Outlook 2021: Our Coastland, Behind the Scenes

THE COASTLAND TIMES

Outlook 2021

Our Coastland

Behind the Scenes

Outlook 2021 • 3

4 • Outlook 2021

Outlook 2021 Edition

CONTENTS College of The Albemarle: Transforming lives and communities .................................................................6

Middle Creek Farms: Continuing the family legacy ............................................................................36

Theresa Schneider Publisher

Open arms for all animals at the Currituck Animal Shelter .............................................................................8

N.E.S.T. volunteers: Protecting sea turtles for over 25 years .........................................................................38

Philip S. Ruckle Jr. Staff Writer

Keeping the lights on ................................................12

Peace Garden Project grows food and community.................................................................. 40

from The Coastland Times

Summer Stevens Staff Writer

Dare County Water Department keeps the water flowing ..........................................................................14 Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation: Caring for animals in need...........................................................18

New Rodanthe Bridge ‘is built to last, that’s for sure’................................................................................42 Sanctuary Vineyards: Cheers to family farms .... 44

Danielle Puleo Staff Writer

Food-A-Rama: Behind the scenes at the familyrun grocery store........................................................22

Scarborough Boatworks: ‘Entirely custom from day one’ ........................................................................45

Hannah Russ Marketing Consultant

Duck Fire Department: Evolving to meet the needs of the town it serves .....................................28

Single Fin: Thai-sushi restaurant brings modern twist to traditional flavors ....................................... 46

Jewelry By Gail sparkles with custom designs and styles......................................................................30

Tyrrell teachers navigate pandemic challenges to reach students ........................................................... 48

Father-son team does ‘whatever it takes to keep a pool running’...............................................................34

Sugar Shack Fish Market & Restaurant looks forward to best season yet ......................................50

For additional copies, stop by our office at 207 Queen Elizabeth Ave., Ste. 10 in Manteo.

Contact us by calling 252-473-2105, emailing news@thecoastlandtimes.com or by mail at PO Box 400, Manteo, NC 27954

Outlook 2021 • 5

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College of The Albemarle: Transforming lives and communities

by Summer Stevens

Courtesy COA

International students at the COA Dare campus.

For the last 60 years, College of The Albemarle has been seeking ways to meet the needs of students and prepare them for the workforce.

COA seeks to build pathways to employment for local students in their hometowns. “You don’t have to get a four-year degree to have an economically viable career in the Outer Banks,” COA President Dr. Jack Bagwell said. “We’ve got the jobs, we’ve got the opportunities.”

He has a challenging job, considering that COA serves seven counties across four campuses – Elizabeth City, Currituck, Dare and EdentonChowan. While each campus has its own flavor and cultural differences, “We’re not four campuses that only share a name; we’re one college that happens to have four campuses.” A lot of energy is poured into the consistency in policy and procedure throughout the campuses. “We can celebrate differences, but at the end of the day, we are all COA,” Bagwell said.

There are plans for growth occurring on all of the campuses. Construction for the new Dare County 35,000-square-foot campus is in full swing, with an anticipated completion date of December 2022, some class offerings in the spring of 2022 and fully operational by the summer session. The new campus will provide for much needed classroom space, meeting areas and library space. Most importantly, it will consolidate the two Manteo campuses, currently located about a mile from each other.

After construction is complete, discussions are

in progress for the Russell Twiford Campus to be used by the Dare County school system for its early college program.

There’s an expansion plan in place in Currituck, as well as discussions in Elizabeth City to expand the nursing simulation facilities; COA-Edenton-Chowan is redoing a space to serve the trade programs.

Steve Sizemore worked in the manufacturing industry for twenty years before accepting a position as a welding instructor for College of The Albemarle, Roanoke Island Campus. Eight out of 10 of his students are participating in dual enrollment (also called Career and College Promise), which means they’re getting college credit while still attending high school classes.

“When I ask my students why they didn’t go straight to university, without missing a beat they all say, ‘We didn’t want the debt. Why wouldn’t you come here if it’s paid for?’”

Just one of the many financial aid options is Dare Guarantee Scholarship program, which is open to recent or upcoming high school graduates in Dare County and may pay for all tuition and fees that are not covered by financial aid and scholarships. Priority is given to students attending the COA-Dare campus.

“There’s a great cooperation between COA and the county,” Sizemore said. His dual enrollment students attend high school in the morning, then come to COA in the afternoon. For students who start the 18-month program as a junior, they graduate from the COA welding program the same time they graduate from high school. “It’s a really fantastic program,” he said.

Outlook 2021 • 7 According to Sizemore, many of his former students go on to well-paying government jobs at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, others are hired through the partnership program at Manns Harbor or the apprentice program with the shipyard in Wanchese.

