Text and photo by Connie Leinbach
Elizabeth O’Meara of Clemmons had never been to a decoy festival and won the first prize of the raffle – a Canvasback duck carved by the late Mark Justice.
“I’m flabbergasted,” she said as she collected her prize.
She and her friend were visiting the island and thought it would be fun to attend.
“We wanted to see all these decoys and all these wonderful artists,” she said, noting that they had read about Justice and the event.
Before capturing the raffle prize, O’Meara bought a shore bird carving.
“That one was from a carver from earlier in the last century and who died in 2001,” she said. “I walked away from it and thought, ‘Okay, when I’ve seen everything else, if it’s still there, I’ll get it,’ and I did, which was great.”
This was the second time in her life she had won something.
The other time was when she was in fifth grade and living outside of Chicago and she walked by a brand-new men’s clothing store.
There was a huge jar of pennies and a promotion to guess the number of pennies and win a gift certificate.
“I guessed right on the money,” she said, “and it was for a men’s clothing store and didn’t help me a bit.”
But the prize decoy from Ocracoke will “make our visit that much more memorable,” she said.
The 7th Annual Ocracoke Waterfowl Festival was held April 11 and 12 in the Ocracoke School Commons room since the gym floor was being rebuilt.
Justice, who was the featured carver this year, died Oct. 15, and the raffled Canvasback was the only one of his carvings his wife, Sharon Justice, let go.
“It was great to have his carvings there for people to see how talented he was,” said Trudy Austin, who took over as president of the Decoy Carvers Guild, which puts on the festival, after John Simpson, one of the guild founders and the president, died in November.
She said the guild members and decoy vendors were pleased.
“I think John would have been happy with the way things went,” she said about the festival. “He laid a very strong foundation for us to build on.”
This year the festival opened Friday evening and continued all day on Saturday in conjunction with the Earth Day activities.
