods inside out. A few of them had brought their shotguns, or more, and seemed ready for anything.

The whole day was just a delight. We found everything we were looking for, except for the tram road, and a few other things, too. And now and then, we’d all pause and Marion or one of her relatives would tell a story, often a tale that they remembered hearing when they were children.

As we wandered deeper into the forest, the sun rose above the trees. The day warmed up. The woods and swamps came out of the shadows and we could take in the beauty of the land in all its glory.

Spirits were high, too. Even when the undergrowth was so thick that we could only see a few feet in front of us, the forest was filled with laughter and the sounds of storytelling.

I am writing this at a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, where I am waiting for a friend to finish up a round of treatment.

And as I think back on my day in Piney Grove, I guess I remember two things most of all.

Both will make me sound like an old fogey, but well, we are who we are.

First of all, I remember the kindness and almost old-fashioned solicitousness of Piney Grove’s young people.

Again and again, they helped me and the other older people across creeks and ditches and opened our way through overgrown paths by pushing brambles aside or holding back branches.

Personally, I don’t think that I always needed so much help, but the young guys did it with so much generosity of spirit that it did just kind of warm my heart.

And I remember one of the young men, a gentle soul named Javelin Bell, who saw at one point that I was feeling a little unsettled as we crossed along the edges of a big swamp.

He just came over and whispered real soft like, “You don’t have to worry about nothing. You’re with family.” And after he said that, I didn’t worry anymore.

As much as that meant to me, something else meant even more.

I have to confess that, in my line of work, I have grown accustomed to it being older people who care most about the stories from our past.

In many settings where I go to talk about history, the room is full of people who are at least as old as I am. I don’t mind that — I’m interested in sharing the little I know with people of any age. But I do notice how rarely young people are in the room.

But the young people of Piney Grove were different. When Marion paused to tell a story, they crowded near to hear her.

And when some of the young people asked me about Abraham Galloway, they crowded around me.

Abraham Galloway, the subject of my book “The Fire of Freedom,” had family roots in that part of Brunswick County; his mother came from the area around Piney Grove.

Their enthusiasm, and the joy they took in the day, seemed boundless.

When we found an old graveyard, the young people didn’t stop until they removed the leaves and the dirt around every last headstone so we could all read the inscriptions.

And whether we were exploring one of the burial grounds or standing by the old refuge that they called The Hole, those young people showed a kind of respect and reverence for the sacredness of those places and for the importance of the stories that made me instantly and forever lose my heart to them.

Thomas LaFontine “Fountain” Odom, 85, a former state senator credited for his clean water advocacy, died Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023, after a lengthy illness.

A celebration of life is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Steele Creek Presbyterian Church at Pleasant Hill in Charlotte. The family will receive friends in the church fellowship hall following the service.

Odom, a Democrat who served 14 years as a state senator, six as a Mecklenburg County commissioner, and six years on the Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation Commission. He also served as chair of the Dare County Democratic Party.

He co-sponsored and supported the 1996 legislation that established the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, now known as the North Carolina Land & Water Fund, which to date has conserved more than 500,000 acres and protected or restored 3,000 miles of streams and rivers across North Carolina.

He is survived by his wife of 21 years, Carmen Hooker Odom of Charlotte, former secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services who served as a member of the Coastal Federation’s Northeast Advisory Board and on the Coastal Federation Board of Directors.

Born April 18, 1938, he graduated from West Mecklenburg High School in 1956, attended Charlotte College 1956-57 and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He graduated from the UNC School of Law in 1962.

Odom was admitted to the North Carolina State Bar in 1962 and began his professional life as a law clerk for North Carolina Supreme Court Justice William B. Rodman Jr. from 1962 to 1963. He served as Charlotte’s first assistant city attorney 1963-64.

He was a partner in Weinstein, Sturges, Odom, Bigger, Campbell and Jonas law firm. In 2003, he became attorney and counsellor of the United States Supreme Court. In semi-retirement, he was Of Counsel in The Odom Firm, PLLC, founded in 2000 by his son and daughter-in-law.

He worked closely with friend and former senator, the late Marc Basnight, on many pieces of legislation such as public education, jobs, and healthcare.

Fountain loved the history and mystery of Roanoke Island. He collaborated with Duplin Winery and Tinga Nursery to propagate cuttings from The Mother Vine, an over 250-year-old Scuppernong grapevine on Roanoke Island.

In 1960, he married the late Jane Lowe, who died in 1999. In 2002, he married Carmen Hooker, and resided in Raleigh, Manteo, New York City and Charlotte.

In addition to his wife, Carmen, he is survived by a blended family of six children, 11 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Dementia Alliance of North Carolina, 9131 Anson Way, Suite 206, Raleigh, NC 27615 or https://dementianc.org.

Arrangements are by Kenneth W. Poe Funeral & Cremation Service in Charlotte. Online condolences can be shared at www.kennethpoeservices.com.

Several of the people Gov. Roy Cooper appointed to boards and commissions, positions announced Monday, reside on the coast.

Cooper appointed Lacey Edwards of Havelock to the Catawba Indian Nation Foundation Board of Directors as an enrolled member of the Catawba Indian Nation. Edwards is a teacher in Havelock.

Virginia Gardner Vinson of Edenton was appointed to the Edenton Historical Commission as a member at-large. Vinson has worked as the director of adult education for the College of Albemarle, director of the commission’s Penelope Barker House, heritage tourism development officer, and executive director of the Chowan Hospital Foundation.

Ahoskie Mayor Weyling J. White was appointed to the North Carolina Forestry Advisory Council as a representative with experience in city and regional planning. White is also a practice administrator for the Roanoke Chowan Community Health Center.

Dr. Janet F. Davidson of Wilmington was appointed to the North Carolina State Historical Records Advisory Board as a member at-large. Davidson has been the Cape Fear Museum Historian since 2005. Previously, she was a historian and exhibition curator for the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution.

Jacob Harrison Joplin of Morehead City was appointed as chair to the Underground Damage Prevention Review Board. Joplin is the CEO and general manager of Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative, where he has worked since 2000. Joplin was serving as vice chair of the board prior to this appointment.

RALEIGH – Jean Beasley, founding director of the Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, recently received the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s Thomas L. Quay Wildlife Diversity Award for her outstanding contributions to wildlife diversity in North Carolina.

Beasley is the 17th Quay Award recipient, the Wildlife Commission announced this week. She received the recognition during the commission’s October business meeting in Cherokee.

“Since opening the Beasley Center in 1996, over 1,000 sick and injured sea turtles have been rehabilitated and returned to the wild. That incredible work, along with establishing the volunteer-based Topsail Turtle Project and improving conservation measures benefitting sea turtles, makes her most deserving of this distinguished conservationist award,” said Wildlife Commission Executive Director Cameron Ingram.

Beasley, a native North Carolinian and 1958 graduate of Duke University, first encountered a nesting loggerhead sea turtle while vacationing with her family in Topsail Beach. That experience led to the inception of the Topsail Turtle Project, formed in the 1980s to monitor and protect nesting turtles, incubating eggs and emergent hatchling on Topsail Island.

Following her daughter Karen’s death in 1991, Beasley and her family followed Karen’s wishes to “do something good for the sea turtles” with her life insurance money. Knowing the Beasleys were already protecting sea turtle nests, people soon began bringing sick and injured sea turtles to the family. It quickly became apparent that a facility dedicated to the turtles’ care, rehabilitation and release was needed, prompting the creation of the Beasley Center.

The commission said the Beasley Center has served as a model for grassroots sea turtle rescue programs. Beasley was the first volunteer-based program leader elected to the board of directors of the International Sea Turtle Society. She fostered advances in sea turtle medicine and biology and has overseen a community of hundreds of volunteers in the Topsail Island Nest Protection Program and the Sea Turtle Hospital. She managed the growth of the Beasley Center from a 900 square foot facility that opened in 1996 to a 13,000 square foot facility in 2013 that treats over 100 turtles per year. Beasley headed the center until her retirement at the end of 2021.

Wildlife Commission Chairman Monty Crump had introduced the resolution to recognize Beasley with the Quay Award. The award is named after Thomas Quay, who died in 2012 and was a professor in the North Carolina State University Department of Zoology for 32 years. A self-described “full-time volunteer and unpaid environmental activist,” Quay was the first recipient of the award in honor of his passion for wildlife, ornithology and teaching.

For more about the Quay Award, visit the agency’s website.

BUXTON — Susan West, a longtime advocate for the Hatteras Island fishing community and a writer who helped foster improved communications and respect between regulators and fishermen, died last week at age 73.

“She made sure that Hatteras and those small fishing communities were never left out of the conversation,” recalled Karen Willis Amspacher, director of the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island. “She made sure Hatteras was at the table.”

Amspacher, speaking Monday to Coastal Review, fondly remembered being able to pick up the phone to talk to her friend at 4:30 a.m., and engage in long conversations.

“She was the person I would call when I needed clarity and rational thought,” she said. “She understood people and she understood her community.”

West passed away unexpectedly Thursday at Outer Banks Hospital from complications from cancer treatment, said North Carolina Sea Grant Fisheries Extension Specialist Sara Mirabilio.

“She was a dear friend, personally and professionally,” she said, adding that besides working on fisheries issues together, they had a close bond as breast cancer survivors. West has been a part of Mirabilio’s life since she started working at Sea Grant in 2003, she said.

“As a writer, as an activist, she was really good at bringing issues to life,” she said. “She was definitely an advocate for the industry … yet her demeanor was very calming and inclusive.”

As a young transplant to the Outer Banks from Baltimore, the course of West’s life was set after meeting Rob West, a surfer from Long Island, when they worked together at a Hatteras restaurant in the 1970s. After they married, Rob became a commercial fisherman.

In the early 1990s, as tensions started rising around commercial fishing, Susan decided to organize a local women’s auxiliary group to the North Carolina Fisheries Association.

But to Susan West, a graduate of Towson State University who had worked for the Maryland Historical Society before coming to Hatteras, the women’s group tapped her talent as a dogged researcher and patient communicator who could understand arcane fisheries policies and translate it to watermen and their families with clarity and precision.

Barbara Garrity-Blake, who later coauthored “Fish House Opera” with West, remembered first meeting her in 1992 at a Hatteras-Ocracoke women’s auxiliary Fisheries Association meeting.

“There she was, with that long, red braid halfway down to her butt,” Garrity-Blake recalled. The two became fast friends, and in no time, “fisheries conspirators,” she said.

After serving three years together on the Moratorium Steering Committee, a collaborative state legislative panel created to overhaul fisheries policy that led to the 1997 Fisheries Reform Act, the two women agreed that most people had little understanding of fisheries issues or fishermen, Garrity-Blake said Monday. So they decided to write a book from the watermen’s perspective, which became “Fish House Opera,” published by Mystic Seaport Press.

Garrity-Blake, a cultural anthropologist who teaches marine fisheries policy at the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, said that West was not only keenly intelligent and insightful, she was also unflappable. 

“She always said, ‘You know, Barbara, we just need to keep plugging along,’” Garrity-Blake recounted. “In the midst of the rough and tumble world of fisheries, she always remained calm. She was just trusted by everybody. I think that’s because she was a reasonable, thoughtful person.”   

With her deliberate speaking style — composed and paced, as Garrity-Blake described it — people listened to West and respected the way she handled herself when she approached problems.

“Instead of raising hell, she would raise a question,” she said.

West’s remarkable accomplishments also included an oral history project, “Carolina Coastal Voices,” that involved transcribing old and new interviews with old-timers and community members, a blog with Garrity-Blake, “Raising the Stories,” and a leadership program, or “Fish Camp,” that hosts dozens of young people interested in or newly licensed in commercial fishing. She also served on the board of NC Catch and helped organize the Dare County Working Watermen’s Committee.

In addition, West is an award-winning writer who has penned numerous articles for multiple publications. And, she was instrumental in launching the annual “Day at the Docks” in Hatteras and its popular “Seafood Throwdown” chef contest that began as a celebration of survival of the village after Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

West appreciated the fishing heritage of the Outer Banks, but she realized that it’s more practical — and meaningful to state regulators and policymakers — for the fishing community to focus on the importance of their livelihood and the income and seafood product they produce for themselves and the state, said Lynne Foster, a Hatteras resident and friend who, with her husband Ernie Foster, runs the Albatross Fleet. 

“She poured all her energy into what she could do to preserve fishing here,” Foster said. But her style leaned into warm, honest and witty rather than aggressive.

“Susan was always kind,” she said. “There was a gentleness about her. You never saw her lose her top.”

In addition to her husband, West’s survivors include her mother, Betty Jane Butler of Manteo; brothers, Billy Butler of Easton, Maryland, and Tommy Butler of Raleigh; three nieces; and her dogs, Lydia and Hank, according to her obituary released by Twiford Funeral Homes. She was preceded in death by her father, Thomas Butler.

An informal celebration of West’s life is to be held.

But Amspacher said the “girls” who have worked for so many years alongside West are already planning to meet on Hatteras in the coming months to celebrate their friend’s life.

“For an important life like that, yes,” she said. “I just feel like that everyone needs punctuation at the end of our sentence.”

Updated June 28: Organizers have opened up the invitation to this year’s shrimp fry to electric system linemen and women. “A group that we depend on throughout the year and especially during the summer and fall months of hurricane season.”

The Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center has made it a priority to honor and celebrate those who make a difference in the community, past and present.

As part of that mission, the museum on July 9 during its annual All-American Shrimp Fry will again recognize active military and area veterans as well as thank health care workers, first responders, law enforcement, teachers and school personnel who have been on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The theme this year is a continuation of the 2021 theme, “Thank you, community, for leading us through COVID all these years!”

This year’s celebration is from 4 to 7 p.m.  at the Harkers Island museum. Those who are being honored will receive a complimentary dinner of a half-pound of fresh local shrimp with all the trimmings, dessert and drink and a chance to win a sunset cruise to Cape Lookout. 

