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Volume 12, Issue 34 ~ August 19 - 25, 2004
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Dock of the Bay
In Galesville, a village where heritage rules, longevity seems a habit. When Jack Smith took his turn to 80, he wasn’t the only one at the party who’d passed that milestone. Among the 150 friends, neighbors and relatives celebrating was Smith’s 100-year-old aunt, Agnes Dixon. Billed as a “Roast and Toast to celebrate the illustrious and perhaps infamous Mr. Jack of All Trades Smith,” it was a fun-filled evening sponsored by, and benefiting, the Galesville Heritage Society. Smith — well known for sending peels of laughter through a crowd with his quips, stories and elaboration of the facts — had the tables turned on him, as friends and politicians stepped forward to roast him. “This is a man I can look up to,” said Anne Arundel County Councilman Big Ed Reilly, who towers over Smith, as he passed on the county council’s congratulations. Jack Smith — husband, father, sailor, Naval Air cadet, teacher, country store keeper, lumberyard owner, environmentalist, volunteer and an unbelievably spry octogenarian with a twinkle in his eye and a 1950s crewcut — smiled up at Reilly and shook his hand. Del. Virginia Clagett presented Smith with a pin making him an honorary member of the General Assembly. Representing County Executive Janet Owens, Bea Poulin presented Smith with a citation saluting him “as one of Galesville’s treasures.” Smith responded with typical modesty. “As I look out in the crowd, at those here from Galesville, they have done just as much as I.” But all knew that isn’t quite true. Smith was born in Galesville, and other than the few years he spent away at school and in the service, that village has been his home. Jean Trott, a Galesville native and distant cousin, remembers back into the 1930s, when “Jack was the teacher’s pet. We never knew whether to kiss his ring or adjust his halo,” she said. Following in the footsteps of his mother, Jessi Dubel Smith, who chronicled Galesville’s history with the Maryland Gazette, Smith has dedicated much of his life to preserving the heritage of Galesville. In the seven years Smith served on the Galesville Heritage Society’s board, he has led the society from a tiny room behind the West River Market to its own historic home, the old Carrie Weedon house. Leni Preston, who has worked with Smith on an interpretive plan for the new museum, quoted Emerson to describe Smith’s tireless efforts in the Heritage Society: “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” A believer in conservation as well as preservation, Smith raises oysters off his dock to help replenish the Chesapeake Bay population; he grows native grasses in his yard; and he uses his Coast Guard Sea School captain’s license to conduct weekly tours of the history of Galesville from the water. Smith’s tireless enthusiasm is known across the county. He travels 40 miles twice a month delivering Meals on Wheels to six customers. He is a past president and board member of the South Anne Arundel Lions Club. He’s been honored with Southern Anne Arundel Chamber of Commerce’s Gene Hall Award and the Jaycee’s Outstanding Man of the Year Award. Jack Smith has made history just as he’s helped preserve it. As a young man during World War II, Smith joined the Navy and was stationed at Attu Island in Alaska. Back home, he finished college, taught math and science in a Baltimore County high school, was keeper of the Smith Country Store in Galesville and then manager of the family lumber company. The Smith Building Supply Company, which Smith owned and operated for 33 years until its closing in 2001, wasn’t your typical lumberyard. It was a mom and pop business on the crossroads of Churchton and Shady Side, a one-stop lumber, hardware and garden store where service and advice were freely laced with jokes and generosity. “Many months our Accounts Receivable would run in the one-million-dollar range,” says Smith, a man known to never to say no to anybody. Several who roasted Smith talked about their first meeting at the lumberyard. Terry Smith (no relation to Jack, as he reminded the crowd) of the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, remembered his first visit, after buying a house in Shady Side. “There was Jack, rubbing his hands at the prospect of a newcomer with D.C. plates. “We will match — or exceed — any price you can find,” Smith recalled Smith saying. For just such supposed cleverness in business, Fred Wilson roasted his uncle. “Jack really lived by his personal philosophy,” said Wilson, “which was give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll buy worms from you.” If all the roasting wasn’t all quite true, it didn’t matter, for everybody knew the truth about Jack Smith. As Poulin said, reading from the county citation, the truth is that “It takes a Jack Smith to raise a village.” —Maureen Miller
Earl White, Chesapeake Waterman Appropriately enough, I was on the water when a friend called to tell me that though Earl White had fought the good fight, he passed away August 9, after a brief illness. Earl was one of those rare, unabashed spirits that come into our lives like the tide’s ebb, effortless and graceful. To many of us, Earl symbolized the rich cultural fabric that was life in Chesapeake Country. But so much more than that, he was simply a good man. In an era of hyped platitudes and padded credentials, Earl White was a Chesapeake original: genuine, honest, and straightforward. We connected through the blues. We both loved the great champions: Son House, John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf. To Earl, who played guitar and sang of what he lived, these two powerful life forces, music and water, were inextricably linked. You can’t fake it; it’s too real. Like Earl. Born in Dames Quarter, Md., he worked mostly aboard skipjacks, boats of an era long gone when the Bay’s vitality was unparalleled. As the storm clouds gathered over Europe and America emerged from financial ruin, Earl dredged for oysters. In 1954, Hurricane Hazel pummeled the Atlantic Coast but Earl still helped deliver a load of oysters. When the nation faced internal strife and political upheaval in the 1960s and ’70s, Earl was still earning a hard living from Chesapeake waters. When the oysters crashed in the late 1980s, he accepted a job as field educator with Chesapeake Bay Foundation on the skipjack Stanley Norman. Until recent months, amidst Code Orange alerts and dead zones, Earl was a calming and steadfast influence on the school kids, teachers and adults who boarded Stanley Norman to learn about the Bay. His was a rich life full of abundant oyster harvests, bone-chilling winters and violent squalls. He regaled his audience with tales of fat oysters, a rich Bay and promise of a brighter tomorrow for the Chesapeake. He was living maritime history, unfiltered. I met Earl nearly 10 years ago running a field trip on the Patuxent River. As usual, Earl mesmerized this group. He recounted abundant oyster hauls decades earlier on the Hawks Nest, upriver from Solomons where we had anchored. Now it was just a worn-out oyster bar. I had a set of 14-foot shaft tongs to demonstrate a traditional method to harvest oysters. I lowered the tongs into the swift ebb tide and struggled to get a bite on the shell. As I pulled the tongs up, grunting, sweat flooded my face. Without a hint of arrogance, Earl took his turn. Like a hot knife through butter, he plunged the tongs through the water, fluid and graceful, like Ali in the ring. That moment is burned into the back of my eyes: a man nearly half a century older than I working the shaft tongs like he was conducting the New York Philharmonic. Poetry in motion. Earl inspired me with his love of life and generous soul. Thanks, Captain. —C.D. Dollar Ask the Plant Professor
In Washington, they held a birthday party last week for perhaps the world’s oldest bear, a husky brown in a ranger hat and blue jeans. You got it; his name is Smokey, he turned 60, he looks marvelous and if he decides to run for office he’d begin with some serious name I.D. A survey showed that 95 percent of American adults and 77 percent of children know who Smokey the Bear is … |
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Matching Cause with Effect