Bagwell strives to keep the program offerings in line with community needs and the success of his students upon graduation to find well-paying jobs in their field. The college offers over 50 programs of study.

Some offer associate degrees, some certificates and others a diploma.

Recently, the college’s Associate Degree Nursing program was selected by RegisteredNursing.com as number one in the state out of 82 North Carolina schools.

For Bagwell, though he is proud of the ranking, this is nothing new. “We have had an excellent nursing program for 50 years. Today’s program stands on the shoulders of the program of yesterday,” h e

Courtesy COA

The library at the COA Dare campus. said.

Bagwell credits the staff: “We have a cando faculty. They love the students, they love the community, and they love what they do.”

Over six decades, COA has seen a lot of changes. It was the first comprehensive community college in the state and the North Carolina Community College system is currently the third largest in the country.

There’s a lot of community support for the

Summer Stevens photo

Student Elizabeth Kays makes a copper bracelet out of forged copper.

college, be it through fundraising or general good will. “It never fails, at least weekly, if I’m wearing my COA lapel pin or lanyard around my neck, that someone will stop me to speak well of the college,” Bagwell recounts. While the geographic vastness can make it a challenging area to serve, “I couldn’t be prouder to be associated with the staff, the students and the community,” he said. 

Summer Stevens photo

Ongoing construction work at the new COA Dare campus.

Courtesy COA

Bottom: Groundbreaking at the new COA Dare campus

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Open arms for all animals at the Currituck Animal Shelter

by Summer Stevens

Summer Stevens photos

Top: An adoptable cat at the Currituck Animal Shelter. Bottom: Animal care technician Connor Rogers with Buster, who is looking for a home.

It’s clear that the staff at the Currituck County Animal Shelter love what they do.

They’re there to love and care for neglected and unwanted animals by providing safety, warmth and affection.

The shelter is what’s called an “open missions” shelter and is available to all animals in the county, including roosters, goats, reptiles and swine in addition to the more traditional dogs and cats. No animal is turned away. They work in connection with the Animal Control Department. The shelter can house approximately eighty cats and thirty dogs.

A day at the Currituck County Animal Shelter, located at 140 Aviation Parkway in Barco, starts at 8:30 a.m. when the staff arrives. The first half of the workday is spent cleaning the animal areas – refreshing litter boxes, power washing the indoor dog quarters and feeding and watering all the animals.

When the weather is nice, the dogs are outside in individual kennels and take turns in the large play yard with staff or volunteers. Each dog gets about fifteen to twenty minutes a day of individual attention in the play yard. There is a gated area with an obstacle course built by Eagle Troop 117.

According to the staff, “The dogs love [the obstacle course].”

Staff and volunteers spend time interacting with animals, making them feel safe and comfortable. For some animals, this happens quickly; others need more time. “Whenever we have a spare moment we interact with the animals,” said animal care technician Connor Rogers, who has worked at the shelter since 2015. “Our goal is to make sure the

Summer Stevens photo

Animal control officer Brandon Dozier with animal care technician Caitlin Garrett. animals feel safe. Once they’re comfortable with us, we can tell how comfortable they’ll be with the public.”

The staff aims to acclimate the animals quickly to their new environment and gauge the personality of each animal so they can make a good placement with a new owner.

They conduct interviews and take into consideration traits like energy level, temperament and health. Pre-COVID, members of the public looking to adopt were invited to walk around and interact with the animals and forge a connection. Now, animals are chosen by photos posted online; they can still visit the shelter but it is by appointment only.

Because of these restrictions, there are some animals that are not getting adopt-

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10 • Outlook 2021 ed quickly. For example, Buster, a boxer mix who (as of March) has been at the shelter since June of 2020. Buster had heartworms and he’s older, so he doesn’t attract as much interest as the younger dogs or the more popular breeds like golden retrievers or Labradors.

According to Rogers, prior to the pandemic, someone would have walked by his cage and been drawn to his personality.

Overall, the shelter is continuing to thrive, thanks to websites like petango. com, which connects people to pets needing to be adopted based on zip code and desired radius. “You feel like you’re really doing something when you find an animal a home,” said

Summer Stevens photo

Obstacle course built by Eagle Scout Troop 117.

Rogers. “It makes it all worth it.”

Not all pets who come to the Currituck Animal Shelter leave via adoption.The shelter partners with a variety of rescues including Brandywine SPCA, Lucky Dog Animal Rescue and LabRescue. If an animal has a better

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chance at adoption somewhere else, or if, for example, a dog is getting restless being penned up, Currituck Animal Shelter will seek out another home. The only time an animal is euthanized is if it is sick, aggressive or a danger to the public.

Adoptions cost $125 for dogs and $75 for cats and include spaying or neutering, all shots and microchipping.