Reserve a plate through the museum’s website by noon July 8 or call the museum at 252-728-1500. Additional plates can be purchased for $15 each. Hot dogs are offered for the children.

In addition to dinner, attendees can enjoy treats from the bake sale, participate in the silent auction, watch decoy carving demonstrations, check out Crystal Coast Antique Club’s cars and hear music from the 2d Marine Aircraft Wing Band from Cherry Point. 

Lisa Kittrell, director of elementary education and Title I for Carteret County Schools, told Coastal Review Monday that she was thankful educators were again being invited to the Waterfowl Museum’s annual shrimp fry.

“Along with so many others in the county, our teachers have worked hard during COVID. The opportunity to bring together so many heroes to say thank you, to enjoy delicious food and to fellowship is a great idea,” she said.

Down East resident and military veteran Paige Hurley Humphreys attended last year. She said in an interview that she and her family attended “as a way to enrich ourselves more in the wonderful history and community we live in.”

She added that it was a wonderful occasion with speakers commemorating locals who did so much through the pandemic and those who have served this county and the United States.

“It was great after a long pandemic to see people coming together to celebrate our county’s heritage,” she said, adding that she thought the Marine Corps Band was incredible and there were great vendors selling crafts. The museum itself was so enjoyable and educational.

“The perfect finish for our family was that we won passes to go on the ferry to Cape Lookout. It was a wonderful and memorable day,” she said.

The museum has been holding the shrimp fry for years as a community event around Fourth of July, Karen Willis Amspacher, executive director, told Coastal Review.

In the last decade, Ike Southerland, museum’s sponsorship coordinator, transformed the event to a veteran and active military appreciation celebration. 

Once the museum began offering the plates to veterans and active military that were sponsored by community members as a thank you, the event grew, serving around 200 plates to between 350 to 400 plates.

“There are so many veterans Down East and in Carteret County we are honored to do this,” Amspacher said.

Last year organizers opened the invitation to those on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, when they served almost 800 plates.

Amspacher explained that entering the third year of COVID-19, the organizers decided to extend again this year appreciation to these community leaders. “Once again we are honored to say, ‘thank you’ to the men and women who lead our community every day,” she said.

First responders, health care workers and school personnel continue to face this historic health care emergency with strength and resolve, and “we recognize their courage and fortitude in this continuing battle,” Sutherland said in a statement. “We appreciate the leadership and commitment of all the men and women who have faced this unprecedented threat to our community. We will also recognize the education community – teachers, principals, bus drivers, school administrators and all those who have helped our children through this very difficult time.”

Volunteers will be on hand to interview those who want to share how they faced this unprecedented time in history and memories of how this pandemic has changed the community. 

Volunteers are always needed to help with this event, including setup and cleanup. Desserts are needed and door prize donations are welcome. To help, email museum@coresound.com, or call 252-728-1500.

Sponsorship opportunities are available. Host sponsors are asked to donate $1,000. Plate sponsorships, which go to cover the cost of the food, are available at the following levels: $500 for 35 plates, $300 for 20 plates, $250 for 18 plates, $150 for 10 plates, $120 for eight plates, and $100 for six plates. All sponsor names are to be recognized at the event and included in promotional materials.

The museum offers programs year-round, from hands-on demonstrations of decoy carving and quilting, interactive community exhibits, outdoor experiences, field trips and summer camps for students and educators. The signature event, Waterfowl Weekend, is the second weekend of December. 

If you can’t make it out to Harkers Island, swing by the museum’s Community Outreach Center at 806 Arendell St., in Morehead City. 

In addition to carrying locally made arts and crafts, at 2 p.m. every Thursday through Labor Day visitors can enjoy Parlor Talks, which highlight different topics, at the outreach center. No reservations are needed. Handicap access is available via ramp outside and lift inside.

On the schedule 

June 30: Protecting our Dark Skies with Crystal Coast Stargazers Club

Related: Cape Lookout is now a certified International Dark Sky Park

July 7: “Menhaden Fishing, When Beaufort was a Money-making country” with Steve Goodwin, author of “Beyond the Crow’s Nest: The Story of the Menhaden Fishery of Carteret County” and Barbara Garrity-Blake, cultural anthropologist and co-author with Amspacher of “Living at the Water’s Edge: A Heritage Guide to the Outer Banks Byway.”

Related: Our Coast’s History: Menhaden Fishing Days

July 14: “The Tide IS Rising” with Swansboro Commissioner Frank Tursi, and former editor of Coastal Review.

July 21: Dynamics of Extreme Events, People and Places (DEEP) with UNC researchers Elizabeth Frankenburg and Nathan Dollar

July 28: Leaving the Banks with Joel Hancock, author of “The Education of an Island Boy.”

Aug. 4: Cape Lookout Lighthouse History and Restoration Status with Cape Lookout National Seashore Superintendent Jeff West

Aug. 11: Cabin Culture of the Southern Banks with Dr. Stan Rule

Aug. 18: The Value of Down East Culture in Arctic Alaska with artist Susan Mason

Aug. 25: Marshallberg Boatbuilding, story of the Albatross Fleet, North Carolina’s first charter fishing business, with Ernie Foster and Keith Willis

Sept. 1: Stories and Songs We Love with museum archivist Connie Mason

A new, temporary exhibit commemorating the history of African American military service in North Carolina opened this weekend at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City.

“We Wanted to Fight: Black North Carolinians in World War II,” which consists of 12 pop-up panels, opened Saturday and is set to close on May 11.

The temporary display is part of a grant project of the North Carolina Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, the North Carolina Museum of History, Elizabeth City State University School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the State Archives of North Carolina Military Collection in recognition of the African American Military and Veterans Lineage Project.

“All of our service members and veterans have a story to tell,” said North Carolina Department of Military and Veterans Affairs Secretary Walter Gaskin in a statement. “Black Americans have always answered the call to serve, and this program during Black History Month is a fitting tribute to their stories, patriotism and deep commitment to this country and to the great state of North Carolina.”

The State Archives of North Carolina preserves and makes accessible the personal accounts of North Carolina’s military veterans so future generations may hear their stories and better understand the realities of war. This project taps into the stories of African American military service members from North Carolina through a collection of interviews, correspondence, photographs and artifacts.

“Uncovering and sharing often-untold stories is at the heart of what the North Carolina Museum of History does,” said North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Secretary Reid Wilson. “This collaboration with the North Carolina Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and the State Archives will give all North Carolinians the opportunity to learn of the proud and courageous tradition of service of Black Americans in the Armed Forces of the United States.”

To coincide with the museum display’s opening, the State Archives has published “Trials and Tribulations: North Carolina African American Soldiers and the Racial Divide.” The booklet that commemorates the history of North Carolina Black Americans’ military service.

More information on the African American Military and Veterans Lineage Project can be found online.

A North Carolina Humanities Council grant awarded to Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, which coordinates the travel of this exhibition at military bases, and cultural and educational institutions in the state, funded the exhibit.

The Museum of the Albemarle is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Saturday.

Dressed as an enslaved woman from 19th century North Carolina, Leesa Jones, executive director of the Washington Waterfront Underground Railroad Museum, tells the story of the journey to freedom that thousands of enslaved people endured.

Housed in an old caboose at the corner of Main and Gladden streets, the museum is small but filled with information and artifacts from the time that enslaved people were a part of life in Washington. Although the artifacts and reprints of wanted posters for runaways are fascinating, Jones and her narration are what truly bring the story to life.

As she describes the journey, what emerges is an interweaving of moral outrage, courage and ingenuity.

It was the enslaved people and their need to be free and a network of abolitionists fierce in their defiance of slavery that created the Underground Railroad. Although many of the people who were a part of it were white, the effort crossed racial and cultural lines, a point Jones emphasizes.

“Not all abolitionists were white. They were Native American, they were Italian, they were immigrants, they were German. They were people from every walk of life,” she said.

Jones draws particular attention to William Still, one of the best known and most effective of the abolitionists. A Black businessman from Philadelphia, he was born across the Delaware River from Philadelphia in 1821 in Burlington, New Jersey, and in 1847 started working for the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Three years later, he became the chairman of the society’s Vigilance Committee, the arm of the society that actively brought enslaved people to freedom.

Still is particularly important because of his 1872 book “The Underground Railroad,” which is notable because the stories of the enslaved people are told almost entirely through their letters, correspondence and interviews.

The book includes the story of William Jordon (page 129) that Still recounts, describing why a person would choose to live for 10 months in the swamps and three months in a cave, “surrounded with bears, wild cats, rattle-snakes and the like.”

“Under Governor Badger (sic, probably Sen. Edmund Badger), of North Carolina, William had experienced Slavery in its most hateful form. True, he had only been twelve months under the yoke of this high functionary. But William’s experience in this short space of time, was of a nature very painful,” Still wrote.

In Still’s narrative, Jordon became the property of Badger when the white man married his third wife. Badger and his wife were not good masters to Jordon and Jordon’s wife.

“The governor and his wife were both equally severe towards them; would stint them shamefully in clothing and food, though they did not get flogged quite as often as some others,” he reported.

What finally drove Jordon to escape enslavement, though, was the separation from his wife.

“(H)is honor gave him distinctly to understand that the idea of his going two hundred miles to see his wife was all nonsense … ‘If I said so, I did not mean it,’ said his honor.”

In his book, Still includes letters describing the conditions many of the escaping enslaved people endured. A letter from prominent abolitionist Thomas Garrett about three men who arrived from the South and needed a place to stay is similar to a number of other letters.

“Respected friend, William Still,” Garrett wrote, “I write to inform thee, that Captain Fountain has arrived this evening from the South with three men, one of which is nearly naked, and very lousy (covered in lice). He has been in the swamps of Carolina for eighteen months past … I would send them on to-night, but will have to provide two of them with some clothes before they can be sent by rail road.”

The origin of the phrase “underground railroad” is unclear. Numerous sources place the first use of the term in 1831 when Kentucky slave Tice Davids swam the Ohio River to the free state of Ohio with his master hard on his tail. An Ohio abolitionist named Rush Sloane claimed that when Davids’ master returned home emptyhanded, he blamed the escape on an underground railroad.

By 1840, the term was in general use in describing the network of safe homes, conductors and others who actively helped enslaved people to freedom.

Located at the mouth of the Pamlico River, antebellum Washington was a bustling industrial port, second only to Wilmington as the busiest port in the state, and was ideally situated to aid in the escape from bondage that the underground railroad offered.

“By 1850 Washington was the largest shipbuilding port in North Carolina. And it rivaled only Wilmington in size,” Jones said.

Her observation is confirmed by an East Carolina University research paper, “The Castle Island Ships’ Graveyard: The History and Archaeology of Eleven Wrecked and Abandoned Watercraft,” written in 2006 by Bradley A. Rodgers and Nathan Richards.

“By 1849, John Myers and Sons were building steamships in the port. The company completed two steamships that year,” according to the authors. “The following year Washington ranked as the number one shipbuilding center in North Carolina. A census completed in 1850 documented 23 shipbuilders living in Beaufort County.”

Jones said the port of Washington was a center of international trade, and the state’s exports of agricultural products and naval stores shipped to destinations as diverse as the northeast coast of the United States and Canada, Europe and the Caribbean. Those ships with their worldwide ports of call were a pathway to freedom for the enslaved.

“Freedom seekers used this river,” she said, “to get their freedom literally anywhere that a ship could go.”

What she describes was a vast network of people and places that gave the enslaved people of the South a chance to be free before the Civil War.

“You could get your freedom not just north and Canada,” she said. “People don’t realize the Underground Railroad ran south.”

She points to Fort Mose (pronounced Mo-say), a small settlement of free people of color that existed just outside St. Augustine, Florida. The town, sanctioned by the governor of the province when it was under Spanish rule in 1738 was “the first legally sanctioned free Black town in the present-day United States,” according to the Florida History Museum.

Jones describes a remarkably sophisticated network that included coded phrases and words that were commonly used but, only for the trained ear, delivered a message of hope.

“Let’s say (you’re) standing here and having a conversation with me. And let’s say (someone) says to me, ‘Tomorrow at the depot, we’re going to have breakfast. We’re going to have ham and eggs,’” she said.

To the untrained ear that sounds like an invitation to breakfast, but for the conductors and passenger of the underground railroad, the meaning was quite different.

Depot, she explained, would be almost any meeting place that had been agreed upon earlier.

“It could be a graveyard, could be a place by the river, could be a place in the woods, could be a cave. Anywhere that we had already agreed to meet. Breakfast indicates a specific kind of meeting. Ham one adult. Eggs more than two children,” she said.

Yet that only hints at the complexity of the journey to freedom for enslaved people.

A number of the ship’s pilots and captains who called Washington their homeport were enslaved. There was little motivation for them to escape their bondage — their skills were highly prized, and they were often quite well off and many had families that they could not return to if they left. Yet if the Black pilots and captains did not wish escape themselves, Jones said she believes they would often help others.

“They could tell you everything,” she said. And if they did not themselves seek freedom, they would often turn a blind eye to stowaways who were fleeing. Still’s book is filled with stories of Underground Railroad passengers, secreted in ships as they traveled north to Philadelphia or other free ports.

For Jones, who grew up in Washington, the stories she heard as a child are part of her own journey of discovery. Her grandmother would tell tales of her ancestors coming to America “in the snow,” and she would wonder because there is seldom snow in Washington.

And then she realized, “The Snow was the name of the slave ship coming from West Africa.”

She spent her summers as a child in Philadelphia, and remembers hearing the adults say, “Somebody went to Timbuktu. All I knew about Timbuktu (was that) it was in Africa.”

But what she subsequently learned was that Timbuctoo was an early African American settlement in New Jersey. According to the New Jersey State Library, the community dates from 1826. It is in Mount Holly about 3 miles southwest of Burlington.

For Jones, the process of uncovering the stories of the Underground Railroad has been a journey of discovery that keeps revealing more tales to tell of the people who believed so strongly in the freedom for others. And as those stories are revealed, different ways to understand what happened will continue to unfold.

“History is really like a diamond,” she said. “The more you turn it, the more you’re going to see.”

