The ‘Keeper of 12’ is on the watch

Text and photos by Connie Leinbach

“The Keeper of 12” takes his job very seriously.

Shanon Eiben is the North Carolina Department of Transportation worker on Ocracoke who maintains the roads – from the village to the north end of the island.

“The road crew is me,” he says about his work, and he’s much busier since his co-worker Keith Gaskins retired. “I’m always on the road.”

Eiben is “Johnny on the spot” when the ocean breaches the dunes at the north end of the island, as happened several times this past winter when nor’easters or distant hurricanes wreaked continuous havoc at the “hot spot,” as officials call the mile-plus area at the north end where sandbags are holding back the ocean.

He’s out there as soon as he knows about it, scooping sand off the road.

Maybe that’s why some of his colleagues, in addition to the Keeper of 12, call him “Sand Man,” or “Shan Man,” as Jeff Ryder, who supervises all of the NCDOT on the Outer Banks, called Eiben during a recent interview.

Recently, another DOT crew replaced 70+ traffic signs, mostly stop signs, repainted some street lines in the village.

Like DOT crews elsewhere, Eiben and his colleagues keep their eyes on the weather all the time.

“If there’s a storm, we’re on call,” he said. He often stages equipment and “make sure everything’s ready to go.”

It’s all to keep the public safe, Eiben said.

“Anything along NC 12 we can take care of,” Ryder, who is based in Manteo, said.

On the job for 22 years, if Eiben isn’t attending to NC 12, he’s doing road maintenance around the village.

That could be mowing the grass, filling in along “the radius,” which are the edges around corners in the village, and cutting back brush that hinders the view of traffic.

“A lot of it is keeping the roads clear and visible so you can see,” he said.

He also likes to make sure the island is presentable, especially the “plains area,” which is the expanse from the NPS campground to the village.

“I get it looking nice for the holidays,” he said. “We want to make it look nice for the visitors.”

Eiben says he scrapes the shoulders of the roads to help beautify them as well as assist in drainage as there is no water sewer system on Ocracoke and the same low areas become big puddles after rainstorms.

“We’re at sea level so any time it rains you’re going to see that (puddling),” he said.

A native of Hatteras Island, Eiben, his sisters and mother have lived on Ocracoke for more than 40 years.

Eiben’s mother, Pam Midgette, and his grandfather were Scarboroughs from Avon, and his grandmother was a Gaskins from Hatteras, which probably makes him related to the Gaskins family on Ocracoke.

He graduated in a class of six from Ocracoke School in 1994.

Ryder said he is looking for another crew member to help Eiben. Those interested should call Ryder at 252-473-2990.

Story originally published in the November 2024 Observer.