For more information, call the shelter at 252-453-8682 or follow them on Facebook.

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Keeping the lights on

by Philip S. Ruckle Jr.

The job may not appeal to everyone, but Jonathan Vernesoni said being an electrical power lineman can be rewarding.

“Power is so essential today and there is a real sense of accomplishment when the job is done,” said Vernesoni.

Vernesoni should know. He’s been an electrical power lineman with Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative for 17 years.

Unlike investor-owned utilities, which are for-profit enterprises, an electric cooperative is a private, nonprofit organization owned by its members or customers delivering electrical power to the members living in its service area.

According to Laura Ertle, CHEC director of public relations and marketing, prior to 1945 the only Hatteras Island electric service was in Hatteras Village. The sparsely populated island was not seen as a profitable venture by investor-owned utilities, so local residents formed their own power company. Today a staff of 25, including 11 linemen, provide electrical service to the island’s almost 8,000 accounts.

“Our linemen undergo extensive training and follow numerous protocols to ensure safety as they work to maintain our lines and restore power,” said Ertle. “Often that work is in very treacherous conditions.

The pandemic has added

CHEC photo

Jonathan Vernesoni has been a lineman with Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative for 17 years. another layer of precaution to an already demanding job, but our linemen have risen to the challenge and demonstrated an exceptional level of skill, dedication and expertise.”

Vernesoni, a supervisor with a crew of 10 other linemen, said even as a crew leader he still climbs into the bucket when needed.

“When the power goes out everyone wants their lights back on right away,” said Vernesoni. “Even me at my house.”

Fortunately, power outages are much less frequent and do not last nearly as long as in years past. Many local resiCHEC photo

Above the Rodanthe rooftops, Jonathan Vernesoni performs maintenance work on a pole.

Outlook 2021 • 13 dents can probably recall periods of days and even weeks without power due to inclement weather or equipment failures.

Although they do still happen, Vernesoni attributes improved service to better built equipment, better equipment designs, better line insulators and regular maintenance.

Along with those improvements have been power increases to meet modern day demands. Vernesoni said when he started, those overhead lines carried 34,500 volts. Today most lines on the island are at 115,000 volts.

With any voltage comes a need for safety. According to a 2019 Kiplinger article by Stacy Rapacon, and other survey results, power lineman rank among the top 10 most dangerous jobs in America.

“Electricity is always a present danger,” said Vernesoni. “Working with charged lines takes some mental toughness. One mistake can make a life changing difference, if not end it.”

He went on to say that while linemen like to kill the power when they can, that is not always possible, leaving them inches from a charged power line.

Vernesoni

said so far he’s been fortunate to have never been needed on a mayday rescue call.

One reason might be the focus on safety.

“You might say we are inspectors,” Vernesoni added. “We spend a lot of time inspecting our gear, inspecting the truck, the safety equipment and checking the poles.”

Training is also an important key to job safety. There is always continuing education. According to Vernesoni there is ongoing CPR training, hazard recognition, forklift operations, first aid and regular safety meetings.

“Safety is a top priority,” he added. “So we are always training with safety in mind.”

Vernesoni said when he started, most of the training was through on-the-job activities. These days, however, it’s not at all unusual for a new recruit to have already graduated from some type training program like the Electric Line Academy offered at Nash Community College.

“I was a green recruit when I started,” he said. “I started with no formal electrical experience and they trained me from the ground up.”

Vernesoni said he had dabbled in construction and a few

other careers, but after getting married he decided to look for something with benefits. When he heard the co-op was hiring, he put in an application. Little was required other than having a Class A CDL and meeting a few physical requirements.

“The job can be physically tough with a lot of heavy lifting, pulling and climbing,” he explained. “Anyone afraid of heights gets weeded out early.”

Those who stick with it are not going to see a typical 9-5 job. Some work days are actually at night and no two work days are the same.

“Every day is different,” Vernesoni explained. “Some days it’s the weather, other days it is the traffic. At times it’s the poles or the height of the pole and other days it can be the voltage.”

There are even days when the work is not restricted to just Hatteras Island. Just like when other crews descend on the Outer Banks following a major devastating storm, Vernesoni and his fellow workers have headed out to Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana to help in those storm-impacted areas.

“We are always more than glad to help other co-ops when called,” Vernesoni added. “They come help us and we’re ready to go help them. And the guys are treated like rock stars after a storm event."  CHEC photo

Workers complete a maintenance project at the Cape Hatteras Electric Cooperative Buxton Substation.

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Danielle Puleo photo

Inside the DCWD treatment facility where the trains and well tanks are housed.

Dare County Water Department keeps the water flowing

by Danielle Puleo

Have you ever thought about how convenient it is to turn on the faucet in your home and have running water flow out immediately? Water is a resource that the Outer Banks is both aware and fond of.