Editor’s Note: Coastal Review asked Karen Willis Amspacher, executive director of Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island, to share how the tight-knit Down East Carteret County communities are coping with the deadly plane crash Sunday. Of the eight lives lost on the private plane that was returning from a duck hunting trip in Hyde County, six were Carteret County residents and two were from Pitt County.

A few days ago, no one could have ever imagined what the people of Down East would be facing. Life was slowly moving closer to “normal” as the pandemic (at least) seemed to be fading, winter was giving way to a few hints of spring and the fishermen were working on their nets, pots and boats. All was calm Sunday morning.

And then it happened, the unimaginable.

Phones and social media went wild with calls for prayer, questions of who was on the plane and what happened, where and when, all laced with a painful mixture of fear, dread, and disbelief. As the names emerged, the story unfolded and one of the most horrific moments in Down East history began to emerge.

We are now going into our fourth day of this nightmare and the reality is worse than anyone could grasp in the beginning. Each day has brought deeper heartaches as the facts have become known. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, families and neighborhoods have waited hour by hour for news from the offshore search.

For Down East, the world stopped …

Shrimper and East Carteret High School teacher Zack Davis, of Marshallberg, says it is “instinctive” for Down East people to “carry its loved ones” through times like these. He tells how we come from a long line of tragedies, from shipwrecks to hurricanes, lost loved ones and difficult times, and he is right. Since Sunday we have relived the Storm of ’33, boats sinking, men and women lost to lasting tragedies that remain etched in our collective minds and hearts. This is not our first disaster and the people Down East don’t forget.

We cannot forget. Down East people are so intertwined with one another there is no way to move too far beyond the people we have loved. We are all “kin” in ways that we cannot explain and we don’t even understand, and we don’t even try to figure it out, we just know. Our mothers and fathers were connected, and their mothers and fathers ahead of them. Generations of overlap and shared bonds define who we are, the way we hold onto each other and this place that binds us, Core Sound and the people we love.

For the communities of Atlantic, Sea Level and Cedar Island, these are their children, the boys they taught in Sunday School and took shrimping in the summer. Their families, generations deep, are grounded in their harbors, just like each community is with their own — this way of life, this place that has shaped us through the traditions that we share across the creeks and marshes of eastern Carteret County.

For Down East, one community’s burden is every community’s shared heartache. These children, and their families, are part of us too. From generation to generation we have worked together, played ball together, fished together, shrimped together, marched in the band together, raised our children together, and for many of us, we have grown old together.

It’s been said that Down East is “at its best when things are at their worst” and that is true, but this burden, this tragedy has been of such magnitude we could not have ever faced it alone. This cruel agony runs too deep in all of us.

We are amazed, overwhelmed and humbled by the outpouring from the entire county and beyond. Ribbons and school colors, pop-up fundraisers, everyone trying to do “something” to help ease the burden, show their love, and meet the needs such a tragedy creates. This has been at the scale Down East has never seen before. This too was unimaginable before Sunday.

From across the state and country, people have heard of this disaster and are offering their prayers and reminders that people really do care. In these dark days for Down East, they want to be part of the extended community that will see these families and their friends through these unknown places, and we welcome their hearts into ours. We know that we will hold strong together with the help of all who share the burden of this tremendous loss for our community.

A Down East mother who lost her child to another tragic moment once told me, “the healing is in the giving” as she and her family faced a new world beyond the pain of losing their son, their shining star and all their dreams. I have thought of those words often over the years and especially during the past four days. It IS how we heal, how we move on, how we face the future without the people we love, and in this case, these young men, who like the others we have lost too soon.

Down East has had more than its share of losses. Maybe it feels this way because we know each other too well, we are too connected, we are too engrained in each other’s lives. Maybe that’s the price we pay for being who – and whose – we are, with deep roots that have connected us, even before we were born.  Maybe …   

And if so, that is our strength and our blessing as we stand together, safe in that inheritance of love and reassurance.

***

The Core Sound Museum, with the approval of all the Down East families involved with Sunday’s plane crash, has established a Core Sound Family Fund for the victims of this tragic accident. 

This financial support will go to help meet expenses and other family needs associated with this disaster. Funds received will be held in a special agency account and disbursed as needed to each family.

Contributors will receive an authorized receipt for their nondeductible donations.  Immediate family members will receive a full accounting of monies received and disbursements made.

The museum will continue to respectfully help the people of Down East Carteret County in the weeks and months ahead. We are thankful for the outpouring of support locally and from across the region. 

Contributions can be made online or by mail to CSWM, Family Fund, P.O. Box 556, Harkers Island, NC  28531.

NAVASSA – There have been times when Al Beatty has been afraid to look at Reaves Chapel as he’s driven by.

Jesica Blake felt a swift wave of nausea when she watched the chapel, built in the mid-1800s, visibly shake as its steeple was lifted off the roof a couple of years ago.

More than one conversation between the two have started with the question, “Is it still standing?”

Remarkably, Reaves Chapel, one of the oldest African American buildings in southeastern North Carolina is, indeed, still standing after falling into dilapidation since a congregation last met within its walls more than 15 years ago.

Since then, the small chapel built by people formerly enslaved at Cedar Hill Plantation has weathered tropical storms and hurricanes. Termites have feasted on its wooden bones.

The weight of the steeple, which holds a small, but impressively heavy bell, began to cause the chapel to tilt to one side.

The race against time to restore the chapel before it toppled to the ground weighed heavy on Beatty, president of the Cedar Hill/West Bank Heritage Foundation, and Blake, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust associate director.

“It would have never survived another tropical storm,” Beatty said, surveying the chapel’s new flooring on a recent, cold February morning.

It was the first time he walked inside the chapel, its floor too rotted to safely hold a person, in more than a year.

“This is fantastic,” Beatty said, a smile beaming across his face. “It’s past great. It’s fantastic.”

Roughly half of the $1 million it will cost to restore the building, landscape the chapel’s grounds, build a separate building for restrooms and a parking lot, has been collected through fundraising efforts headed by the land trust, foundation and Historic Wilmington Foundation.

The Coastal Land Trust purchased the little more than half an acre on which the chapel now sits just off Cedar Hill Road in Navassa, the Brunswick County town nestled at the confluence of the Cape Fear and Brunswick rivers.

Ed Reaves, a former Cedar Hill Plantation slave, donated the land in 1911, which was around the time the chapel was relocated by its congregation, the members of which used logs and a team of oxen, to move it inland from the bluffs of the Cape Fear River.

The church eventually became affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal denomination and remained an AME church until its doors closed permanently in the mid-2000s.

As a child, Beatty attended the church with his family. He recalls the Easter Sunday programs when he and the other children, dressed in their Sunday best, had to recite short speeches intertwined with scripture, from the pulpit.

“Everybody had a speech,” Beatty said. “Everyone.”

Beatty helped form the Cedar Hill/West Bank Foundation in 2011 in an effort to save the chapel. The foundation officially gained nonprofit status two years later.

Early attempts to buy the chapel were unsuccessful. The land trust, which had been working with Navassa as the town began going through a process with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to remediate the former Kerr-McGee Superfund Site, eventually stepped in and offered to help pick up the cause to save the chapel, purchasing the land with a grant from the Orton Foundation.

“It’s a piece of American history that we are honored to help protect,” Blake said.

The church is being restored to how it was in 1911, when a cubby-like addition was built at the front of the church to hold a choir.

Today, the chapel’s white paint is grayed and chipped. Evidence of water damage marks parts of the ceiling and walls.

Portions of exposed, wooden frame of the building are peppered with holes gnawed by termites. “Real, old-fashioned nails,” as Beatty refers to them, still hold the frame together.

But the bones are good, a testament to the craftsmen who built the chapel more than a century ago.

Beatty said he’s yet to bring first-time visitors to the chapel who were not immediately drawn to its allure.

“The church becomes a part of them,” he said.

Balding Brothers, a Wilmington-based company that specializes in historic building restoration, is overseeing the project.

Since restoration work began late last year, the church’s foundation has been stabilized by some of the original concrete blocks that have held up the church for years. New, brick pilings have been added along the foundation’s sides.

Three stain glass windows, including a triangular-shaped window over the double-door entrance, have been removed and sent off for cleaning and restoration at a hefty price tag of $50,000.

A shipping container next to the chapel, which is enclosed temporarily by a tall, chain link fence, is used as storage for items taken out of the chapel, such as pews and the steeple bell.

Out of site of the chapel grounds, back in the woods that lead to the Cape Fear River bluffs, is the chapel cemetery.

About 10 or so headstones are in that area. More than 70 depressions in the ground signal more graves.

“We are in the process of restoring that and getting a catalog,” of those graves, Beatty said.

The organizations are working with the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office to have the chapel and its cemetery designated a state historic site, one that would eventually be tied in with nationally-recognized places of historic significance related to the Gullah Geechee.

Gullah Geechee are descendants of West Africans taken from their country and enslaved on rice, indigo and Sea Island cotton plantations of the lower Atlantic coast.

Reaves Chapel would be the northern anchor of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which encompasses 12,000 square miles of coastal area that runs up the southern Atlantic Coast from St. John’s County, Florida, to Onslow County.

Efforts are underway to connect the corridor with the East Coast Greenway in Brunswick County. The greenway is a 3,000-mile walking and biking route that runs through 15 states from Maine to Florida.

The Gullah Geechee Greenway/Blueway Heritage Trail project will be designed to intertwine outdoor activities, including walking, bicycling and paddling, with the history and culture of the Gullah Geechee.

There is also a proposal in the works to build in Navassa a cultural heritage center, a place that will further educate visitors about the history and culture of the Gullah Geechee.

Blake said the goal is to get the state to take ownership of the chapel. Ultimately, Beatty said, the plan is to get the site on the National Park Service’s National Register Historic of Historic Places.

Blake said, though lofty, she hopes the chapel restoration will be complete by year’s end.

There wasn’t much to suggest a trail that led to the message in the bottle that Steve Jarvis found Jan. 6 in the Kitty Hawk Woods Reserve at the edge of Currituck Sound.

Jarvis is the northern sites stewardship assistant with the North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve, a program of the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, a division of the Department of Environmental Quality. The reserve includes 10 sites along the state’s coast established for long-term research, education and stewardship.

The previous two days had been windy and rainy and Jarvis was walking the soundside trail, making sure there wasn’t any deadfall blocking it. He noticed what looked like it could be an unauthorized trail heading to the sound, and the retired game warden in him emerged.

“I noticed that a trail that I hadn’t noticed before and the game warden came out in me,” he said. “Anytime I see any new trail, I go look to see what’s going on down there.”

The trail, indistinct and probably not visible in the summer, looked like it may have been a dirt road at one time, but Jarvis felt it was important to make sure no one was using it.

“I was like, I’ll just walk this out and make sure somebody’s not doing something they shouldn’t be doing down here,” he said.

“I got probably within about 75 yards from the sound, and I found a scum line from a storm with a bunch of stuff washed up. And I happened to look over and I saw it. Wow, that’s a bottle with a message in it,” he recalled.

His first thought was to not open the bottle and see what kind of reaction it would get.

“Just kind of have it as a conversation piece, because I knew it would make people nuts to find a bottle with a message in it and not actually not open it,” he said.

But after conversations with his supervisor, Northern Sites Manager Eric Alnes, and with his best friend and his best friend’s wife, he changed his mind.

What he found inside was not a call for help from a stranded mariner on a deserted island. This was simply a message from a family who was curious about where the bottle might end up.

“It was kind of tough to read but I could make it out,” he said. “‘We’re a family from South Dakota on vacation in Corolla. We have six kids and we just want to know who finds this and when and where.’ They left the email address, and it was dated July 19, 2016.”

By the time Jarvis discovered the message, the Pszanka family had pretty much forgotten they had even thrown a bottle into Currituck Sound. When Mickie Pszanka told her son, Jaxson, that the bottle had been found, he was confused at first.

“I was eating dinner, and she (Jaxson’s mother) said, ‘Someone found our message in a bottle,’ and I had no clue what she was talking about, because it was such a long time ago,” Jaxson Pszanka said. “I was very surprised once I started to remember it, that someone actually found it.”

While at the time there were six children in the Pszanka family, the parents have since adopted two more and moved to Colorado. The idea of throwing a message in a bottle into Currituck Sound did not meet with universal family approval.

“One (of the children) said, ‘Mom, why do you think that’s such a good idea for us to be throwing things into the into the sound?’ And I said, ‘I guess I didn’t think about it at the time.’ The other ones thought it was really cool,” she said.

The idea was sparked by a bottle the family had found the year before.

“It was on the beach in Corolla. It was a family that was vacationing, and it didn’t go far. They were in Duck. So, we contacted them, and that’s what gave us the idea,” Mickie Pszanka said.

The bottle that Jarvis found had traveled, perhaps not as long a distance as a bottle floating on ocean currents, but the Pszankas message had managed to dodge innumerable islands in northern Currituck Sound, islets and sandbars to make the roughly 25-mile journey from Corolla to Kitty Hawk.

It’s not clear what forces drove the bottle to Kitty Hawk Woods. The most likely suspect was a hurricane. Hurricane Matthew came ashore in October 2016, and then there was Hurricane Michael in 2018 and Dorian in 2019, and there were innumerable nor’easters since the bottle was tossed.

Whatever drove the bottle to shore, when it was found, the memories returned when the email arrived.

“We didn’t hear anything for all these years,” Mickie Pszanka said. “We forgot about it. I didn’t think I’d ever hear anything of it.”

Fifty years ago, 17-year-old Kevin Duffus and his two high school buddies set off in the early morning hours of Aug. 18 from Greenville on their 10-speed bicycles, kicking off a 425-plus mile circuitous ride to the Outer Banks.

Although it lacked the death-defying drama of movie road trips, the five-day journey was a classic example of an intrepid teenage adventure that can set a young man’s path in life. For Duffus, who later became a researcher and chronicler of Outer Banks maritime history and is a contributing writer for Coastal Review, the trip charged his curiosity about the coast and doggedness to uncover its secrets.

