Down Creek Gallery will begin its tenth year of promoting local and regional artists and their works in its “Expose Yourself To Art” series with a season kick-off open house tonight from 5 to 8 p.m. (May 13).
Marissa Gross, who purchased the gallery last year, said this opening event will showcase the nonprofit Ocracoke Child Care Center and include art by local preschoolers. Donations for the center will be accepted.
This year, Gross is featuring new artists and jewelers this year to complement her array of local and regional artists’ work in pottery, glass and home accents.
The Ocracoke Civic and Business Association (OCBA) will have its open monthly meeting, 7 p.m. in the Community Center.
RALEIGH – The state Division of Coastal Management will hold public hearings in North Carolina’s oceanfront counties to gather comments on a proposal to repeal the high hazard flood area of Environmental Concern, or AEC.
The hearings are scheduled for the following dates and locations:
May 12, 3 p.m. – Oak Island Town Hall, 4601 E. Oak Island Dr., Oak Island
May 12, 7 p.m. – New Hanover County Government Center, 230 Government Center Dr., Wilmington
May 14, 3 p.m. – Surf City Town Hall, 214 N. New River Dr., Surf City
May 14, 5 p.m. – Onslow County Public Library, 1330 Highway 210, Sneads Ferry
May 19, 1 p.m. – Ocracoke Volunteer Fire Department, 822 Irvin Garrish Hwy, Ocracoke
The High Hazard Flood AEC covers lands subject to flooding, high waves and heavy water currents during a major storm. These are the lands identified as coastal flood with velocity hazard, or “V zones,” on flood insurance rate maps prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Single-family residences located in the AEC are currently exempted from Coastal Area Management Act permit requirements provided that they are not also located within another AEC, are constructed on pilings, and comply with both the N.C. building code and national and local flood damage prevention ordinances. Property owners in this AEC are required to sign a “hazard notice” acknowledging that special risks are associated with development in the area and pay a $50 fee for an exemption letter.
The N.C. Coastal Resources Commission is proposing to repeal the High Hazard Flood AEC because its current rules parallel the N.C. building code and national and local flood prevention standards, making the CRC standards no longer necessary.
The High Hazard Flood AEC is part of the state’s Ocean Hazard System. Areas of environmental concern are designated by the commission and are defined by the Coastal Area Management Act as areas of natural importance that may be susceptible to erosion or flooding; or may haveenvironmental, social, economic, or aesthetic values that make it valuable to the state. The CRC classifies areas as AECs to protect them fromincompatible development that may cause irreversible damage to property, public health, or the environment.
AECs cover almost all coastal waters and about 3 percent of the land in the 20 coastal counties.
Daniel “Boone” Vandzura is now the acting chief ranger for the Outer Banks Group; Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and Wright Brothers National Memorial, the National Park Service has announced.
Vandzura, who was nicknamed “Boone” by coworkers over the years, is the supervisor of the Visitor and Resource Protection division for all three parks.
Previously, Vandzura worked in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, where he held many detail assignments, the last being the emergency services director within the Chief Ranger’s office in Yellowstone. Vandzura is originally from Pennsylvania and vacationed in northern North Carolina as a youth.
Michelle Havens serves as the new chief of resource management for the Outer Banks Group. Havens grew up on the beaches and shores of the Texas Gulf Coast where fishing and camping with her family led to a career in natural resources for the National Park Service.
She received her master and bachelor of science degrees from Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, and has since studied and worked in coastal ecosystems and shorebirds. She comes to the Outer Banks Group from Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California. Being a water sports lover, she missed the coastal communities and she enjoys kayaking, fishing, bird watching, eating southern home-cooking, and spending time on the beach.
“It feels good to be back at a seashore!” Havens said.Michelle Havens
Portsmouth Methodist Church. Photo by P. Vankevich
The Friends of Portsmouth Island will hold its spring meeting on Ocracoke beginning at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 16, in the Ocracoke Community Center.
The meeting begins with a complimentary brunch. Volunteers Glenn and Brenda White will share their stories and experiences while helping take care of the village. Steve Neshkoff, the VIP Coordinator for Cape Lookout National Seashore, will also provide some updates.