So readily available to us, but how? Much of that credit belongs to the Dare County Water Department (DCWD).

Patrick Irwin, public utility director at DCWD, has been involved with water plant operations here on the coast for the past 30

years. He sees five million gallons of water leave the plant in Kill Devil Hills every single day. Not to mention the other four water plants in Dare County, all of which service millions of gallons of water on a daily basis.

“The first water systems on the Outer Banks were a result of the Ash Wednesday Storm,” Irwin explained. In 1962, after the historic storm hit the mid-Atlantic states, Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head worked together to get water from the fresh pond that still

resides by the Dare County ABC store off of W. Eight Street in Nags Head using surface water treatment.

By 1980, the Skyco plant was established, feeding water to residents of Manteo all the way up to Duck through the Kitty Hawk pump station. The plant in Kill Devil Hills was started in 1989, running three million gallons of water per day. Rodanthe saw its water plant in 1995, five years prior to the purchase of the Cape Hatteras Water

Outlook 2021 • 15 Association, where the Frisco plant was then built.

Sixty years of innovation and technological advances have made it possible to accommodate the surplus of visitors and residents alike that come to the Outer Banks every year. Expansions are still taking place.

“We’re actually doing an expansion right now,” Irwin shared. Two new trains – the equipment used to pump one million gallons of water per day with treatment – are taking the place of the original three trains located at DCWD headquarters in Kill Devil Hills.

“We are tearing out the original three trains from 1989 and replacing them with 1.3 million gallons a day due to the technology,” Irwin said. “So, we’re getting an additional 900,000 gallons a day in the same footprint.”

With massive amounts of water flowing to households across the county comes immense responsibility and the need for a dependable team. From billing to operations to the construction of these new trains, everyone in this department has to work together seamlessly.

Irwin explained that employees working in the billing department create the bills and handle all phone calls that come in every day of every month.

Water treatments take place regularly throughout a day in the lab; testing the alkalinity, chloride, calcium, phosphates and so much more is essential to sustainable water.

Operators are out night and day checking on water towers, providing needed maintenance to equipment, logging water levels and numbers on spreadsheets and monitoring the wells and plants.

Laurie Seal and Laurie Kellogg work together in the billing department of DCWD to ensure customers are taken care of. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, their day-to-day began looking a little different.

While they did not work remote due to their essential status, they did have to close the doors.

“We closed the doors to public and really began utilizing our auto-teller while still taking care of everybody,” said Kellogg.

The facility’s auto-teller, similar to that of a bank’s, was in place prior to COVID-19.

However, customers opted to come in the office and pay bills face-to-face. Starting in March 2020, everyone had to shift to accommodate for social distance regulations.

With partitions in place and sanitizer readily on hand, the women handle all pay-

ments electronically or through the auto-teller. Electronic forms were set up to accommodate the remote ways of billing.

“The county has been very good at giving us whatever we need,” said Seal.

As for the operators, their normal work day had to shift as well. Jordan Curles, WTP superintendent at DCWD, shared that operators have a packed work day: day-shifters start by checking and logging numbers on a spreadsheet that is constantly monitored.

Daily labs are the name of the game before hopping in their vehicles to drive up to Duck and check the six to seven water tower locations for chlorine. After these tasks are attended to, the afternoon is full of maintenance on the

Danielle Puleo photo

Trains, also known as the equipment used to pump one million gallons of water a day with treatment, inside DCWD treatment facility.

16 • Outlook 2021 the system used to control all the pumps in their system. A color-coated array of cyber pump tanks displays the water level of physical pumps around the county. “All the different tanks and tower levels are controlled through there,” he said. “If it gets to a level where it’s about to overflow, we get an alarm and it will turn red.”

Managed on a minute-by-minute basis, the system is the key to ensuring that the sections of Dare County under their control are getting the water they need.

As Irwin walked through the trains that have been pumping water since 1989 and the wells that run to the plant, he explained the process of transforming the salty well water into fresh water. “This is about a 75% recovery plant because you have to take the fresh and reject the salt,” Irwin explained. A process that is complex, but necessary.

Water flows into the plant from wells connected to aqueducts under the surface of the towns. From there, it is shifted and chemically balanced to rid salt through the trains. Six large pressure vessels lie in the back of the indoor facility, where the water undergoes its final polish before going off to two 10 million Danielle Puleo photos gallon holding tanks.

Top: The auto-teller inside Ten million gallons sounds like enough to feed a DCWD in Kill Devil Hills. town for a while, Bottom: A monitor screen but Irwin statdisplaying the system ed that the used by DCWD to control facility could do the water pump tanks close to that amount throughout the county. per day in the summer months.