“So generally speaking, when I look back and think about it, to me it’s pretty remarkable that was my first experience with the Outer Banks,” he said in a recent interview, “but it sort of became, you know, my future.”

It is also noteworthy because at the time, long-distance bicycling was almost nonexistent, certainly in rural northeastern North Carolina.

Back in 1971, Duffus was a senior at Rose High in Greenville, where his family had moved to two years earlier from Missouri. Even before he arrived in North Carolina, he had been intrigued with Ocracoke since watching the movie “Blackbeard’s Ghost,” loosely based on the famous pirate who was killed in waters off the island.

Shortly after moving, he read Outer Banks’ author and historian David Stick’s book, “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” and was captivated by the story of shipwrecks off the coast.

Duffus wanted to see the Outer Banks, so he persuaded his friends Gary Snyder and Bob Thurber to make it a biking expedition. The three young men already knew each well from scuba diving together, including during a trip the year before where — at Duffus’ suggestion — they snuck down to Florida during Christmas break to go cave diving. They also devoted considerable time hunting for the U-352 World War II German submarine off Cape Lookout. 

“Kevin had a very distinct love of adventure,” Thurber recalled in a recent telephone interview. “He was just very energetic and always wanted to go do things. He thought that this would be a physical challenge and a rewarding week spent on the road.”

Thurber had a yellow Schwinn 10-speed bicycle that he equipped with toe clips and saddle bags.

“We weren’t trained cyclists,” he said. “We just kind of had some bikes, they weren’t really ultralight road bikes either. They were pretty chunky.”

Snyder also had a 10-speed. Between them, Thurber recalled, they packed two tents, sleeping bags, and some food and water, with refills obtained along the way. They wore their everyday clothes and footwear but no sunglasses or even hats. Sunscreen didn’t really exist and of course, there were no cell phones.

“Imagine — we were stupid — I mean I was wearing some idiot sandals,” Thurber remembered with a laugh. “No biking pants, probably just some cargo shorts. We were not smart about this at all.”

Thurber, who is vice president of engineering for Raycom Media outside Montgomery, Alabama, said they all were fried by the sun and tortured by bugs, but they kept going and never considered giving up.

“Oh, yeah. The insects on that run up to the Outer Banks were tough,” he said. “We were kids. We were bulletproof, you know?”

The trio decided ahead of time that everyone should keep their own pace, Thurber said, which meant that for much of the riding, there was not much talking but a lot of thinking. When they were together, he said, they had an easy camaraderie and he said he doesn’t recall any arguments.

“My recollection is that the trip itself was a pretty single-minded purpose, kind of myopic,” he said, adding that no one kept a dairy. “You know, we’re going to get these miles down and put it down in the book that we did it. We were just knocking down the miles.”

Which relates to what Thurber said is his strongest memory of the trip.

“In general, it was the requirement for perseverance,” he said. “You know, going along the swamp, I was tempted to throw the bike in.”

The biggest mistake they made was going north to south, he said, which had them riding the whole way into a headwind. But just being on the bike highlighted every detail of their surroundings. As often happens after high school, the friends lost touch with each other, although Thurber and Duffus recently reconnected.

“We got to experience the smells, the sun, the wind,” Thurber said. “That kind of macro lens was incredible for me. I really enjoyed it.” Even the long stretch of miles by the bombing range was far more interesting because he could see the birds and the environment. “It was like walking on a nature trail, really.”

No doubt the bike trip was “physically brutal,” he said, but it changed his life in a positive way.

“I think it was an incredible source of self-confidence for me,” he said. “You know, ‘I can do this!’ Doing it, finishing it — I felt good about myself in that I felt that it was a win.”

Duffus, who had mapped out the route and figured out stops along the way, had focused on fulfilling two main objectives: climbing the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and then taking the ferry to Ocracoke. 

The first stop was in Pactolus, where they took a brief nap on a church porch.  Then on to Little Washington, where they were able to catch some breakfast and another brief nap, this time under a school porch.

After resuming their trek, they reached Lake Mattamuskeet Lodge by sundown, and started pitching their tents along the side of the road, Duffus recounted, “which was really kind of crazy — I couldn’t imagine doing that today.”

Soon, a friendly ranger stopped them and told them that wasn’t a great place to spend the night, and instead got them a room at the lodge, which then was still open. The young men were even served meals, along with lodge’s guests, and were able to take showers.

The ride on the next day from Engelhard to Manns Harbor on U.S. 264 was desolate, Duffus recalled. As they pedaled along the side of the open road, military jets flew low over the adjacent bombing range, dropping test bombs on targets.

After going through Manteo, the trio turned onto N.C. 12 and the northern border of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Finally at about 7 p.m., they pulled into the Oregon Inlet campground, where the exhausted boys were turned away by the park ranger because they didn’t have a reservation. Fortunately, a kind man overheard their conversation and let the boys pitch their tents on his campsite.

“Back then, I can’t say this for certain, but I don’t think that anyone had ever done a bike ride like this, at least to the Outer Banks by camping,” Duffus said. “Now you see people doing it all the time, but this is pretty revolutionary in 1971.”

People were generally very friendly and quite surprised to see three teenagers from Greenville traveling on their bikes, he said. A lot of people, especially on the ferries to Ocracoke and to Cedar Island, were curious about them and would come up and ask questions.

Back then, the ocean was visible from the highway on Hatteras Island because the dunes were lower, Duffus remembered. The villages were mostly houses with a couple of stores and a few motels. The few tourists they saw were mostly there to fish.

The barrier islands were still relatively undeveloped and uncrowded, and traffic was light.

“I convinced my friends it was going to be an easy ride because there were no hills, but I didn’t consider the Bonner bridge to be a hill. Also, this was in August and there was a southwesterly wind that was blowing like 25 to 30, right in our faces all the way to Hatteras, and then even down to Ocracoke. The headwind was just brutal.

“We parked our bikes with all of our possessions without a thought and went up that lighthouse. I mean today, you might come down and your bike wouldn’t be there. We didn’t have bike locks or anything.”

Duffus said that his great-great-grandfather was an 18-year-old Union soldier who was part of an amphibious landing on Hatteras, and he is pretty confident that his ancestor’s unit had discovered that the lighthouse was missing its Fresnel lens.

“You know, so 110 years later, I’m standing in the same spot that my great-great-grandfather was,” he said, noting the coincidence of their crossed paths and roles in the history of the lens.

Years later, Duffus tracked down the missing lens from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and wrote a book about it.

That evening they ate at the Channel Bass in Hatteras village. They took the ferry to Ocracoke and then Duffus told his friends that they had to ride 13 more miles to Ocracoke village.

“‘What!?’” they said. “They thought the trip was gonna be over.”

At the community store in Ocracoke village, Duffus innocently asked some local men on the porch where he could find the 100-foot-high cliff he saw in the movie overlooking the bay where Blackbeard was killed.

The men paused and smiled a little, and then one spoke up in a thick island brogue: 

“‘Boy, you’ve come to the wrong place. The highest place on this island is 8 feet,’” Duffus recounted. “That was sort of my indoctrination that you shouldn’t get history from movies from Hollywood.”

After high school, Duffus became passionate about sailing and worked at Raleigh’s WRAL-TV, where he eventually produced an award-winning documentary about the history of the state’s lighthouses and the lightkeepers. Duffus has since established himself as a maritime historian, producing several documentaries and writing numerous books and articles, including for Coastal Review, about North Carolina’s lighthouses, shipwrecks and Blackbeard the pirate.

In 2004, the late David Stick, who over the years had become Duffus’ mentor and friend, wrote in a letter: “I was fortunate to have been involved with Kevin when he first began his research on the Outer Banks and its lighthouses and shipwrecks, for at that time, I was considered an authority on those subjects. Years later, he is the authority to whom I must turn.”

As Duffus sees it, his career course was set before he graduated high school. 

“You know, none of that would have happened, I think, if I had not read David Stick’s book and gone on this bike ride. None of this stuff would have happened.”

In 2016, Janelle Fleming founded MERROW, the Marine Education, Research and Recovery for the Oceans Worldwide.

According to its website, the nonprofit organization based in Morehead City serves as “a call to action for the Ocean Environment” and “seeks to understand and promote educational and scientific research that benefits the oceans and the organisms that use them.”

Fleming, who has a doctorate in physical oceanography and biological oceanography from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, started a consulting company with her husband and also works as a researcher and scuba diving instructor.

“The area for citizen scientists is growing so much,” Fleming said. “People are wanting to participate, they’re wanting to do what they can, and a lot of them have a science background. Some of them don’t, but they’re very willing to work.”

MERROW encourages people of all ages to get involved in ocean recovery, and Fleming noticed how eager young people were to learn about the world while figuring out their place in it.

“We hear catastrophe stories all the time on the news, but this was a way for them to actually do something about it,” she said.

In 2019, she helped set up a North Carolina branch of SCUBAnauts, which, until then, had only ever been in Florida.

“It was kind of like the Boy Scout Sea Scouts, but more focused on scuba diving,” Fleming said. “And I just knew that that was the exact thing that I wanted to do.”

They had 10 participants throughout 2019, and now have a steady attendance of dozen kids between the ages of 12 and 16 and their parents.

“The cool thing about the program is it’s not a drop-off program,” Fleming said. “You’re actually incorporating the parents as well. So each person that participates, they need to have a parent who is also willing to do it. They don’t necessarily have to scuba dive, but they do need to be trained in terms of first aid and CPR, and everyone gets a background check following Boy Scouts’ standards.”

Bryn Fleming, 15, a SCUBAnaut First Class, was excited to join her mom.

“I was really excited about it because I would get to dive all the time,” Bryn said, “plus I’d get to spend more time with some of my friends who I don’t see as often since we don’t go to the same school. It’s really fun!”

“We have monthly meetings (where) we cover the scientific material,” Janelle said. “It’s, in general, a four-year program, because oceanography is the study of four different disciplines – more if you include everything that’s in it.”

Oceanography includes chemical, biological, physical and geological trends.

“In 2019, we started with the geological trend,” Janelle said. In 2020, they covered biological.

“This year, we’re starting with chemical oceanography. We just had our first meeting on Friday (Jan. 15).” This meeting, along with one on Jan 16, featured an introduction to chemical oceanography and swim tests.

“All of the chapters have the same sort of basic material, but then the other six months out of the year, we apply it directly to our local area,” Janelle said. “On the weekends, when hopefully everybody is available, we will either go do our cleanups or we will do other sets of training, whether it’s actually doing a dive and collecting corals or monitoring them. During the winter months, we try not to dive so much just because the water temperatures are so cold.”

Bryn’s favorite part of being involved with SCUBAnauts is being with people who also have an interest in diving.

“It’s really fun to catch up with all my friends and plan out our next dives,” she said. “I don’t get to see the other SCUBAnauts a whole lot in winter …so it’s nice to see everybody again. Plus, there’s food.”

“They learn the basics of rescue techniques, in case there are any issues underwater or above water,” Janelle said, which includes first aid CPR training, neurological O2 administration and hazardous marine life injuries. And if they’ve been out of the water for six months or more, they need to refresh their skills.

“At the end of the training, they actually become a AAUS science diver,” Janelle said. AAUS, the American Academy of Underwater Sciences, is an umbrella organization for science diving. “People who dive under their auspices can collaborate with government agencies like NOAA or the National Park Service. And they can work with other universities and other research projects through reciprocity.”

Twice a year, the SCUBAnauts will do an underwater beach cleanup that includes an above ground cleanup as they walk to the site. They often visit Radio Island, an island between Morehead City and Beaufort made out of dredge spoil, and now also features a rock jetty.

“Radio Island is frequented by quite a lot of people in the summertime and there’s often lots of trash, unfortunately,” Janelle said. “The students learn how to conduct transect and quadrat surveys, they learn the invertebrates and vertebrates, they also know how to identify the corals and whether they have stony coral tissue loss disease, and they’ve outplanted the coral and monitored them.”

These meetings have given the SCUBAnauts the opportunity to interact with a variety of marine life. “I’ve gotten to see tons of sharks and various other marine life, both at Radio and diving offshore,” Bryn said. “I actually saw a huge stingray on a night dive at Radio.”

“One experience that I had with my son just this past summer was at Radio Island,” Janelle said. “There was an octopus that was outside of the rock crevices. … My son put his hand out to just kind of see what it would do and the octopus reached a tentacle out and kind of wrapped around his finger.”

The SCUBAnauts also get to participate in CHOW, the Capitol Hill Ocean Week.

“A group that’s chosen, based on their applications and interviews, goes to Capitol Hill, and they talk to their local senators about marine issues that are important to them,” Janelle said. “They’ll meet and learn how to interact with our senators and our representatives.”

Janelle believes that even if you aren’t a diver, the more you know about ocean relief, the more you can contribute to it.

“The better educated you are on even the different techniques that scientists use, the more informed you are. And the more informed, the better able you are to make decisions,” she said.

Bryn takes environmental problems very seriously.

“(These issues) might not affect you right now, but what about in 10 years, when your waterfront property is 6 feet under water because of sea level rise?” she said. “What about when you have to pay a small fortune for edible, nonpoisonous seafood, because ocean acidification pollution has killed 90% of the world’s sea life? Try to solve the problems we’re facing now, because if you don’t, the consequences will be disastrous.”

She also believes it’s never too early for kids to start protecting the environment.

“While it’s tempting to just expect that our parents and teachers will figure out a way to protect the environment, odds are that the problems affecting the environment will still be ongoing by the time we’re old enough to vote,” she said. “We’re the people that will have to figure out what to do with the environment.”

“(Young people) are our future,” Janelle said. “And if we can be good stewards, and provide a good example or a model, then they will also be a good steward and also models for the future, for their own generation and for the generations that come after them as well.”

Former Duck town manager Chris Layton worked his first day Tuesday as Plymouth’s interim town manager, a job that has seen its share of turnover.

