VOLUME XX NO. 48
C : M3EES ENJOYING
HATTERAS ISLAND
AND ITS PEOPLE
Navy Workers Now in Circulation,
Adding Nfiw Interest to the
General Activity
By BEN DIXON MACNEILL
With their first off-duty week
end on Hatteras Island members
of the newly arrived detachment
of 151 Seabees have had their first
opportunity to look around and get
their bearings, see how they like
the Island—and for the Islandei
to see how they are going to like
the Seabees. Altogether it looks
like it is going to be a right satis
factory arrangement all around.
Take Tandy, and take Deputy
Sheriff Raymond Basnett. Mr.
Tandy wondered how many Satur
day nights his recreation would
last—and after the first Saturday
night and the second he has come
to the delighted conclusion that it
would be a nice world if every
body in it was like like these Sea
bees. “The most friendly and the
most orderly crowd he has ever
had inside his doors,” he says. And
even “the old man,” who is Lieut.
W. N. Wenke, commander, aged
25, comes in and dances a little—
and see that his ‘.boys” some of
them near twice his age are far
ing alright.
And take the Sheriff. “If every
body was like these boys have
been since I’ve been here I’d be
just plain out of a job,” says Ray
mond Basnett. “Or just serving
summonses for the jury to go off
to the county seat and figure out
whether people up there are guilty
of anything. They’re sure a nice
bunch of boys.”
That sums up most of it but,
just to take another sample, take a
blonde young giant named Quentin
Wilson from Concord, New Hamp
shire. He used to work in a print
ing plant that prints the Readers
Digest and he sort of likes a little
history. And he was sort of home
sick for his young wife. But then,
when he ventured out to explore
a little, he discovered that 157
years ago. Maj. Gen. Henry Dear
born, another New Hampshireman,
gathered up a few hundred tons of
’'"s, right where Wilson now
barged them down the river
?d them to Cape Hatteras and
the Alexander Hamilton
..gnthouse. They were very dur
able rocks and there are a lot of
them still around.
See SEABEES, Page Ten
LARGER FERRY FOR
HATTERAS INLET IS
LEASED TO PEELE
After reconditioning at the
Highway Department’s ma
rine base at Manns Harbor the
veteran ferryboat “Barcelona,”
built by Capt. Toby Tillett and for
years the mainstay of passage
across Oregon Inlet until Captain
Tillett’s franchise and equipment
was brought outright, goes this
week to Hatteras under lease to
Capt. Fraier Peele and will be put
into service across the Inlet, giv
ing Ocracoke Island an enlarged
and faster ferry service.
Captain Peele has been operat
ing a small, four-car ferry across
the Inlet between Hatteras and
Ocracoke for three seasons past
and so greatly has the traffic
grown that he is under the neces
sity of enlarging his service. The
boat goes to him under lease from
the Highway Department and will
maintain regular, seven-day sched
ules.
The arrangement is temporary.
By July the Highway Department
expects to let to contract the ex
tension of the Outer Banks High
way from Hatteras village to
Ocracoke and eventually the State
will take over the Hatteras Inlet
ferry on ehe same basis as it took
over the service across Oregon In
let under Governor J. M. Brough
ton in 1941, and freed the ferry of
tolls. . . . .
Survey of the projected high
way with necessary ferry channels
and docks will be completed by the
See FERRY, Page Twelve
MANTEO H. S. CLASS OF ’2<»
TO HAVE REUNION SAT.
Members of the graduating
’ass of Manteo High Schol for the
r 1929 are planning a reunion
Saturday evening. A dinner
* be held at Fearing’s Case in
~ianteo, and class members and
their husbands and wives will at
tend. Ctess president is Hugh B.
Hines, city manager of Jackson
ville, N. C., who plans to be pres
ent Also expected to attend are
four members of the faculty at the
time the class graduated. They
are: F. T. Johnson of Hertford,
Mrs. Sally Peele Smith of Char
lotte. Mrs. Percy W. Meekins of
Washington, D. C., and Mrs. Theo.