To think, the water that flows so readily from our sink faucets and shower heads has gone through an entire transformation before it ever hits our hands. Twenty million gallons of treated water in reserves, 10 of which can be gone in 24 hours, could not be possible without the crews at water treatment facilities like DCWD. 

fourteen wells DCWD maintains and the one very large water plant located at the Kill Devil Hills facility.

Six operators are staffed at the DCWD Kill Devil Hills plant along with one chief operator and Curles himself. Curles noted that after the pandemic hit, operators would drive individually. “We started sanitizing before and after every shift,” he added. Before partitioning rooms off with shower curtains, only one employee was permitted to be in a single room at a time.

Masks are worn at all times.

“We are very fortunate we were able to operate and keep going,” Curles said. “These guys are used to operating during storms, hurricanes and extended power outages,” Irwin added.

“They were pretty prepared.”

While in the control room, C u r l e s pointed o u t

Danielle Puleo photos

Construction of the trains set to replace the current trains from 1989 is underway.

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HIWR photo

A great horned owl that is waking from anesthesia. It had been hit by a car.

Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation: Caring for animals in need

by Philip S. Ruckle Jr.

HIWR photo

A peregrine falcon in rehab

HIWR photo

Since their feathers are not waterproof, owls do not fly well in the rain.

Many times the best thing you can do for a wild animal is leave it alone.

There are, however, times when a wild creature is injured, becomes sick or is orphaned and in those cases, human intervention may be needed to nurse them back to ideal health and release them back out into the wild.

That is what Lou Browning does. As a licensed wildlife rehabilitator in Frisco, he helps care for and treat injured or orphaned animals so they can return to their natural habitat.

It’s a calling that dates back to his childhood years.

“I have always liked working with animals,” Browning says. “When I was a kid I liked all kinds of critters, domestic or wild.

And I’ve always had a great curiosity about them.”

In North Carolina, permits are required to be able to keep most wildlife species. So Browning took a wildlife rehabilitator class taught by Elizabeth Hanrahan, a rehabilitator already on the island, to get a basic state

permit.

“That’s an easy permit to get,” he points out. “Like most rehabilitators, I started working with small animals, small reptiles and other small non-rabies vector animals.”

Because caring for birds requires a federal migratory bird rehabilitation permit, when Hanrahan moved to Edenton, Browning started making the long drive to get birds to her there.

“I was hauling birds to Elizabeth in Edenton and quickly realized I could make trips twice a day seven days a week and not keep up,” he explains. “A federal permit is a pretty intensive thing to get. So I apprenticed with her to get my federal permit for birds. She was a powerhouse type person who was president of the North Carolina Wildlife Rehabilitators for a while, but that was probably a good thing.”

In addition to at least 12 months of supervised rehabilitation activities under a licensed rehabilitator, a formal rehabilitation facility is required for a federal permit. So around 2002, Browning founded Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation.

“I got my federal permit and started rehabbing down here,” he continues. “And HIWR photo

An eagle that has seen some hard times and lived through them was a July 4th patient at the Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.

Outlook 2021 • 19 when I got my federal permit, for the first 10 or 12 years I was doing mainly birds. All kinds of birds.”

Although licensed to work with almost any kind of animal, Browning says he preferred to stick with birds.

“I decided not to do mammals,” he says.

“One nice thing about birds is that you don’t have to get up all hours of the night to feed babies. I don’t think mammal rehabilitators sleep. I give them a lot of credit.”

Even with a partially limited clientele, Browning estimates his caseload was up to around 500 a year.

“I was doing all types of birds,” he continues. “It was a full gambit from pelagics to songbirds to loons and quads. Anything and everything along with raptors, songbirds and waterfowl. It was about to wear me out.

So about nine years ago I began limiting my work to raptors and reptiles.”

While most of his work is a solo effort, he says during the winter months he works with N.E.S.T. and the Park Service dealing with cold stunned sea turtles and in the summer months he is working with them on sea turtle nests. The rest of the time he specializes on raptors with calls coming in from all across northeastern North Carolina.

“I get calls from Moyock to Columbia and out to Gates County,” he continues. “It keeps me busy.”

Browning went on to say that many of the calls he gets tend to be cases that are more medically intensive. Providing what medical treatment he can within allowable guidelines, Browning has a network of other professionals willing to help nurse and injured wildlife back to health.

Places like Roanoke Island Animal Clinic in Manteo and Rocky Point Animal Hospital in Rocky Point, just north of Wilmington.

“Dr. Joni Shimp at Rocky Point is a wonderful r e s o u r c e ,”

HIWR photo

Lou Browning listens to a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle’s heart to get a pulse rate.

says Browning. “She founded Cape Fear Raptor Center which has become a nationally recognized rehabilitation center specializing in bald eagle rehabilitation and training.