Layton, who was Duck town manager for nearly 20 years, is filling the role vacated Jan. 15 by interim manager Arlene Willis. The town council, during its Jan. 11 regular meeting, voted unanimously in favor of Layton taking the position, which he accepted at that time and agreed to the terms. He officially began the position at 5 p.m. Jan. 15.

“I appreciate the opportunity,” Layton said during the meeting.

As previously reported, Layton resigned his position in Duck in Currituck County July 24, 2020, after being charged July 15, 2020, with two misdemeanor counts of assault on a female. The alleged victim is the spouse of an employee of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review Online. In October, the assault case against Layton was continued to Dec. 7, 2020. The trial is now set for April 8.

The Roanoke Beacon reported Wednesday that Mayor Pro tem Deborah Brooks said Layton had been up front with the town council about the charges against Layton but the charges didn’t affect its decision.

Layton is replacing Willis who was hired in July 2020 to serve as interim town manager. She replaced Matthew Livingston, who was interim town manager from April 2019 to March 2020 and is now manager for Ayden.

Willis during the Jan. 11 meeting said that Jan. 15 would be her last day and expressed her frustration with the work environment.

“Since I stepped foot on Plymouth soil, some of the constituents, town employees, business owners and the local newspaper — and some of our very own councilmen and women — have purposely tried to sabotage me and made my life here a living hell for absolutely no reason,” she said, adding she wanted to share the “inside story.”

She listed several of what she called “incidents” that took place during her tenure, one of which occurred on her first day. Willis said she was told there was an unsafe building at 101 and 103 Water St., “declared a disaster by our former code enforcer,” prompting her to close that section of the street, which she said was not an easy decision and was not well received.

Willis went on to say that she believed it was a hostile work environment that was “intentionally created for me by some of my very own town employees, and even some of the councilmen and women that sit right here on this council.”

Willis also raised the issue of her being previously fired in October for “no reason.” Willis was fired Oct. 19 by the council during a reconvened Oct. 12 board meeting and then rehired Oct. 22 during a special meeting.

“Some of the council members were very strategic and sneaky as to how they came up with the votes to fire me,” she said. “As most of you were asking why … most of the council couldn’t give you an answer, because there was no reason other than just working and getting my job done. And I might want to say, while being a Black, African American woman, let me not leave that out. I was not only falsely accused of some trumped up charges about 101 and 103 ( E. Water St.), but fired for no reason.”

Willis was referencing comments made earlier during that Jan. 11 meeting by Police Chief Willie Williams about a situation regarding the derelict building on Water Street, which she said led to the town trying to take disciplinary action on the two. She alleged that corruption was taking place in the town, based on comments made by Williams.

Willis also alleged that she had been harassed and threatened. “I have had messages saying watch your back,” she said during the meeting.

Willis said she was going to work with a state agency investigating fraud in the federal Payroll Protection Program COVID-19 relief loans.

“So I hope to see you back in here and Plymouth, in some way,” she said.

Fired, hired again

Near the end of a remote meeting Oct. 19, 2020, Councilwoman Mary Ann Byer requested to add to the agenda a discussion regarding Willis. Byer put forth a motion to terminate Willis’ employment with the town effective immediately. No reason was given for the termination but the motion was approved in a 3-2 vote. Willis was directed to turn in all town electronic devices and not to enter any town administrative spaces to collect her belongings unless prearranged with the town clerk.

When other council members questioned the motion, Byer said the “motion stands on its own. I have no comment.”

The council then approved another motion by Byer that Joanne Floyd, the town clerk at the time, would serve as interim manager.

A few days later on Oct. 22, 2020, the town board called a special meeting at the request of Councilwoman Kim Williams and Councilwoman Donsenia Teel.

During that meeting, Teel made a motion to rehire Willis as interim manager for 16 months, contract to be negotiated, effective immediately. The motion also directed Willis to receive the same salary and be reissued town electronic devices, keys and access to town facilities, including town hall.

After a 3-3 vote on the motion, Mayor Vershumn “Shawn” Hawkins voted yes to break the tie.

He addressed the board and public listening in on the Oct. 22 meeting held online, “Unfortunately, some of us that are on the council were left out of the loop with respect to a motion that was made on this past Monday’s meeting, and the request, or the motion, that was made to terminate our then-interim town manager Arlene Willis.”

Hawkins noted that the town for the last 20 years had experienced issues with the town manager position.

“And it’s not a matter of whether or not Willis was wrong or right, I think what was wrong, with respect to the termination, was the fact that at least Willis and/or individuals from the public were not privy to knowing why Ms. Willis was actually terminated,” he said. “And I think that we do owe anyone that works for the town of Plymouth, whether it be the town manager, our public works director, our assistant manager, I think that everyone deserves a right of knowing why they’re being released.”

He added that he would hate to have such a precedent set for the town and that the turnover was discouraging to anyone who might otherwise be interested in working for the town.

“I think the way in which it was done — it was done underhanded and it was not fair, again, to the public. It was not fair to Ms. Willis and it was not fair to the council members. So with that being said, I will be voting in favor of bringing Arlene Willis back on as our interim town manager,” he said.

Byer asked the town attorney whether the council needed to go back into closed session to discuss the motion to rehire Willis. “We’re talking about legal matters here,” she said. “There’s a lot of repercussions.”

More resignations

Town attorney D. Cole Phelps resigned effective immediately Nov. 12, 2020, during a meeting that was reconvened from Nov. 9. Less than a week later Floyd, the town clerk, followed suit, although she committed to work a 30-day notice.

Floyd attempted to address the board at the Dec. 14 meeting during a discussion about a severance package for Willis.

“She made life hell for us,” Floyd said. “I mean, she was hard on us. You all need to listen to our side.”

The Roanoke Beacon reported Jan. 20 that Plymouth Police Chief Det. Frank Mitchell and Det. Sgt. Melissa Spence worked their final day Jan. 13. The newspaper reports that reasons for the detectives’ separation remained unclear and the town did not respond to Freedom of Information Act queries last week.

Mitchell and Spence both say they resigned because of “political and personal reasons …” according to the Roanoke Beacon.

Coastal Review Online reached out to the mayor, members of the council and staff but did not receive a response in time for publication of this report.

That first pass more than 200 miles above her home state seared into her memory.

It’s a mental snapshot astronaut Christina Koch fondly recalls, relishing in intricate detail North Carolina’s distinctive geographical features seen from the “Window of the World.”

Looking down from space, tracing the state’s coastline hallmarks like New River Inlet and Cape Lookout, the Interstate 40 line slicing through the state from Wilmington to the mountains – that is among Koch’s most memorable moments during her 11 months aboard the International Space Station.

“I was lucky because I did get to see the North Carolina coastline. It is such a distinctive picture,” Koch said during a recent telephone interview from her home in Galveston, Texas.

She was able to get in a quick, weekend trip to Durham to meet up with family from all over shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic seized the country.

That’s the closest she’s been to her hometown of Jacksonville since returning Feb. 6 to Earth, where she now holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman: 328 days.

When she and two other astronauts landed in a remote town in Kazakhstan, Koch had already made history when in October of last year when she took part in the first three all-female spacewalks for a combined 42 hours and 15 minutes.

Koch’s life aboard the space station was spent conducting research and experiments in biology, physical sciences, technology development and Earth science, along with daily physical workouts.

Some of the science experiments on which she focused in the orbiting lab included studying the effects of microgravity on Mizuna mustard greens, combustion, bioprinting and kidney diseases.

The space station travels at a speed of 17,500 mph, making one full orbit around Earth every 1½ hours, according to NASA.

For Koch, that translated to 5,248 orbits of the Earth and 139 million miles.

She visited the seven-windowed Cupola, where astronauts make observations, including unexpected weather events, that do not get picked up by robotic sensing platforms.

“We do see a lot of human influence on Earth,” such as haze and runoff into rivers, Koch said.

Whether astronauts aboard the space station may be seeing a change in human influence on the environment since pandemic-related shutdowns have occurred, Koch said she does not know.

The space station is equipped with numerous instruments that study the Earth, and Koch said she has no doubt those studies are looking at the effects stay-at-home orders are having on the planet.

There was just enough time between her return to Earth and when shutdowns ensued for researchers to complete a host of medical tests on Koch to evaluate the effects of long-duration spaceflight on a woman.

Koch’s body had to readjust to gravity. She walked a bit wobbly. Her head slightly bobbled like that of a baby.

“There’s a period where you feel pretty tipsy,” she said. “Our bodies adjust to what their normal is. When you float around you don’t move in a fast way.”

The 41-year-old said she’s been fortunate because she’s had no adverse medical effects.

In fact, she said, she is even more fit in some ways now than before she launched March 14, 2019.

“We actually work out on the space station for two hours every day,” she said.

She’s actually gained muscle, a testament to what the human body can endure is space.

Those tests will help NASA as it plans for the Artemis program to send the first woman and the next man to the moon by 2024 and, eventually, to Mars.

Koch attended White Oak High School in Jacksonville before being accepted to the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham.

She earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and physics and a Master of Science in electrical engineering at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

Before she was selected as an astronaut in 2013, Koch was a research associate in the U.S. Antarctic Program, a field engineer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Monitoring Division Baseline Observatory in Barrow, Alaska, and station chief of the American Samoa Observatory on Tutuila Island in the South Pacific.

Koch’s current mission – outreach – is one she can do from the comforts of her home.

She’s “focusing on the positives,” taking each day at a time in this age of a pandemic where there, like space exploration, is still much to be learned.

OCRACOKE ISLAND – Blanche Howard Joliff was a young teenager when her father, Stacy Howard, decided in 1934 that he needed another boat. He commissioned a master boatbuilder, Tom O’Neal, to begin building him a fine skiff.

The work was finished by another island boatbuilder, Homer Howard, who added a rounded cabin near the prow. Proud of his well-designed craft – a traditional deadriser with a V-shaped hull at the bow that’s flatter toward the stern – Howard gave it the name of his daughter, Blanche.

Blanche, who died in April at 98, always remembered how happy she was when her father named the boat for her, and how she loved going fishing with him. She bragged, “One day I caught 57 bluefish, and I thought I had done something.” The boat that carries her name is now an outdoor exhibit at the Ocracoke Preservation Society Museum.

Born in 1919, Blanche was delivered at home by Ocracoke’s renowned midwife, Charlotte “Miss Lot” O’Neal. She lived in her parents’ house on Howard Street until the early 1950s, when she met a young man who was looking to build a highway on the island. Upon their marriage she moved to the mainland, coming back once a month to see her family. After her husband’s death in 1994, Blanche moved back into the home on Howard Street where she grew up, where she stayed until shortly before her death.

Blanche’s father was an island fisherman. Blanche’s mother, Elizabeth Ballance Howard, also born on the island, had family connections to Hatteras Island as well.

Blanche liked to talk about what life was like back then for her and her three sisters, Leila, Etta and Lois, as they were growing up.

“Momma kept chickens,” she once said. “They ran around free, and sometimes they’d get into trouble – scratch up someone’s garden. Sometimes when we were young, Etta and I would chase them around and get them squawking. It was the best fun, but then we’d get in trouble.”

Her family ate fish, clams, turtle, chicken and vegetables. You couldn’t get fresh meat because there was no refrigeration.

“Papa had a big garden out back, with cabbage, string beans, collards and sweet potatoes. My mother made the best sweet potato pie,” she said.

One of Blanche’s favorite foods was turtle. She recalls that before they were listed as an endangered species, fishermen in the village would catch sea turtles in their nets and bring them back to the fish house at Mace Fulcher’s Community Store. They would quarter them and give each quarter to a family, who parboiled it.

“You had to cook it a good while, ’til it was tender, and then you cut the meat off the bone,” Blanche explained. “You cooked it with onion, potatoes and a little bit of salt pork. We called it turtle hash, and you had to have baked cornbread with it. You never tasted anything so good.”

The foods they did not grow came mostly from Fulcher’s Community Store, but there were other stores on the island, too. Back then, there were two or three fish houses, which also sold big blocks of ice in the days before refrigeration.

Blanche remembered the ponies that wandered around freely in the village. “Sometimes folks would ride them to the store, tying them outside while they shopped.”

Blanche played hopscotch with neighboring children, and they played in make-believe houses and kitchens, using broken dishes and making pretend desserts with red sand. She recalled pretending a piece of cedar was chicken. They also filled the tops of coffee cans with mud, let them dry, and put them together to make pretend layer cakes.

In Blanche’s early years, nearly all transportation was by water.

She recalled, “There were two freight boats, which went to little Washington (in Beaufort County) or Morehead City, and two mailboats, which came out of Beaufort, and after that from Atlantic (in Carteret County).”

Blanche’s uncle had a horse and cart, and he’d give the girls rides.

“Once, when I was about 5, I went out across the beach with my uncle and aunt to see where the ship, the Victoria S, had fetched up on a shoal,” Blanche recalled. “The ship was still in water, loaded with lumber, but it could not get off the shoal.”

The owner of the lumber, she explained, had it unloaded and stacked on the beach. He wanted to get it shipped to the mainland. Two island men got the idea that they would each buy a flatbed truck and haul the lumber from the beach to the docks where it could be shipped.

“But there wasn’t a road the whole way, so they got permission to cut through the oak and myrtle in front of Blanche’s house and make one. It wasn’t very wide, and there was deep sand. In order to get through the sand, they had to gun their engines and try to plow through it fast. One day the two trucks met head-on at the sandy stretch. This was the first road wreck on the island.”

Meanwhile, the boat her father had named for her was put to good use. For nearly 80 years, the Blanche plied the waters around Ocracoke, passing through many owners and uses. In 2006, the Blanche’s most recent owner, James Barrie Gaskill, donated the boat to the Ocracoke Preservation Society, and the work of restoring the skiff and telling its story began.

The Blanche’s history was compiled by talking to islanders and fishermen who remembered and worked on the boat.

Maurice Ballance recalled when Blanche’s father, and his uncle by marriage, had the boat built. He said that Howard used the Blanche to long-haul, a fishing method in which two boats drag a long net to shore and another boat circles around to bail the fish, for trout, spot and sea mullets.