Shuttle service will be available for passengers without cars arriving on the Cedar Island ferry. Portsmouth T-shirts and books will be available for sale, and door prizes will be awarded at the end of the meeting.
Portsmouth Life-Saving Station. Photo by P. Vankevich
The meeting is open to the public and all are invited to attend.
Established in 1753, Portsmouth was the largest settlement on the Outer Banks by 1770 and remained a major shipping center for nearly a century. Ocracoke Inlet was the major trade route to inland ports at that time.
By 1860, there were 685 residents in Portsmouth.
The Civil War forced many to leave and not return as the Union Army advanced down the Outer Banks.
Portsmouth Post Office. Photo by P. Vankevich
After an 1846 storm opened a deeper inlet between Ocracoke and Hatteras, the population steadily declined.
In 1971, one of the last three residents, Henry Pigott, died, and Marion Babb and Elma Dixon then moved to the mainland.
Every two years, the Friends of Portsmouth Island, many of whom are relatives of original Portsmouth Island residents, return to the island.
The next “homecoming” will be in 2016.
For more information, contact Rosanne Penley at Rosanne.Penley@gmail.com, its website at www.friendsofportsmouthisland.org, or its Facebook page.
To read more about Portsmouth Island, clickhere for an article by Pat Garber.
The Henry Pigott house in Portsmouth Village. Photo by P. Vankevich
Paintings like these by Barbara Adams, an Ocracoke artist, are on view in Down Creek Gallery. Barbara’s show will open July 29.
Down Creek Gallery will begin its tenth year of promoting local artists and their works in its “Expose Yourself To Art” series with a season kick-off open house from 5 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday (May 13).
Marissa Gross, who purchased the gallery last year, said this opening event will showcase the nonprofit Ocracoke Child Care Center and include art by local preschoolers. Donations for the center will be accepted.
Gross is featuring new artists and jewelers this year to complement her array of local and regional artists’ work in pottery, glass and home accents.
Painter Douglas Hoover of Archdale will be the first artist featured from 5 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, May 27, along with island musician Rob King.
Specializing in oil paint, Hoover captures images of urban city scapes and coastal lifestyles of North Carolina.
His work can be viewed in other venues on the island, and he will join more than 35 artisans selling their work at the Ocrafolk Festival June 5 to 7.
All are welcome to attend these openings that include refreshments and light hors d’oeuvres.
The gallery is open daily at 10 a.m. For information, call 252-928-4400, or visit www.downcreekgallery.com. Click here to visit their website.
Down Creek events 2015
All openings and events at Down Creek are from 5 to 8 p.m. and include complimentary adult beverages and hors d’oeuvres.
May 13: Open House “Kick Off to Summer.” Musical guest: Rob King
May 27: Doug Hoover (painter). Musical guest: Rob King
June 10: Robert Chestnut (print maker). Musical guest: DJ Tyler Jackson
June 24: Jason Daniels (wood carvings, decoys). Musical guest: Aaron Lavigne
July 1: Row Selman (plein air painter). Musical guest Aaron Lavigne
July 15: Roy Revels (sculpture and paintings). House Music
July 29: Barbara Adams (painter; mixed media): Musical guest: Desiree Christa Ricker
Aug. 12: Kitty Mitchell (painter). Musical guest: Rob King
Sept. 9: Sarah Searight (mixed media/painter) Musical guest: April Trueblood
Sept. 23: Mary Bassell (pastels). Musical Guest: Rob King
Oct. 7: Crystal Canterbury (photography). Musical guest: Rob King
To see more profiles in the Birds of Ocracoke series, click here
Thalasseus maximus
Text and photos by Peter Vankevich
This is a bird more often heard first before being seen, as it makes a frequent loud “Keer-reet ” call in flight. It can be identified in by its large bright orange bill, long pointed wings, black cap in breeding plumage and black crest in basic plumage. Royal terns forage by plunging into the water, often just off the breakers.
Royal Tern in basic pumage
When to see: Present year round, far fewer from mid-December till March as most migrate south. Common from Mid-March into November.
Where: Unlike the larger similar appearing Caspian Tern, Royal Terns can be found only in coastal saltwater areas. During the right time of the year, they can be seen from all three Ocracoke ferries. They fly just off the shore line, over the village and back and forth from the sound to the beach and will perch on pilings in the water.