She is probably the most experienced veterinarian on the east coast with eagles. So when I get eagles I always confer with her.”

Browning also has others on the island he can call on. Sadly, Hanrahan passed away in 2019, but Rebecca and Richard Marlin are rehabilitators just down the

road in Frisco who work with mammals.

“We work pretty close together,” adds Browning.

He says that there are other resources available as well, with numerous training opportunities at various veterinary school symposiums.

“You can always learn a lot there,” he adds. “You need to keep learning and document everything so you can go back to see what did work, what didn’t work and why.

There is a lot of on-going training. If you want to be good at it and succeed, you need to keep learning.”

And, while a big part is rehab, another important part is public education.

“Some of that education is simply why a bird is on the beach and why it is okay,” HIWR photo

A cold stunned green sea turtle being carried from the sound to transport to eventually the Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation Center at the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island

20 • Outlook 2021 Browning continues. “There is also education on why an osprey might be stuck in a nest. We have balloon strings and kite strings that can entangle birds.”

As expected, along with the seasonal influx of visitors is an increase in the number of calls to Browning.

“After Easter there might be 40-60 calls a day,” Browning explains. “It gets busy in the summer when visitors are here. Sometimes multiple calls on the same bird walking the beach. Other times it might be a dozen calls a day.”

Often Browning has to determine from a caller if a bird is actually in need of help.

Some cases just require that nature work its course.

Sometimes a call turns out to be a truly unique situation. One such call came last year when an Atlantic puffin was found in Buxton.

A small seabird usually associated with more northern locales north of Maine like Iceland and Nova Scotia, the Outer Banks are not considered a routine stop over.

Browning says many of the birds he deals with are suffering some type poisoning, are hit by cars or a combination of those events.

Fortunately, there has been success when some good Samaritans follow his instructions to help free a bird or transport it to Browning.

Browning says also that he would like to see less chemical poisoning. Common household poisons and pesticides ingested by rodents can have a disastrous effect on the food chain and even be transmitted to larger wildlife like ospreys and eagles.

“Better to use a snap trap,” Browning says.

“That is much more humane.” 

HIWR photo

A sad find on the soundside of Hatteras Island.

A turtle volunteer found a leatherback with no obvious signs of trauma, so it was not known why it died.

MANTEO, NC | 252.473.2449 | ELIZABETH CITY, NC | 252.335.4395 HIWR photo

Two orphaned great horned owl nestlings

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22 • Outlook 2021

Food-A-Rama: Behind the scenes at the family-run grocery store

by Danielle Puleo

Jackie Parker is no stranger to challenges. Running Food-A-Rama in Manteo with her three sons, Brandon, Cameron and Dylan, Parker has opened her doors through hurricanes, power outages, floods and even a worldwide pandemic.

Overseeing every aspect of her family-run grocery store is now second nature, but the day-in and day-out goings-on of the business changed drastically in 2020.

“Normally this time of year, it’s slow,” Parker told The Coastland Times in March 2021. The steady pace of the off-season frees up time for the family to get their daily duties done.

“Where we’re family-owned, it’s different then a big company because we have to do it all, the managers do. We do all of

the ordering, all the prices ourselves, we help the company work on our ads, do all the shelf tags, signs, all the cleaning . . . we clean the whole store every winter ourselves,” Parker explained.

All of these tasks at hand are taken on by the family members running Food-ARama behind the scenes. A huge part of running a grocery store is relying on the orders delivered several times a week.

Brandon Leavel, Parker’s son and manager at Food-A-Rama, explained that normally, their delivery trucks make their way to Manteo on Tuesdays and Fridays to unload supplies at Food-A-Rama.

“That changed big time when COVID hit; we couldn’t get product,” said Leavel.

“Our basic schedule weekly is we get

a truck Tuesday/Friday, order for these trucks Monday/Thursday, so then we have a couple of days in between to do books, price changes and do accounting. But when COVID hit, couldn’t get anything.”

Before the pandemic hit, Parker had just started to hand her side of the ordering off to her sons. After realizing the nature of the virus and how drastically different things would be, she stepped in and took over ordering half her supplies once again.

Most local grocery stores on the Outer Banks have different supplies due to competition. Suppliers run the ads for each store and deliver the specific products that store orders during the week. During the COVID-19 pandemic, every supplier

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Gregory Clark photo

Four generations of Chesley Midgett’s family were on hand to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Food-A-Rama in Manteo in May 2018. Midgett grew the business from a small mom and pop store begun in 1958 to a full service supermarket.

For Cameron Swain, Dylan Swain, Chesley Midgette Jr., William Chesley Leavel, Jackie Parker and Brandon Leavel, the business is a family affair.

and manufacturer struggled to produce certain items and grocery stores dealt with the repercussions.