He also did sink-netting in the ocean for bottom fish and, according to Ballance, “One time, Stacy and Murray Spencer, who was fishing with him, like to got swamped coming in. They were running before the sea. A breaker swamped her and she was half-full of water.”

Stacy later took out fishing parties – visitors to the island who wanted a real fishing experience – on the Blanche.

“That boat’s been through a lot,” mused Ballance. “It was wrecked up some during the storm of ’44, when it broke the stake it was tied to in the harbor and went into a piling. Preacher Dixon and I waded out and cut her loose and retied her, but some boards were damaged.”

After Howard died, the Blanche passed through the hands of several owners until Gaskill’s father, Lum Gaskill, took ownership and rechristened it the “Candyjoe” in honor of his grandchildren, Candy and Joe.

Vince O’Neal, who now owns the Pony Island Restaurant, remembered swimming around the Candyjoe when the boat was tied up near Lum Gaskill’s dock.

“Yeah,” admitted Vince, “we snuck up on her sometimes at night when no one was watching and jumped off. We were kids, you know.”

When Lum Gaskill died in 1975, Ballance took the Blanche to Qwawk Hammock, where he planned to use her for long-hauling. There, someone stole the battery and anchor, so Ballance abandoned his plan. The Blanche sank to the bottom of the creek, and it looked as if the boat would meet the same sad ending as many other old wooden boats.

Instead, Anthony “Moose” Mutro bought it, pulled it up from the bottom and, with his uncle, Irvin Styron, started putting the Blanche back into working shape. In 1977, Mutro transferred ownership of the Blanche to Styron, who installed a rebuilt Chrysler marine engine and added a new cabin and deck. He then put the boat to work mulleting and crabbing, always accompanied by his black Labrador retriever, Pisces.

Ocracoke fisherman Rex O’Neal recalled going crabbing with Styron. “He would go out when other fishermen couldn’t, she was such a seaworthy boat.”

 Capt. Rudy Austin added that “a lot of them would be out crabbing on the other side of the Lehigh, back in the ’80s when crabbing was good. When it got rough and the rest of us were having a hard time in our flat-bottom boats, Irvin would be riding along, crabbing at ease.”

 Irvin’s daughter, Ava often worked with her father. “I ran the boat and he pulled the pots,” she said. “One day while we were fishing pots, I looked up and there were two waterspouts out on the sound. They sat down on the water and it got real rough. I wanted to go in, but Daddy said, ‘We’re going to finish the pots – there’s only 25 left.’ Well, the waves started breaking over the boat and it stalled the engine. The boat was filling up with water. We were scrambling around, trying to get her started again. We got her running and we finished the pots, but I quit when we got back.”

She chuckled as she recalled the incident, adding that she’d quit quite a few times but always went back to work with her father.

Styron’s son, Ray inherited the Blanche upon his father’s death in 1986. He re-named her the “Shoestring,” and with the addition of a short mast and removable outriggers, used her for shrimping.

Eventually, James Barrie Gaskill acquired the Blanche, planning to use it as a pleasure boat. But instead he asked the Ocracoke Preservation Society if they would like to have the boat, and on April 29, 2006, the old deadriser officially became the property of the museum. The Blanche was placed in a cradle, a shelter was built and restoration work began.

The Blanche is now a museum exhibit, honoring both Ocracoke’s commercial fishing tradition and Joliff, the boat’s namesake.

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• Ocracoke Preservation Society

RODANTHE – Nathan Richards, head of the Marine Heritage Program at the University of North Carolina Coastal Studies Institute, is sitting next to an extraordinarily detailed drawing of the Pappy’s Lane shipwreck. Named after its location at the end of a street here, Richards and his team were recently able to eventually identify the origins of the ship, even to the date of manufacture.

The remains are not particularly old, nor was there some catastrophic moment associated with its sinking, yet the ship and the story it relates is, for Richards, a tangible piece of history that tells its own tale.

The journey to the Outer Banks and CSI began at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Richards was finishing his doctorate in 2002, concentrating in marine archaeology, and was one of the first marine archaeology doctorates the university awarded.

“My dissertation was on the phenomena of ship abandonment,” he said.

There was a job offer to work in Tasmania, based in Hobart, the largest city in the state. Before he accepted the position, though, another opportunity appeared.

“A job opened up at East Carolina University and all my professors there, and my adviser told me, in very strong terms, to apply,” he recalled.

At the time, ECU was one of the few colleges with degree program in marine archaeology. And although there has been an increase of the number of universities offering degrees in the field, according to Richards, ECU remains one of the leaders.

“There are very few universities that offer a program in marine archaeology, and even fewer, if any, offer the array of courses ECU has to offer,” he said.

ECU is the administrative campus for the Coastal Studies Institute in Wanchese. The institute was established in 2003 and includes member institutions Elizabeth City State University, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and University of North Carolina Wilmington, as well as ECU. Richards began as head of the institute’s Maritime Heritage Program in January 2011.

The narrative that archaeology presents, Richards explained, sometimes confirms what we know about history; at other times it offers something new or different to what has been believed.

“Archaeology always has to play the role of an independent test,” Richards said. “That’s not to say a historian isn’t skeptical too. But an archaeologist has to think, ‘does the evidence fit the historical narrative?’ There are sometimes things we see in the archaeological record that may suggest that the historical record is slightly different or is wrong because people write the historical record from their point of view.”

Ships’ Graveyards

For Richards, that archaeological record lies beneath the waters of the world. The lost hulls and skeletons of ships are the constructs that tell the stories of communities and societies.

“For the majority of human history, as soon as human beings have been using watercraft, they don’t tend to wreck as often as they tend to be thrown away,” he said. “It is the idea that the abandonment phenomenon … corresponds to greater changes in culture, whether it’s technological or economic or social. A new technology comes in and a whole fleet of ships get abandoned.”

Richards noted that the circumstances leading to abandonment are remarkably similar across all cultures and through history. During the Great Depression, for example, there was a tremendous number of ships that no longer had economic value.

“You have a phenomenon like the Great Depression (when) a lot of ships need to be dumped at once because we don’t want them clogging up the harbors. So, they created designated places,” he said.

Those places are ships’ graveyards, and they are surprisingly common.

“Every major commercial harbor has a graveyard. Elizabeth City has a ships’ graveyard,” he said.

Even when abandoned or consigned to a graveyard, because of how ships are constructed, they continue to tell a tale.

“Ships are such investments and they are built so well … they’re difficult to deconstruct,” Richards explained. “Ships have always been reused for things. Whether it’s sunk as a foundation to a house … or used to create the shoreline of San Francisco, you look at how they reused ships that they didn’t need.”

Because ships are often the most visible remnants of a time and place, they can reveal unexpected information and those are the stories that Richards finds fascinating.

“I’m more interested in the anthropologically oriented archaeology. Which is to say the story is really interesting. It’s a story like a history,” he said.

The Outer Banks and coastal North Carolina, with its rich maritime history, is a continuing source of material, although Richards does not do as much field work as he had in the past.

“I’m a program head here. I have a reduced teaching obligation in a formal sense. I have more of a role in having a public interaction. People from in the public come and ask for help on a project,” he said.

The public interaction, however, has led to some interesting studies for the students enrolled in the marine archaeology graduate program.

‘That (the public interaction) will often get fed to my students as a thesis idea. Their labor helps kill two birds, in a sense, helping a community and helping them get their thesis,” he said.

“My students’ (studies) are very broad. We have students working on very modern things, World War I, World War II and earlier stuff like the Civil War,” he added.

Those studies include a 2016 analysis of an attempt during World War II to create a protective arc of mines around Cape Hatteras for Allied shipping, resulting in three allied ships sinking with no report of any effect on German submarine, or U-boat, activity. A student also examined the Elizabeth City ships’ graveyard.

Currently there are several studies underway.

“We have lots of projects going on,” Richards said. “We’re finishing up Pappy’s Lane. I have a student working on Buffalo City (in mainland Dare County).”

The site, a logging company town from the 1870s until the 1950s that was once Dare County’s largest community, is now part of the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

“She’s looking at virtual recreation techniques to rebuild Buffalo City,” Richards said of the student. “Her idea is to use three-dimensional modeling to give people an idea of what that place looked like. I have a student doing a story on the dolphin fishery (at Hatteras Village). It’s not a pretty story to tell, but it’s an important one. I have a student doing a thesis on World War I off North Carolina. Another student I have is looking at the Chicamacomico Races (A Civil War incident on Hatteras Island). He’s seeing if he can determine the extent of that battlefield.”

The Outer Banks and coastal North Carolina seem to be the ideal setting for the work Richards finds interesting and important, and he addresses that idea in what he feels his students and studies can accomplish.

“I think,” he said. “This area is an excellent area for looking at the idea of maritime cultural landscapes and looking at how that has influenced people’s prosperity or economic growth and decline. That’s the great promise of a lot of this work.”

The Pappy’s Lane Wreck

Clearly visible from the shore, the Pappy’s Lane shipwreck isn’t the type of location that typically draws a lot of attention.

“It’s not the kind of site that anybody is going to go look for. You stumble upon it because you live here,” Richards said.

Yet a rusted, abandoned barge ultimately told a story steeped in history.

Located in the work zone for the proposed “jug handle” bridge that is to bypass the storm damage-prone “S-curves” of N.C. 12 north of Rodanthe, the North Carolina Department of Transportation needed to have the site researched.

Although the shipwreck was apparently recent, Richards and his team found conflicting stories about its origin.

“That whole part of the Pappy’s Lane story was that it was a barge, and there were all kinds of different stories and that there was something deeper, some other story or stories to get at,” Richards said.

What followed was a search for facts that sounded like the plot of a mystery novel.

The wreck first appeared on nautical charts in 1969.

“That doesn’t mean it first appeared in 1969, but it had to be there in 1969,” Richards said.

Visits to the Outer Banks History Center revealed photos taken over many years showing the wreck’s superstructure as it gradually deteriorated.

At first, Richards thought the wreck might have been a converted Coast Guard buoy tender or possibly one of the ocean barges used for the construction of the Panama Canal. A team of interns, however, spending their time in the shallow but cold waters of Pamlico Sound meticulously measuring the wreck, ruled out both possibilities.

The interns, however, did notice a very distinctive feature on the stern: skegs, or fins, that would have housed two propellers.

That was the key to the discovery.

The ship, as it turned out, was a type of World War II military craft capable of operating close to shore. But it wasn’t immediately clear whether it was an LCI, or Landing Craft Infantry, or an LCS, or Landing Craft Support.

LCIs could bring an entire company of infantrymen ashore. But because these vessels were only lightly armed, it quickly became apparent that sending men onto a beach required close artillery support. LCS’s used the same LCI design but were heavily armed, carrying more armament into battle than any other ship of their size.

Further research revealed that the Pappy’s Lane wreck was the LCS (L)(3)-123, launched in November 1944 and built in Neponset, Massachusetts, by George Lawley & Son, the creator of the LCI and LCS designs.

After serving throughout the Pacific, the ship was sold as surplus in 1947 to the Hunt Oil Co. of Hampton, Virginia, which converted it to a fuel barge.

The ship ran aground in 1969 during an unsuccessful attempt to refloat two gravel barges that were hauling stone for the construction of N.C. 12 on Hatteras Island. Refloating and salvaging the ship would have cost more than the value of the craft and it was abandoned, Richards explained.

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• Coastal Studies Institute

NEWPORT – Brooke Breen moves through the Outer Banks Wildlife Shelter swiftly, her movements careful and measured as she cups a baby bird in her hands. As an experienced wildlife rehabilitator and the shelter’s new executive director, she knows time is of the essence.

“It’s just like an emergency room, you never know,” says Breen. “It’s always going to be something.”

Just a little while ago, someone dropped off two abandoned grackle chicks. One had already died. Breen rushes to the second one to the baby bird nursery for a quick meal of Pedialyte, which is full of electrolytes a hurt bird would need.

“You’re dealing with a live creature that’s sustained some sort of trauma,” she says. “First thing they do to you in a hospital is give you an IV, same principle applies.”

Saving baby birds is just one event in the day in the life of the shelter’s new executive director, a role that keeps Breen on her toes and working overtime.

“This is my sole focus. Technically, I’m here four days a week, but usually its six,” she says.

As a mother to an almost two-year-old son, Breen, 39, has her hands full at home and in the shelter. Fortunately, she has two decades of experience working with wildlife and a bachelor’s degree from North Carolina State University in zoology to help her out.

Breen has a strong connection with the community, and still lives in the house she grew up in Emerald Isle. Her father, Russell Covert, was a longtime teacher at White Oak Elementary School in nearby Cape Carteret, and her mother, Christine, was an assistant principal in Craven County.

She says her love of wildlife started early, and that she did not choose animals.

“They chose me,” she says. “I would stumble across them and I just kind of ignored it and played it off as long as I could.”

Compelled to help animals, Breen began volunteering at the shelter at the age of 17 as a junior bird feeder. Over the years, she continued to volunteer or work part-time at the shelter, even while working as an emergency dispatcher, chemistry teaching assistant at Carteret County Community College and silversmith apprentice, among other jobs. She became the executive director of this sprawling, two-acre compound in January.

“I’ve worked my whole adult life to be able to have this opportunity,” she says. The goal of the nonprofit is to care for injured, sick and orphaned wildlife, rehabilitate them and release them back into the wild. The shelter serves a variety of species, including birds, like owls and pelicans, reptiles, like turtles, and small mammals, like rabbits.

Occasionally, an animal may be too permanently injured to be released. The shelter cares for them and uses them for educational purposes. The shelter hosts summer art and wildlife camps for children, where they can learn about the natural world.

Breen says she loves the job of running the place and that she’s fortunate her work is her passion. “Some people, this is what they’re supposed to do,” she says.

Breen has a deep connection with the animals she cares for. That was apparent with Phoenix, an injured peregrine falcon and a permanent resident that recently died.