Listen:
(audio provided courtesy of OhioLINK Digital Resource Commons)
Additional notes:
Royal Terns do not currently nest on Ocracoke. They do nest in colonies on nearby uninhabited Big Foot island and North Rock island that are in the Pamlico Sound. Big Foot Island had more than 7200 nest sites in 2014.
Royal Terns are the opposite of pelicans. Their chicks are precocial, that is, they hatch out downy and can stand up within a day or so of hatching. However, they usually stay in the nest scrape for a week or so. When they get bigger they form into a group called a crèche The crèche is tended to by some of the colony’s adults while the rest keep busy bringing in fish for their chicks.
Surprisingly John J. Audubon himself confused the Royal Tern with the Caspian Tern (Sterna caspia). In his Birds of America, Audubon depicted depicted a bird he called the Cayenne Tern that included a combination of features of both birds.
Ocracoke School senior Katie O’Neal reads the roll call of sailors lost May 11, 1942, when the British trawler HMT Bedfordshire was torpedoed off the coast. Photo by C. Leinbach
By Connie Leinbach
The annual British Cemetery Ceremony yesterday was an international event on Ocracoke.
“I’ve never been to a multi-national event,” said retired Coast Guard officer Pete Trebbe, husband of Coast Guard Commander Karrie Krebbe, the master of ceremonies.
He was stationed in Boston before he and his wife relocated to Pine Knoll Shores south of here.
“We didn’t have anything like this (in Boston),” he said. “This is wonderful. Here, it’s the community taking care of foreign soldiers.”
For 73 years, Ocracoke has remembered the four British sailors whose bodies washed ashore after a U-boat on May 11, 1942, torpedoed the HMT Bedforshire, a British trawler pressed into military service to ferry supplies along the United States coast.
Two of the sailors were identified: Sub Lieutenant Thomas Cunningham and Ordinary Telegraphist Second Class Stanley Craig. The people of Ocracoke rallied and donated land on which the four are interred and which is now leased by Great Britain. Two other British sailors from the San Delfino are interred in a second cemetery in Buxton, who were remembered the day before the Ocracoke event.
Coins and rocks left on the crosses at the British Cemetery are an old European tradition that says, “I was here and I remember.” Photo by C. Leinbach
These are the only WWII British cemeteries in the United States, and the U.S. Coast Guard takes care of them.
Other international visitors on Friday included Alphonsus and Selena Sweeney from Bell Island, Newfoundland.
It was their first trip to Ocracoke after learning that one of the fallen Bedfordshire sailors was Al’s uncle John, who was 23 when he died.
“We knew he was torpedoed, but we didn’t know where,” Al said during the reception in the Ocracoke Community Center. Earlier this year when the couple was in Florida, they decided to search the Internet and learned about the Bedfordshire.
The two were moved by the reading of the roll call of the fallen by Ocracoke senior Katie O’Neal.
“All I wanted to do was sit down and cry,” Selena said. “All those young men….”
The two visited Ocracoke for the week and said they would be back next year again for the ceremony.
Ocracoe School senior Samantha styron recounts the history of the Bedforshire. Photo by P. Vankevich
“Everyone is so friendly here,” Selena said.
Her observation was echoed by Richard Eagles, who lives in Margate, Fla., but was born in Brixton, England, and who has attended the ceremony for the last few years in honor of his uncle who had been part of the Royal Navy.
“This is amazing,” Eagles said. “We don’t even do this in our own countries.”
He pointed out something new he discovered this year—that one of the fallen Bedforshire men, Leonard P. Bickford had been from Brixton, too.
Richard Eagles of Margate, Fla., points to one of the fallen Bedfordshire sailors who was from his home town of Brixton, England. Photo by C. Leinbach
For Carla Palmer, this was her fourth visit to Ocracoke and her first attendance at this ceremony. Originally from Toronto and now living in Maine, she was particularly touched by the story of the Canadians.
“I thought it was interesting how the Newfoundlanders were considered to be UK citizens on the roster, but Canadians considered them their own,” she said. “Newfoundland didn’t become part of Canada until 1949.”
Courtney Shafer, an elementary gifted resource teacher from Virginia Beach, liked the international aspect of the ceremony.