“Everyone was running out of meat, cleaning products . . . everything went to this super shortage,” Leavel said. To compensate, the family had to order food three times a week and then have deliveries coming in three times a week, leaving little time to do much else but unload trucks and stock shelves.

In the midst of it all, the family began ordering from a second distributor for more supplies, such as toilet paper. “We took on another distributor just to get wipes and toilet paper . . . Sysco, which we normally don’t use them, but were buying supplies from them,” Leavel said.

Even at that, products were constantly in short supply. “I was ordering 3000 pieces and only 500 would come,” said Leavel. “The supplier didn’t have it or manufacturers didn’t have it because couldn’t keep up with the mandate.”

Leavel explained that the distributors began telling them that even if they had more supplies in stock than what was

o r d e r e d, Food-ARama would still be supplied less because suppliers were overloaded with orders. “They wouldn’t have been able to satisfy everybody if everybody was getting their full orders, so they were cutting everybody back a percent.”

On top of the constant battle to keep their shelves stocked, Leavel shared that Food-A-Rama began delivering groceries to those shut-in due to the virus. “Us, we were doing the deliveries and the shopping,” he said. Parker added, “We really put some hours in . . . it put us all here six days a week.”

While fighting to maintain their supplies, the family began to realize early on that panic has set in within the commu-

nity. Customers were shopping for the same things every day. During delivery days, Parker said she would see the same people coming back and loading their carts.

“During COVID, even when they had shut down the island, we were running numbers the same as we normally would like July 4th and the summertime when it

24 • Outlook 2021 came to . . . amount per cartload,” Leavel noted. “It shot us over the dollar amount that we were doing in the summer.”

“I kept telling people: ‘We’re gonna get more product next week, I promise you,’” Parker said. “I told them it might not be their brand, but we’re gonna get something. They still panicked, and that was the most stressful part.”

As Parker, Leavel and Parker’s son Dylan Swain sat with The Coastland Times a year after the pandemic began to take its toll on the nation, Swain shared that they had been accused multiple times of price gauging. “When eggs took a plunge, with us being a ‘Mom and Pop,’ we can’t keep but thirty crates/boxes on hand of eggs,” Parker said. “Big companies have pallets and so they held their prices down until they ordered more pallets of eggs and then their prices went up. But it didn’t hit when mine hit.”

Supply and demand is not something

the average person thinks about while walking down a grocery aisle. “When all of these things went into shortage, our prices went up, so we had to raise prices,” Leavel explained. “It’s not us price gauging . . . our cost went up, so we have to go up.”

Despite the accusations from some, Leavel said many of their customers were understanding. The mask mandate went into effect immediately and Food-ARama installed Plexiglas shields in front of their registers to protect the cashiers and shoppers. Sanitizing stations were placed throughout the establishment, with sanitizer the family made themselves.

As if these battles were enough to overcome, the family faced yet another difficult challenge while operating during the pandemic: staffing. Leavel explained: “The huge thing during COVID is finding employees. One Danielle Puleo photo

Food-A-Rama in Manteo has installed Plexiglas shields to promote social distancing and help mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

thing she [Parker] has told people is when COVID hit, we had thirty employees, but we operated during COVID with around twelve to fifteen, with ten to fifteen percent times the amount of work.

We operated on a skeleton crew with it being busier than the summer, so that was crazy.”

Everyone was forced to adapt to rapid changes with the onset of the pandemic.

After watching her mother and father, Ruby and Chesley Midgett, run their successful store, Parker knew it was her duty to keep things operating. Working with her family has made that duty easier.

“I get to see my family more than most people and I am grateful for that,” Parker shared. “We do good together.” Leavel added, “It’s a family thing, that’s why we’re keeping it going and I enjoy working with my family.”

Outlook 2021 • 25

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26 • Outlook 2021

Outlook 2021 • 27

28 • Outlook 2021 Duck Fire photos

Duck Fire Department members, from left, Deputy Fire Chief Trey Batschelet, Christian Dick, Brandon Boyd, Duck Fire Chief Donna Black and Cameron Whitaker.

Duck Fire Department: Evolving to meet the needs of the town it serves

by Philip S. Ruckle Jr.

To say the area around the village of Duck has changed in recent years could be an understatement.

Little more than a name on a map prior to the 1970s, the area was of little interest to anyone other than avid hunters or fishermen. That changed when NC 12 was paved and visitors crossing the Wright Memorial Bridge

began venturing north. With the influx of people came rapid growth to the sleepy little village of only a few hundred houses. As population numbers steadily grew, local residents soon realized Duck needed its own fire department.

It was in the fall of 1982 that a small group gathered to organize a fire department.