“I started working with him when I was 18 years old,” Breen says, as she tears up a bit. “We knew each other for a very long time and he was a good friend.”

She adds that she and her staff of four also take animals home on a regular basis to give them the around-the-clock care they need.

“I’ve had to go home with 20-something possums,” Breen says, “that have to be tube-fed every three hours.”

Some animals may die during rehabilitation or may have to be euthanized due to extensive injuries. However, Breen says she has never turned an animal away from the shelter. The shelter released about half of the 1,300 animals it received last year, a rate Breen says is good given the precarious state many animals arrive in and the delicate nature of local species, especially water birds.

The community has helped the shelter rehabilitate animals. For example, Lowe’s Food in Cape Carteret donates day-old meat, the boy scouts have held donation drives and cleaned up the nature trails and a church group once redid the shelter’s floors. Breen says she’s grateful for the effort the community has put in and that the shelter still needs as much help as it can get.

“The more volunteers that we have to support the staff members, the more time that the staff members, who have all this expertise in animal medicine, are able to spend with the patient,” she says.

The care of baby birds in the spring highlights the shelter’s need for extra hands.

“Baby birds have to be fed every half an hour from sun up to sun down,” she says. That’s 24 hand-feedings for each bird, every day.

In addition to volunteers, she says, the shelter could use donations, whether its monetary, cleaning supplies or frozen meat.

Fish, she says, is a particular need that is hard to meet.

“Pelicans will eat their weight in fish every day,” she says. “If we’ve got 10 pelicans, that’s a whole lot of fish.”

Breen says one of her biggest challenges coming into directorship was making community members aware of the shelter’s existence, prompting her to start a Facebook page for the shelter.

“This is our expertise. We want to help these animals and we want them to know that we are in the community,” she says.

When she’s not on the phone, making connections within the community, or in Raleigh, meeting with wildlife officials, or in the outdoor enclosures, checking on opossums for release, Breen says she likes to take a 20-minute break by the pond every once in a while to escape the constant noise of the shelter.

There were times, Breen says, when she tried to fight the urge to care for animals. She says they kept finding to her.

“They still come to me,” she says with a laugh. “I guess I’ve got to kind of stick with it.”

HARLOWE — Gene Huntsman had to check the weather forecast before he’d agree to a date for an interview about his impending induction into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, North Carolina’s top civilian honor.

“The first rule of retirement is not to do anything that interferes with fishing,” said the retired National Marine Fisheries Service biologist. “OK. Wednesday looks good. North wind, and maybe thunderstorms.”

It worked out just as planned; it was foggy, misty and cool that Wednesday morning, and Gene and Susan, his wife and fellow honoree, sat amiably and chatted happily for 90 minutes. But presumably, the weather won’t dictate whether the Huntsmans will show up for their induction ceremony, which is Sunday at 3 p.m. at The Train Depot in Morehead City. One thing is certain: they won’t have any trouble getting there, no matter what obstacles might be in the path; they are, in every sense of the word, trailblazers, and that’s precisely why they got nominated for the award by the Carteret County Wildlife Club and approved by Gov. Pat McCrory.

Bob Simpson, longtime club member and family friend, and for decades the state’s premier outdoor writer at the Raleigh News & Observer, put it this way in his nomination letter:

“Possibly the best known of their accomplishments would be their heroic efforts establishing the nationally recognized Neusiok hiking trail, 22-plus miles of public pathway pushing through seemingly impenetrable wilderness regions.”

Neusiok Trail

The trail, which runs from the Neuse River to the Newport River in the Croatan National Forest, was recently recognized by the state as an outstanding segment of the Mountains-to-the-Sea Trail.

“Consider for a moment the effort required to find and create over 22 miles of trail,” Simpson continued in his letter, “convince associates to explore, mark and clear a pathway through dense forest laden with fallen trees, rotting logs, dead branches, dense entanglements of thorn-laden devils claw, assortments of vine, while being limited to the use of hand ax, saws and machetes, while relying on spinal and leg muscles and mud-laden, failing feet, while exploring potential routes through dark, dense forest, wading creeks, skirting swamp, seeking higher grounds, followed by the toting of timbers and bridging material before the actual  construction could  begin.”

Seated in their rustic home on a seven-acre plot of woods adjacent to the Croatan National Forest near Clubfoot Creek in Harlowe in Craven County, the Huntsmans insisted they weren’t heroic, but grudgingly acknowledged that the task was as difficult, in many places, as Simpson indicated.

“We mostly used machetes to hack through at first, and it was very slow going, very tough,” Susan recalled of the beginning of the effort, back in the early 1970s.

“We’d send Mary (Bob Simpson’s wife) out ahead with a compass reading and a flag attached to a tall stick, and she’d walk until we couldn’t see her, and then we’d chop to the flag, and then we’d do it again, and again.” Gene said.

Sometimes, Susan added, “We’d blow bugles to stay in touch. We did anything that worked.”

Susan often carried cooking supplies and food for miles to feed the hungry volunteer workers.

They and other Carteret Wildlife Club members toted lumber, thousands and thousands of two-by-sixes, for long stretches to form a stable path through the wettest areas.

They got grants from the state and from the American Hiking Association. They sought and received donations. It was a consuming passion. They convinced the forest service it was a worthy thing, necessary, important.

When bridges were needed to cross streams in areas too remote to get the lumber in by foot, the Huntsmans and the club somehow convinced the Marine Corps to fly tons of boards in by helicopter.

“They thought we were crazy when we asked them to do that,” Gene said. “They said, ‘No, no, no.’ But we talked to a colonel and eventually they agreed, and we are forever grateful.”

It took about five years, until 1976, to get the trail mostly complete, and the Huntsmans credit the National Forest Service for its cooperation and help. They also remember, however, when the forest service burned a couple of the shelters the club had built for hikers who wanted to rest or even spend the night.

“They were doing a controlled burn and they forgot they were there,” Gene recalled. “Whoops.

But they bought what we needed to rebuild them.”

Raving Success

Almost from its first opening, the Neusiok was a raving success. Susan said there are log books in the shelter signed by folks from all over the world, particularly Canada and Germany. Almost all are highly complimentary.

“It’s really a winter hiking trail,” Gene said. “When it’s too cold to do the Appalachian Trail, people come here. And it’s a great trail. It goes through every type of coastal habitat imaginable: salt marshes, cypress swamps, longleaf pine forests and pocosins. You can do the whole thing at once, but most don’t. It’s challenging, but not impossible for casual hikers. You can do a segment, just a nice afternoon in the forest. And the three shelters are spread out so you can just do one segment at a time. You don’t have to carry your whole house on your back.”

There is a source of water and a place to have a fire at each shelter.

The idea for the trail started, Gene said, when the son of a friend asked him about the best places to hike in the eastern part of the state. As members of the wildlife club since 1970, the Huntsman knew something about local trails.

“I remember I told him there were lots of nice logging roads to walk in the Croatan,” Gene said. “And he told me he didn’t want to walk on roads, he wanted to hike trails. And that’s when I realized that I didn’t think I’d been around a national forest that didn’t have hiking trails. So the club got involved and we started working with the forest service.”

The members did not, he said, have enough sense to think it was impossible. And it wasn’t. One of the goals was, of course, to simply provide a great trail in a national forest that badly needed one. But the ulterior motive, Gene admits, was always to get people out in the woods, to learn to appreciate them as the club members did, and to value them and the conservation values that are instilled simply by being in nature.

“That’s the real reason, in a nutshell,” he said.

Love of Nature

The Huntsmans came by this quest, well, naturally. Gene grew up in East St. Louis, on the Illinois side, and recalls spending lots of time outdoors as a boy, particularly after his father bought a farm in 1948. The family lived there for a time, and Gene’s love for the outdoors was forever cemented.

Susan was born and raised in England, where her family lived on 13 acres, and she was always fascinated by nature and drawn to the ocean.

They met while undergraduate students at Cornell University, Gene studying fisheries biology, Sue studying biochemistry. They got married in 1963. From there, both went to Iowa State University, where Gene earned his masters and Ph.D. in fishery biology. Susan got her Ph.D. in botany there.

But they knew they didn’t want to stay in Iowa. Gene recalls measuring, one winter, the ground frozen 36 inches deep. The toilet stopped working. It was not pleasant, even for grad students, who generally are accustomed to relative deprivation.

Eventually, they made their way to the University of Miami, where they studied marine biology at what is now the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Florida wasn’t right for the couple either. Gene calls it boring. The weather was always the same, and it took too long to get anywhere else from Miami.

Gene had read The Old Man and the Boy, a classic Robert Ruark novel, first published in 1957, about growing up in the Southport area of North Carolina. Ruark, a journalist, author and hunter, made North Carolina seem like a good place to call home for outdoorsy types. The Huntsmans looked for jobs at the marine labs near Beaufort.

Gene ended up at NMFS on Pivers Island in Beaufort in 1967, working in its menhaden program and later heading up crucial reef fish work that eventually led to national efforts to save stocks of fish like snapper and grouper. Susan landed first at the Duke Marine Lab nearby, working with renowned oceanographer Richard Barber. Eventually, she moved to the NMFS lab. She specialized in trace metals in phytoplankton, the building block of much marine life. She’s also retired.

Ford “Bud” Cross, a former NMFS-Beaufort Lab director and a close friend, said the Huntsmans’ honors are richly deserved, even based only on the work they did at the lab.

Groundbreaking Work

Gene’s reef fish work was groundbreaking for the management of the species, Cross said. He combined surveys of head boats and recreational and commercial fishermen with analytics and fisheries population models. It had never been done before, Cross said, and has since been used by regional fisheries managers to develop plans to preserve and enhance the commercially and recreationally valuable species.

Susan, Cross said, did equally groundbreaking work to characterize the chemical speciation – when it’s toxic and when it’s not – of heavy metals in the water, such as copper. The idea was to determine the effects on phytoplankton and other marine organisms. “It was and is very important work that really changed the thinking,” he said.

Gene and Susan, 75 and 74 respectively, have lived in their Harlowe home since 1969. They have a couple of horses, lots of chickens, a year-round garden and two dogs, Pybr, a Welsh Springer spaniel, and Cadger, a Gordon setter. Both run happily outside but settle down peacefully at their owners’ sides in the house. It’s a picture of woodsy tranquility, with guns and all the other accoutrements of outdoor life on shelves and in nooks and crannies everywhere one looks.

Susan said Gene – true to his penchant for checking the weather before scheduling any lengthy indoor activity – can’t stand to be inside or any length of time. “He’s always in the garden, always, if he’s not out fishing or hunting,” she said.

Hunting remains one of Gene’s great joys. He likes woodcock hunting. It’s a challenge, he said, in part because they’re tiny birds. Susan isn’t so fond of eating them, though. But hunting is a big part of what led him and others in the Carteret County Wildlife Club to embark on creation of yet another Croatan National Forest hiking trail, the Weetock.

It’s basically a circle, close to 11 miles long. It begins (or ends) on N.C. 58 just south of the Hillfield Road, heads west for almost two miles on low bluffs along Hunters Creek, then proceeds mostly north, somewhat paralleling the White Oak River, for more than five miles to Haywood Landing. The last (or first) section traverses bluffs above Holston Creek about 3.5 miles east to the junction of N.C. 58 and the Haywood Landing Road.

It’s an area where Gene frequently hunted, and that’s when the idea hit him. “It’s much more open, not as dense as the Neusiok, and it was easy to envision a trail there,” Gene said. “Plus, it’s in an area that’s really growing in population, and there was a lot of demand for a trail.”

Again, too, there was that philosophical goal of simply getting people out in the woods, in nature’s glory, and to encourage them to be good stewards.

Gene still hikes, but he concedes he’s not quite as limber as he once was, and he also says he’s never been one of those “carry your house on your back” hikers. He’s always been more about making that possible, in the Croatan, for those who desire to take advantage of the opportunity.

He and Susan are still involved in the wildlife club, which also promotes hunting safety, and stay quite busy on their stunningly beautiful property.

Fun Life

It’s been a fun life, lived to the fullest, and while both defer credit for their accomplishments to the many who have helped, Gene and Susan both ended the interview with a quiet, partial retraction of their statements, at the outset of the talk, that they didn’t really know what they had done to deserve induction into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. It’s an honor previously bestowed upon their great friend, Simpson.

“We certainly couldn’t have done any of this alone, by any means,” Gene said. “But I will say I’m proud that we all got it done.”

Simpson, in his nomination, also noted that the Huntsmans’ contributions to the state, nation and people also “include scores of other philanthropic works, including organizing the building and distribution of various forms of bird houses, including wood duck, owl and bluebird nesting sites, insect-devouring bat houses by the score, constructed by and sold at cost (and in demand) by assorted conservation organizations, garden clubs, scouting groups and individuals.

“Unselfish, honest, generous to a fault, selected as non-compensated consultants to several national and regional educational and conservation organizations, the Huntsmans have proven themselves among the most unselfish assets within this state and nation,” Simpson concluded.

To Learn More

• Order of the Longleaf Pine
• Carteret Wildlife Club
• Neusiok Trail
• Weetock Trail

Reprinted from The Island Free Press

FRISCO — “This is a hobby that’s gotten out of hand,” Lou Browning, a longtime Hatteras Island resident, jokes of his work. “And it’s an expensive hobby.”

All joking aside though, Browning has spent a lot of his time—and a whole lot of his money—over the past few years performing a valuable service to the non-human residents of the Outer Banks.

He is the island’s only federally permitted wildlife rehabilitator, and one of just two active federally-permitted rehabbers in northeastern North Carolina. He spends his days rehabilitating ill and injured birds and reptiles at his Hatteras Island Wildlife Rescue Center so that they can be re-released into the wild.

Browning himself is an intelligent and fascinating person. Something of a Renaissance man, he has an impressive cache of knowledge on a diverse range of subjects.

He is an engineer, an artist, a nature enthusiast and a scientist. He has worked as a commercial fisherman, a diver for the N.C. Aquarium, a sculptor and a co-owner of Browning Artworks, a gallery he owned and operated for 20 years with his artist wife, Linda.

