Text and photos by Peter Vankevich
When visiting Vince O’Neal’s workroom on Cedar Road, in addition to work benches and tools of the craft, one will see walls lined with shelves holding waterfowl decoys and other bird species carvings. If displayed properly, there are enough to populate a decoy museum.
Many are his own, but some time ago he started collecting carvings by others and has acquired a substantial collection, some going back more than 100 years.
Vince is the featured carver for the 2024 Ocracoke Waterfowl Festival that has expanded to two days and will be held in the Ocracoke School gym from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 20, and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. The festival is free to attend and will feature dozens of booths featuring carvers, collectors, exhibitors from five states and a decoy head carving competition. There will also be a fish fry hosted by Ocracoke Seafood Co., a bake sale, including Ocracoke fig cake and a silent auction.
Founded in January 2018 by island carvers John Simpson, Vince and David O’Neal, and Dan and Scotty Robinson, the Ocracoke Island Decoy Carvers Guild mission is to preserve and promote the island’s long, rich tradition of decoy carving.
Wasting no time, this nonprofit organized the first Ocracoke Waterfowl Festival on April 21 that year and which was attended by hundreds. Each festival has a featured carver. The first was Dave O’Neal, Vince’s older brother, who owns Down Point Decoys Shop in the heart of the village. The other prior featured carvers are Dan Robinson, John Simpson, Nathan Spencer and Scotty Robinson.
Vince’s branch of the O’Neal clan traces its lineage all the way back to Sir Walter Raleigh’s second voyage in 1590 when David O’Neal, the ship’s cook on His Majesty’s Ship “John Evangelist” decided to remain in Hatteras, then known as Kinnakeet, marrying Morning Dew, an Indigenous Hatteras woman.
The love and skill of wildlife carving not only includes the two brothers, but also their father, David Farrow O’Neal Sr., and many other family members over the generations. Their sister, Sharon O’Neal Justice, is a talented wildlife artist.
Born in 1960, Vince attended Ocracoke School, graduating in 1978. After a stint of commercial fishing, he followed in the footsteps of both his grandfathers, Richard O’Neal and Washie Spencer, his father David Farrow O’Neal Sr. and his brother Dave, by enlisting in the U.S. Coast Guard. He served seven years, some of it on the famed USCGC “Ingham.” Serving in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, he rose to the rank of chief petty officer. While stationed at Elizabeth City he studied business at the College of the Albemarle and East Carolina University.
When Vince returned to Ocracoke, he again took to crabbing and commercial fishing for three years, a trade he loves and still does on a more limited basis these days. The opportunity to buy the Pony Island restaurant came up and he and his wife, Sue, ran it for nearly 30 years. During that time, he continued fishing and featured his catch of the day on the restaurant’s daily menu. They sold the restaurant four years ago. So, he now has more time for carving and collecting.
Growing up, he found no shortage of mentors and he smiles when recalling them. “The old timers loved to share their carving techniques with us boys,” he said.
Back then, it was called whittling.
“As a young boy I would visit Corky’s store (on Creek Road) and Jack’s Store (at the Community Square) and see guys like brothers Wilbur and Clinton Gaskill, Willie “Three Fingers” Hunnings and Papa Howard O’Neal carving on the porch and selling their works to tourists for a buck or two,” he said. “They showed me their techniques and I learned the craft from them.”
His older brother Dave got interested in carving first.
“He also taught me a lot of techniques and has been an inspiration,” Vince said.
The carving tradition on Ocracoke is not just of ducks and geese but includes many other bird species.
Vince particularly likes to carve both miniature and life-size shorebirds. Lately, he has been on a kick carving owls.
He chose the Brant this year as the featured carving so he could demonstrate the island’s tradition of attaching a red-cedar root head to the body, which is made from juniper, also known as white cedar wood. “Most of the old root-head decoys are either from Ocracoke or Long Island,” he said. It will be raffled off at the end of the festival.
Over the many years, Vince has contributed countless hours of volunteer work.
One of his many notable achievements, as president of the Ocracoke Youth Center, he was instrumental in the creation of the Ocracoke Community Park completed in 2015, a beautiful playing field for baseball and soccer at the end of Maurice Ballance Road.
The Ocracoke School graduating class has a tradition of giving a Community Service Award and that year it was given to the Ocracoke Youth Center board of directors, its members and the many volunteers who helped complete the community park and baseball field.
He and wife Sue are proud parents of their three children, Katie, now an Ocracoke school teacher, Carson, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, and Noah, a junior at Ocracoke School. All were Ocracoke Dolphins basketball players, and the boys also baseball players and Vince, one of their coaches.
Vince is a bit of legend with WOVV, Ocracoke’s nonprofit community radio station. Some years ago, he was drafted to broadcast an away game against the much larger First Flight High School in Kill Devil Hills. The Dolphins beat the Night Hawks that night and Vince declared on-air with much exuberance that this was the biggest upset in Ocracoke basketball history.
At the festival, look for him at one of the tables selling a wide variety of his carvings: ducks, geese, shorebirds and owls, along with some historic decoys from his collection.