S. Meekins, Jr., of Manteo.
Os the 23 members of the class,
21 are now living.
exo.
THE COASTLAND TIMES
PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE INTEREST OF THE WALTER RALEIGH COASTLAND OF NORTH CAROLINA
ANOTHER NATIVE BACK
HOME IN BUSINESS
<*** IK
w IS f
MRS. VIOLET MANN KELLAM
ANOTHER of the many Dare
County folks who look forward to
coming back home in business for
themselves. Mrs. H. Willard Kel
lam after 20 years in Norfolk, has
bought the popular Oasis Restau
rant on Treasure Island, between
Roanoke Island and Nags Head
Beach. This restaurant, founded a
few years ago by Paul Gray, has
become famous for seafood. Mrs.
Kellam, who left her native home
in East Lake at the age of nine,
to enter school in Norfolk, is a
daughter of Mrs. Ida Hassell, and
the late Norris Mann of East
Lake. She is a niece of Mrs. Sarah
Cahoon of East Lake, and also of
C. W. Mann of Manns Harbor.
Her husband, a native of the East
ern Shore of Virginia, is a master
plumber, for 18 years in business
in Norfolk.
Mrs. Kellam was educated in the
See KELLAM, Page Twelve
MANTEO GIRL GRADUATE
OF GREENSBORO COLLEGE
wllb’” flr
w i B
Fiss .j. -■ .s
MISS MAXINE SCARBOROUGH
of Manteo, who graduated Monday
morning from Greensboro College,
Greensboro, receiving a Bachelor
of Arts degree with a major in
history and sociology. She will
teach social studies in Princess
Anne High School, Princess Anne,
Va., next year.
While at Greensboro College,
Miss Scarborough served as May
Queen attendant during her sopho
more and senior years; as a sopho
more she served as. freshman
counsellor; she was vice-president
See SCARBOROUGH, Page Twelve
KILL DEVIL HILLS
TOWN BOARD MEETS
In his last regular meeting dur
ing tenure in office, Mayor J. L.
Murphy of Kill Devil Hills cited
many advantages to the commis
sioners, and attended to other
routine matters at the Thursday
morning meeting.
A tentative budget was present
ed, calling for $15,660 for the fis
cal year beginning June 1. The
tax rate would be reduced to 209
per hundred valuation, and busi
ness licenses taxes would be re
duced half. Commissioner Mor
rison had suggested a tax rate of
259.
Mayor Murphy pointed to the
improvements gained by the town
during its 26-month life—zoning,
police protection, streets paved, a
monthly check at all unoccupied
cottages during winter months,
and just recently the addition of a
fire truck. He stated that rent on
the new town hall, built by C. A.
York, had been paid through
March, 1956. The town has a sur
plus of some S2BOO this year, part
ly Powell Bill funds and the re
mainder local taxes.
New Officers June 1
Next meeting for the town will
be June 1, at which time the offi
cers elected May 3 will take office.
They are: mayor, Mrs. Emily
Mustian; commissioners, Herbert
Morrison, Elton Twiford and Rob
ert A. Young. Miss Jimmy Gray
will serve as town clerk.
THURSTON GASKILL,
OCRACOKE GUIDE,
RECITES CHANGES
One of the Most Famed Citizens
of the Island Gives Oys
ter Stew Recipe
By «’ ICE K. RONDTHALER
Oc? May 23.—Several
large cobia, caught this past week,
indicate this species to be running
off Ocraccke early this year. W. E
Woodruff, Robert Lowe, and J. N.
Still, all of Mount Airy, fishing
with Capt. Thurston Gaskill,
brought in- four beautiful cobia,
weighing 20 to 35 pounds, several
channel bass, weighing thirty to
fifty pounds, and a dozen oi core
tuna, weighing from three to five
pounds.