And about 10 years ago, he added wildlife rehabilitator to his repertoire.

Browning began the process by getting a state permit that allowed him to work with small mammals, reptiles and non-migratory birds — working with migratory birds requires a federal permit.

He worked under that permit for a while, honing his skills and expanding his knowledge of the animals and the process of rehabilitation.

But, since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considers all bird species indigenous to the United States as migratory, the state permit left Browning legally unable to work with the majority of avian islanders.

And because the only federal permit-holder in the area, Elizabeth Hanrahan, had moved from Ocracoke to Edenton, Browning found himself driving as much, or more, than rehabbing.

It got to the point where he had two viable options: He could either get a federal permit himself, or, he could continue transporting all migratory birds to Hanrahan, which, probably sooner rather than later, would have left him bankrupt with a carbon footprint the size of East Asia.

So, he began the arduous process of becoming a federally-licensed rehabber.

Now, getting a federal rehabilitation permit is sort of like getting an acceptance to Harvard—it isn’t easy to come by, and once you get it, things don’t necessarily get easier.

In order to be eligible for a federal permit, applicants must spend at least one year as an apprentice to a federally-licensed rehabber and must log a certain number of hours.

When they apply, they have to submit a letter of recommendation from the federal permit-holder stating that the applicant is capable and worthy of the responsibility, a letter of recommendation from a government agency and a letter from a veterinarian stating that he or she is willing to work with the candidate.

On top of that, the applicant needs to demonstrate education above and beyond the minimum requirements and is required to have built penning up to federal standards.

And even then, even if the applicant does all that, he or she isn’t guaranteed a permit.

Well, Browning did all of that.

He said he had no trouble getting his letters.

Hanrahan, with whom he had apprenticed, was more than happy to comply. The National Park Service, recognizing the need for a rehabber on the island, wrote him a letter of recommendation and the veterinarians at Roanoke Island Animal Clinic happily agreed to work with Browning when he needed it.

Browning also took supplemental avian courses, and he updated the pens on his spacious, secluded land in the Frisco woods to meet federal standards, including building a 12-by-10-by- 30-foot flight cage, built entirely of wood (mesh and metal will damage the birds’ wings during their rehab).

In the end, his efforts paid off. Browning got his permit in February 2008, and that’s when the really difficult work began.

He gets calls from just about everybody—the Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the SPCA, the county sheriff’s department and individuals—and with very few exceptions, he always goes and gets the animal in question.

Travel is a necessary part of the job, but it’s the most time-consuming and expensive part.

Browning says that of all his expenses—medicines, equipment, vet visits, specialized foods and so on—it is travel that eats up more of his budget, which is 100 percent donation-supported, than anything else.

The animals he receives fall into two basic categories — ill and injured — and the cases he accepts are about half-and-half.

Of the two, illness, he says, is the more difficult to diagnose. Even for trained veterinarians, diagnosing illnesses in wild animals is tough. They can’t talk to you, and their maladies are less widely understood than those of domesticated animals.

This is particularly true of birds, which engage in a practice known as “masking.”

A natural adaptation as a defense against predation, birds will intentionally hide, or mask, illnesses in an effort to appear strong enough to fend off predators. They often appear perfectly healthy right up until the moment they collapse.

While most cases of illness are difficult to diagnose, others are easy to spot and are the result of natural cycles—nature’s way of maintaining the population of a given species.

Browning cited juvenile gannets as an example.

He said that he got young gannets all summer, “sick and emaciated because they didn’t migrate north.”

“It’s just nature,” he said.

Injuries are different.

“Trauma cases are the easiest to diagnose for a lay person,” he admits, “which I am.”

Because injuries are usually evident, they make the fundamental questions—does this animal go to the vet, does it go through rehab or does it get euthanized?—easier to answer.

Unfortunately, injuries also, usually result from human interaction.

Browning said that he frequently gets animals that have been hit by cars, have ingested hooks or have gotten tangled up in garbage, abandoned nets and fishing line.

The monofilament fishing line—mono, as it is more commonly known—has become a big problem, he said.

Left on beaches and in the water, animals get tangled in the line, and, while struggling to get free, inadvertently tighten the line around their limbs and body parts, which then cuts off circulation, sometimes causing amputation, and triggers a flood of lactic acid, which leads to acidosis—a drastic alteration of body pH that the animal cannot recover from on its own.

Even animals that have been cut loose from mono, nets or garbage should be taken to a rehabber, because acidosis, if left untreated will, in most cases, sign an animal’s death warrant.

Because of the human aspect involved in most trauma cases, they are the ones in which Browning takes the most pride.

And though he concedes that “We could do better in terms of what we leave laying around,” Browning is as practical as he is intelligent.

He maintains a realistic grasp on the nuances of nature, and he does his work without the slightest hint of superiority or judgment.

“Nobody meant for that to happen,” he says, “but it did.”

Being able to do his part to help maintain the balance between man and nature, he says, “[is] what I feel best about.”

Part of what makes Browning’s job so tough is adhering to the “cardinal rule” of rehabilitation— never, ever, tame an animal.

“The idea is that you’re not getting animals for pets,” Browning explains. “The idea is that you keep them wild, rehab them and get them back to their home.”

That may sound easy enough, but if you love animals—and, let’s be honest, you have to love animals to be a rehabber—it can be difficult to maintain that professional distance.

It takes a lot of self-control, but Browning respects the animals’ right to remain wild—and he keeps several pets around to help him resist the urge.

The summer and fall are busy seasons, and Browning is the only bird rehabber around. So there will most likely be more soon.

And that’s just fine by Browning.

“This is my passion,” he says.

Find an Injured Animal?

If you find or see an ill or injured animal on the Outer Banks, don’t hesitate to contact Browning at 252-475-4217.

Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation is 100 percent donation supported. Donations can be sent to PO Box 216, Frisco, 27936.

Reprinted with permission from Susan’s Blogue

Louis T. Moore and Lorna Doone. Photo courtesy of Peggy Moore Perdew.

“Trees are a God-given asset which require a century to mature, and which can be destroyed within a half hour when there is a plan to do so.” — Louis T. Moore

WILMINGTON — Louis T. Moore (1885-1961) had a lifelong fascination with trees and was a pioneer in their conservation. His interest sprang from his sensitivity towards natural beauty that colored his career green long before the word took on its present meaning.

The Wilmington native’s love of trees was encouraged during his college years at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill when William Chambers Coker, the legendary tree enthusiast, was teaching botany and creating the University of North Carolina’s Coker Arboretum.

Moore returned to his hometown in 1906 and became city editor of the Wilmington Dispatch. Due to an earlier bout with polio that had left him with a paralyzed foot, he remained in Wilmington during World War I.

Named as secretary of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce in 1921, Moore worked tirelessly for the material good of the sleepy North Carolina port by waging campaigns to further the regional economy.

He lobbied to deepen the Cape Fear River channel, dredge an Intracoastal Waterway link, improve connecting corridors and build the city’s first river bridge. Through his speeches, voluminous correspondences and national magazine articles he recruited businesses to the area. His efforts helped existing institutions, too, like maritime shipping companies and the mighty Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, headquartered in Wilmington throughout his career.

While the business side of Moore entailed preserving the area’s legacy of commercial strength, the poet within studied and celebrated its various natural wonders like few people had before him. Many of the thousand panoramic photographs he took from 1921 to 1939 capture southeastern North Carolina’s lush environment. Though trees would become his focus, other living treasures caught his eye, too. The most unusual specimen was the carnivorous Venus flytrap, which he photographed and championed long before measures were taken for its protection. His steady efforts helped fuel a Cape Fear Garden Club drive during the 1950s to outlaw commercial sales of the plant.

The grand old trees of Hilton where Cornelius Harnett’s home “Maynard” once stood. Photo: N.C. Dept. of Conservation and Development.

The trees of Market Street, circa 1920. Photo: Fales Collection, New Hanover County Library.

Moore also wrote about the beauty of daffodils, camellias and azaleas, but it was the subject of trees that caused him to become enflamed. If anything other than an act of nature felled one of them, Moore had a tendency to spew words like a sawmill discharging wood chips. Trees were far more than regal beauty and grace to him. They marked time for us as humans and were community treasures. The oldest trees are silent witnesses to centuries of change, drama and, sometimes, mindless development. A precious few seem to become characters in the tale of the lower Cape Fear.

Moore’s loudest, longest tree campaign came about in an attempt to save hundreds of live oaks that once graced Wilmington’s downtown avenues. By the late 1940s, Third Street, a leg of U.S. 421, still boasted some grand oaks, but heavy oil truck traffic and a grid of utility poles had further compromised their aesthetic contributions. Moore and his allies called the byway “Gasoline Alley” and “South Pole Street.” Market Street, an intersecting east-west corridor, was another proverbial tree-lined boulevard until city fathers voted to widen it, and this raised Moore’s ire as well.

Moore and a handful of fellow progressive thinkers went on the warpath. “I remember how upset Daddy was when they cut down the pretty trees in the plaza on South Third Street and Market Street,” said Moore’s daughter, Peggy M. Perdew, in 2008. “I thought he was going to have a stroke. One of Mother’s friends watched him talking about this occasion and said it was ‘just like witnessing the eruption of Mt. Etna.’”

Operating as chairman of the New Hanover County Historical Society, Moore went before a joint meeting of the N. C. Highway Commission and Wilmington City Council to protest. He called the officials “dictators,” as a large crowd cheered him on and as he accused the antagonists of having “no interest in the community.” Moore said their disregard for trees was turning South Third Street into a utility pole graveyard.

Moore, who wasn’t nicknamed “Bully” for nothing, continued to chide the councilmen by distributing the following “anonymous” poem. (With apologies to Joyce Kilmer).

“I think that I shall never see,

A councilman who loves a tree.

Trees whose beauty add renown

To the fair name of our town.

For years they’ve stood through sun and rain

Yet for their life we plead in vain.

Well, only God can make a tree,

But councilmen are picked by fools like me.”

Resolute in posture and spirit, Louis T. Moore stands at Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington, one of his favorite tree-laden spots. Photo: Fales Collection, New Hanover County Public Library.

Louis T. Moore turned 64 in 1949, a year in which he spent volunteer civic service hours learning what other cities were doing to address the problem of unnecessary tree removal. As a veteran researcher and freelance journalist, he had a wide network of contacts and soon discovered that Charleston had paid $3,300 to save the “Ashley Avenue Oak,” a 300-year old tree that would die of old age in about 1973. He also publicized the fact that New York City was going on the tree offense by encouraging tree plantings. Eight trees had recently been planted at Rockefeller Center and the idea captured Moore’s imagination. He later suggested that the Wilmington City Council begin celebrating an annual “Tree Planting Week,” and form a tree commission to “protect existing trees and to establish a program of ‘a tree planted for every one removed.’”

Moore continued his fight against what he called “horticultural murder” throughout his golden years, and his most dramatic battle occurred in 1950. Accompanied by friends who shared his love for the look of old Wilmington, Wallace Murchison, Burke H. Bridgers, and U. B. Ellis, Moore engaged in a two-hour battle with city council that became “hot and personal.” A large audience applauded loudly and long every time Moore scored a point for trees and they clapped like thunder when he accused the officials of “out-Stalining Stalin!”

Despite everyone’s efforts, 500 to 1,000 live oaks that ranged from mature to stately were ruthlessly felled from 1945 through 1950 along Third and Market streets in order to widen the roadbeds for increased traffic. Moore’s requests for the development of alternate routes were barely acknowledged. Rerouting commercial traffic alone could have saved the trees for another 30 years. “One is forced to speculate what other places in the U.S. would have permitted such wholesale demolition of trees,” wrote Moore to a local newspaper editor.

Then, in 1958, city government systematically destroyed an additional 600 trees following Hurricane Helene’s near miss on Sept. 26. Wind gusts up to 160 miles per hour and eight inches of rain had toppled many long-standing stalwarts, but the city manager subsequently ordered the demolition simply because he did not want to deal with downed utility lines in the event of another hurricane. “Many homes were without power of communication. It caused a tremendous inconvenience,” was virtually all the city manager could say in defense of his actions.

Louis Moore took this photo of the trees at Greenfield Lake in Wilmington. Photo: New Hanover County Library.

Louis T. Moore’s last epic battle as a tree saver occurred in 1959. Grand live oaks that sat along Market Street north of downtown where the handsome Kenan Houses mark the entrance to Carolina Heights were in danger. The gracious two-lane street would eventually be compressed into the present four-lane road, but thanks to Moore and many others after him, at least some of the live oaks survived. Moore decried the plan and called for a city-ordained conservation program to protect existing trees and to establish a replanting program to make up for those already destroyed.

“The simple fact that New York City is now planting 1,800 trees along its principal avenues, costing approximately $100 each, furnishes a splendid example which Wilmington well could follow with a program of replacement,” he told the mayor and city council members. “This is in rather marked and decided contrast with the oft-repeated information seen in our local press: ‘Trees Will Be Removed.’ Trees are a God-given asset which require a century to mature, and which can be destroyed within a half hour when there is a plan to do so.”

Moore undoubtedly made a difference. The trees that remain on Third Street and along Market Street, stand in part because of his efforts. He raised awareness and caused a change in attitude toward preserving trees. By influencing the actions of those in power and of social prominence, Moore prevented further loss of these arboreal resources and secured their place of importance in the coastal city.

In addition to the actual trees, he saved images of them in many photographs. Some, like the World’s Largest Living Christmas Tree have survived, but look much different today. The Dram Tree, the trees of Greenfield, the Washington Oak, the Airlie Oak, the dogwoods at Oakdale Cemetery and many live oaks at Orton Plantation are just a few of the grand old trees he celebrated through photography. Moore also invited accomplished photographers like John Hemmer to visit Wilmington and take photos of our area to distribute in other parts of the state and to include in national magazine articles. Either way, Louis T. Moore was a preservationist before the word came into common use.

This article first appeared in the March 2009 issue of Wrightsville Beach Magazine.