“It was moving how those killed in the war from other countries are honored here and how the speakers connected it to the present,” she said.
Kema Geroux, also from Virginia Beach, wanted to see the ceremony that she had heard so much about because her husband is writing a book on the many World War II merchant mariners who were from Matthews, VA.
Military officials stressed how the allies banding together turned the tide of the war.
“We would not have such a safe world if not for the British and what they did in World War II,” said Coast Guard Captain Sean Murtagh of the Hatteras Inlet station. “Thank you; rest peacefully; we have the watch.”
Commander David Trudeau, Royal Canadian Naval attaché out of Washington, D.C., who attended officially for Canada, attended for the third time.
Canadian Naval Attaché Commander David Trudeau. Photo by P. Vankevich
“I’ve been here two years now and I really feel this is a family gathering,” he said, noting that Friday (May 8) was World War II Victory in Europe Day.
Great Britain was represented by Commodore Richard Allen, the British Naval attache.
“We recognize the reconciliation of the protagonists of World War II,” he said. “We are still standing as allies, shoulder to shoulder against tyranny.”
Among the other speakers were Daniel Couch, president of the Friends of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras which coordinates both remembrances; Samantha Styron, an Ocracoke School senior, who read the story of the Bedfordshire; and Lt. John Mabus, Coast Guard chaplain.
Others participating were the U.S. Coast Guard Pipe Band, the Coast Guard Honor Guard, who gave the ending gun salute; Howard Bennink, who played taps; Ocracoke Boy Scout Troop #290; Ocracoke Girl Scout Cadet Troop #2829, Lucy O’Neal and Abigail Morris.
Janey Jacoby coordinates the Ocracoke event.
The final salute. Photo by Connie Leinbach
The procession includes the U.S. Coast Guard Pipe Band, the U.S. Coast Guard Honor Guard, and the Ocracoke Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops. Photo: C. Leinbach
Regarding the article (to read click here) about how well Ocracoke School did in its evaluation, you all should be so proud of your school’s faculty and students. What a stellar performance.
I spoke to one of the high school students when I was visiting last year. He was a very nice young man who told me that there was no problem with bullying or anything like that. Everyone had known each other since they were little kids, and as a result, bullying just didn’t happen.
I think there is more to schooling than providing materials, or college prep courses and AP placement. Ocracoke is a true community where each person is valued, and people strive to help one another out.
The entire community supports its young people. At my daughter’s school, there is an unpleasant feeling of competition: Do better than the next person, score well on tests, or be left behind.
Ocracoke School must be on to something that is eluding other school systems in the state. I think of the pride that everyone feels about completing the baseball field. Here, the baseball team is highly competitive.
So many kids are heartbroken because they never get the chance to play high school ball. Playing varsity sports is for only elite athletes who get coached and belong to travel teams in their spare time.
I do wish that every school system could see its students as valuable members of the community. They are our future.
British Cemetery flag and crosses . Photo by P. Vankevich
The annual Ocracoke British Cemetery Ceremony will take place at 11 a.m Friday. If the weather is particularly bad, however, it will be moved to the Ocracoke School Gymnasium on School House Rd., according to Dick Jacoby, one of the community coordinators.
This annual ceremony pays tribute to the sailors of the HMS Bedfordshire that was torpedoed by German submarine U-558 off of Ocracoke. Four bodies of the sailors that washed ashore are buried at the grave site.
This tribute is organized by the Friends of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, the Ocracoke community, the U.S. Coast Guard, Coast Guard Auxiliary 16-04, the National Park Service, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, students of Ocracoke School, and the Ocracoke Boy Scout troop.
This is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum at 252 986-2995.
Social media, weather websites, and television have been jammed with speculation that a subtropical or tropical system could form in the area of the Bahamas mid-week and threaten the southeast coast with nasty weather by week’s end almost a full month before the official beginning of the hurricane season.
Forecasters are looking at low pressure forming along the remnants of a dying cold front in the western Atlantic between Cuba and the Bahamas over the next few days. Some computer models are suggesting that the low could take on tropical or subtropical characteristics by the end of the week.
However, the models vary greatly on whether the storm will become tropical, how strong it might be, and what direction it might move in.