Capt. Gaskill is young in years,
but old in experience when it
comes to guiding sports fishermen.
He began his trade when he was
thirteen years old, helping his
father, Capt. Bill Gaskill, famous
guide and pilot, and ownei and
operator of Pamlico Inn from 1915
to the time of his death in 1935.
Big Foot Slough, Beacon Island
Channel, Wallace Channel, Shell
Castle Rock, Ocracoke Inlet and
Off-Shore in the Atlantic were
the early haunts of young Thur
ston and he knows them every
inch of the way and has a knack
for finding the fish if the fish are
there. This knack is inherited not
only from his father, but goes
back through several generations
of Gaskills to an ancestor, Jacob.
Colonial records indicate that
Jacob Gaskill was among the first
pilots who settled at Ocracoke,
earning his living in part by pilot
ing sailing vessels from the Atlan
tic Ocean across Ocracoke Bar, in
to the safety of Pamlico Sound.
Ocracoke Inlet in the earlj* days
of the republic was a busy
thoroughfare for trade between
Eastern Carolina and the West
Indies.
Capt. Gaskill has guided fishing
parties coming to the Island all the
way from Pennsylvania to Georgia
and from the mountains to the sea
in North Carolina, waiting on some
of them for more than thirty-five
years. There have been fishing
trips when he has had three gen
erations of the same family to
gether in his boat. Asked about
particularly good catches, he says
that he remembers a year in the
late thirties, probably about 1938,
when his party brought in 505
blues from trolling in the Inlet.
Another good fall season was two
years ago when his parties brought
See GASKILL, Page Twelve
RAPID PROGRESS BEING MADE ON CROATAN SOUND BRIDGE
FT' fW'
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Mft.
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QUITE a formidable showing is being made on the construction of the three-mile long concrete bridge
across Croatan Sound connecting the North end of Roanoke Island with Manns Harbor. T. A. Loving
Company of Goldsboro are the builders, and the huge concrete piles have been drive four abreast, a third
of the distance across the sound, working from the Roanoke Island shore. Hera are two views made from
the shore end of the bridge, and from the progress being made, it looks like Jt will be complete by this
time next year, in time for a whopping big summertime celebration of what looks like the biggest forward
step for the Coastland in many a day. This bridge was provided by the action of the late Governor Wil
liam B. Umstead, a devoted friend of the Coastland.
MANTEO, N. C., FRIDAY, MAY 27, 1955
STRATTON HONORED
FOR ABLE WORK ON
NATIONAL SEASHORE
Meritorious Service Honor Award
Presented Man Who Carried
On Project Under Difficulties •
The Secretary of the Depart
ment, Douglas McKay has ap
proved a Meritorious Service
Honor Award for A. C. Stratton
in recognition of his outstanding
service in connection with the
establishment of the Cape Hat
teras National Seashore Recrea
tional Area. Elbert, Cox, Regional
Director, Region One, National
Park Service, presented to Mr.
Stratton the silver medal and sil
ver lapel pin and read the follow
ing citation from Secretary Mc-
Kay:
“Mr. Stratton became Project
Manager of the Cape Hatteras Na
tional Seashore Recreational Area
in November 1952.' Previous to
that time he was superintendent
of a coastal erosion-control proj
ect in the area and later served
Region One Office of the National
as soil conservationist in the
Park Service. He spent most of the
time since 1934, except for the
period from 1943 to 1951, develop
ing plans and supervising projects
for eventual establishment of the
area. Os special mention is the in
ternationally recognized sand-fix
ation project which was a pioneer
ing accomplishment in this unique
land-reform field. His work in dune
stabilization made possible later
development programs. w“h ic h
would have been exceedingly cost
ly without benefit of his effort.
As project manager, he initiated
an extensive program of land ac
quisition to establish our first
national seashore. Under adverse
conditions he carried the program
to the point where it’s success was
assured and laid the groundwork
for the superintendent who later
assumed administration of the new
area. He performed his duties com
petently and fairly with sustained
enthusiasm despite local opposi
tion. In recognition of these note
worthy achievements, Mr. Strat
i ton is granted the Meritorious
1 Sendee Award of the Department
of the Interior.”
/s/ Douglas McKay
Secretary
Mr. Stratton proved is qualities
as an efficient and conscientious
administrator while he served as
Manager of the Beach Erosion
Control Project from 1934 to 1943.
The knowledge that he acquired of
See STRATTON, Page Twelve
BLESSED WITH THREE FINE BOYS AT ONE TIME
■ ; ■ /A
THESE husky youngsters are Roy, Gill and Lee who will be four years
old in October. They are the triplet sons of Mr. and Mrs. Charles
Evans of Elizabeth City. Mrs. Evans, who was born at Manns Harbor
is the former Blonnie Gard, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Thomas
(Pink) Gard, formerly of Manns Harbor, now residing in Elizabeth
City. Mrs. Evans is also a niece of Samuel W. Twiford, owner of the
Quinn Furniture Store in Manteo.
The Evans have an older child, a daughter. The boys are healthy,
and enjoy life, and usually give the old man a workout when he gets
home from work. Mr. Evans is a native of Currituck County.
PAID $25 FOR BEATING
UP HIS GIRL FRIEND
The course of true love doesn't
always run smooth, but it is also
costly, for Goerge Albert McClees
of Manteo, was required to pay a
fine of $25 and costs Tuesday for
beating Sibley Mackey. Judge
Baum in Recorder’s court gave him
a 60 day jail sentence, suspended
on condition that he not return to
court in a year.
William Ambrose Midgett, Ro
danthe Coast Guardsman was
fined sls and costs for reckless
driving.
Capias was issued for William
David Gaskins on a non-support
count of failing to keep his sls
per week payments.
A MANNS HARBOR BOY
CLIMBING’ RIGHT ON UP
DALTON LEE MANN of Manns
Harbor is another popular Dare
County boy whose neighbors
watch his career with interest. He
is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Guy
Mann and graduated Monday from
East Carolina College. Much recog
nition and many awards have come
his way through his hard work
and application to studies. He was
one of 12 who received student
awards from the Student Govern
ment Association of East Carolina.
He also was one of 32 leaders in
student activities at his college
who is listed in “Who’s ' Who
Among Students in American Col
leges Universities.” Dalton,
Lee is Secretary of Phi Sigma Pi;
president of the Mathematics
Club, and holds membership in
various extra curricular activities
and college fraternities, including:
Chi Beta Phi, Circle K., Science
Club, Student Government Asso
ciation and ROTC Officers Club.
Mr. Mann is one of 20 students
at ECC who were commissioned
second Lieutenants in the U. S.
Air Force Reserve, Monday.
The following quotation from
the class president and college
officials sums up the citation for
his work in college:
“Dalton you have been
named the recipient of the Maria
D. Graham Mathematics Award
and the Mathematics Department
al Award for the year 1954-55.
The Maria D. Graham Mathe
matics Award is presented by the
Math Club annually to its out
standing senior member. The De
partmental Award goes to the
senior mathematics major or minor
with the highest scholastic average
in mathematics.
“In your three years as a mem
ber of the Math Club, you have
been very active, both as a leader
and as a follower. You have never
said “no” when asked to do a job.
And now during your last year you
hae served as oilT president.
“Your participation in other
'campus activities has helped you
Ito become ,a more well-rounded
I person. With all these activities,
See MANN, Page Twelve
Single Copy 70
PROF.- B. G. CHILDS
TO BE COMMENCEM'T
SPEAKER IN MANTEO
Rev. A. C. D. Noe To Deliver
Baccalaureate Sermon Sunday
Evening at Eight O'Clock
Commencement exercises at the
Manteo High School will begin
Sunday, May 29, at eight o’clock
p. m, with the baccalaureate serv
ice. Rev. A. C. D. Noe, rector of
St.-Andrews-by-the-Sea Episcopal
Church of Nags Head will deliver
the sermon, and will be assisted by
Rev. H. V. Napier, pastor of Man
teo Baptist Church and Rev. H. R.
Ashmore, pastor of Mount Olivet
Methodist Church, Manteo.
Class Night will be held at eight
o’clock Thursday evening, June 2.
The program will be entitled
“Senior Merry-Go-Round”. The
valedictory will be delivered by
Shirley Midgett and the salutatory
by Carol Ann Allen.
On Friday morning, June 3, the
graduation exercises of the Junior
High school will take place at 10
o’clock. This will feature a student
participation type of program.
Graduation exercises for the
high school seniors will culminate
the week’s activities with a pro
gram at eight o’clock Friday eve
ning, June 3, with Professor B. J.
Childs of Duke University as
speaker. Mr. Childs is a professor
of Education at Duke, and is much
in demand as a speaker.
All commencement programs
will be held in the school audi
torium.
CHARLIE SCARBOROUGH,
FORMER REPRESENTATIVE
OF DARE COUNTY. DIES
Charles Henderson Scarborough,
73, who represented Dare County
in the General Assembly some 45
years ago, died Sunday in Hamp
ton, Va., where he had resided
since 1917. For many years he was
engaged in the furniture business
in Newport News.
Although he had moved away,
he never lost his interest and love
for Dare County, and was a fre
ouent visitor, often stopping with
his uncle, Lee Mann, and other
relatives at Manns Harbor. He is
survived by a son, Maxton D.. Sca
rborough of Newport News, two
grandchildren and several nieces
and nephews.
He was the husband of the late
Sudie Peele Scarborough of Hat
teras, who died in 1915. He never
remarried. He was the son of the
late Henderson and Lois Mann
Scarborough of Avon. His mother
died young, and he went from
Avon to Manns Harbor to live with
his grandmother, Betsey Mann.
The funeral services were con
ducted Wednesday at the Rouse-
Carper Funeral home in Hampton,
Va.
Interment was in Twiford Ceme
tery at Manns Harbor Wednesday
afternoon.
MRS. SALLIE MEEKINS
COLINGTON'S OLDEST
. RESIDENT DIES TUES.
A great old lady, the oldest
resident of Colington went to her
final resting place Thursday after
noon. Mrs. Sally Shannon Meekins
89, died Tuesday night at her home
in Colington. She was the wife of
John Hawkins Meekins and daugh
ter of the late Nathaniel and
Sallie Williams Shannon, of Ro
anoke Island. She was a life-long
resident of Dare County. She was
a woman of brilliant mind for her
opportunities, and kept well posted
until failing eyesight slowed her
activities a few years ago. She had
been ill for several months.
Besides her husband, she is sur
vived by two daughters, Mrs.
Evelyn Haywood and Mrs. Rob
anna Toler, and a son, John Oscar
Meekins, all of Colington; a half
brother, Jim Shannon of Powell’s
Point; 12 grandchildren, 12 great
grandchildren, and one great great
grandchildren, and many nephews
and nieces.
Burial was in the family ceme
tery Thursday at 2 p. m. follow
ing services conducted at the
Methodist Church by the pastor,
Rev. W. B. Gregory. She was a
member of this church and a faith
ful worker in her active life.
PROPOSED WATERWAY BILL
LISTS $45,000 FOR MANTEO
The proposed bill for waterway
improvements, if Congress should
provide the money, includes
$45,000 for the betterment of
Shallowbag Bay, Manteo harbor.
This appropriation is sought for
the fiscal year beginning July 1.
This bill covers Middle Atlantic
Waterway projects totalling more
than 22 and a half million dollars.