Duck Fire photos

Above: Firefighters direct a water stream into the window of the Buxton Fire Training Building during a training exercise. Left: Duck Fire Chief Donna Black gives firefighters instructions during the training excercise

Outlook 2021 • 29 Don Meadows was named the department’s first chief. With seed money provided by Dare County, local residents built the station themselves and held fundraisers to help pay for the department’s fire trucks.

In 1988, the department had a paid chief and 23 volunteers. Together they answered 30 calls with a GMC equipment step van, two 1,000 gallon/minute pumpers and a 4x4 International brush truck donated

by North Carolina Power.

With continued growth, Duck has since become an incorporated community of more than 2,200 homes and has a yearround population of 520 that swells to more than 25,000 during peak season months.

There is, however, a lot more to Duck Fire than the popular Duck Fire T-Shirt Shop. The department responds to between 500 and 600 emergency medical, fire suppression, automobile accident and ocean rescue calls a year. Meeting the increased demands, the fire department’s arsenal has grown to now include considerably more heavy duty fire power: a ladder truck, two engine pumpers, a brush truck, a utility truck and two command vehicles.

There has also been a gradual change in the people answering those calls. Still maintaining a pool of volunteers, Duck has now become a combination department with a full crew of paid career firefighters.

“One big difference is that in the early years, everyone lived here,” explained Duck Fire Chief Donna Black. “Many of the people in the department lived here and worked in town, so if there was a fire call they closed up shop and responded.”

Black went on to say that as the town grew, especially with incorporation in 2002, the year round population dwindled and those that are here are more in the retirement age range.

While firefighters still have a wide range of ages, according to a February 2020 National Fire Protection Association report, 50 percent of the estimated 1,115,000 career and

volunteer firefighters in the United States are between 30 and 49 years old.

“So we don’t have the population at the firefighting age to draw from in order to maintain what we started with in the ‘80s,” she added. “Also, the cost of living just to be in Duck is high.”

Duck still has close to two dozen fire department volunteers, but now there is also paid staff of a full time chief, deputy chief, a dozen paid career staff firefighters and three or four paid part time firefighters.

Black has also requested that the Town of Duck fund two more full time firefighters.

“We still utilize volunteers,” Black said.

“Only today, they are support personnel outside the burning building. They’re in an effective support role performing important functions because they can throw ladders and can pull lines. They’re just not running into a burning building.”

One thing that has not changed over the years is a relationship with the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

Although Duck Fire built and owns the fire station building, the land it sits on is federal government property.

“We have a very strong relationship with the Army Corps of Engineers,” said Black.

“We have had a lease with the Department of the Army since 1982 and are working with them now to build a modern public safety

Duck Fire photos

Firefighters in full turnout gear access the roof of a building from an aerial ladder platform. building.”

A new building is not the only change on the horizon.

Black, one of less than 60 female fire chiefs in the U.S., is currently serving as International Association of Fire Chiefs Board of Directors second vice-president.

Next year she will move up to first vice-president and then to president of the nationwide association.

Not bad for someone who started as a volunteer, worked their way through the ranks as both a paid and volunteer firefighter, and was named fire chief for the Town of Duck in 2006.

“Our mission is to safeguard the lives and property within the Town of Duck,” said Black. “We aim to reduce the effects of natural or man-made disasters through education, fire prevention and suppression, and emergency medical responses.”

Like other area fire departments, the door at Duck Fire is always open for qualified individuals willing to serve as a volunteer firefighter. For more information about Duck Fire Department or the roles that can be filled by volunteers, call 252-261-3929. 

30 • Outlook 2021

Jewelry By Gail sparkles with custom designs and styles

by Summer Stevens Gail Kowalski credits the neighborhood bully for her success.

She was five years old and she’d come home four days in a row with bumps and bruises. “She was jealous and she was beating the crap out of me,” Kowalski said.

Finally, her mother had had enough. She told her daughter that the only way to stop it was to hit her back. And that ended it. “And we became friends,” Kowalski laughed. “But it took my mother saying, ‘You have the power to stop this.’ And I did. It was very empowering.”

To make a living as an artist, one has to

Summer Stevens photo

Gail Kowalski at her workbench.

be empowered. “My parents never told me I couldn’t do it,” she said. “It’s the best gift I ever got.”

Kowalski’s interest in rocks started in her early years. She recounted her amazement when her neighbors in her native city of Pittsburgh had a load of beautiful shining rocks delivered for their driveway. “I sat in the driveway and picked out my favorites. I called them my lucky bag of rocks.” When her mother discovered the rocks under her bed, she made Kowalski return them. “You can keep your favorites,” the neighbor said.

And so her love of stones had begun.

The love carried her through college at Siena Heights in Adrian, Michigan.

“I enmeshed myself in the fine arts program,” she said. “I loved it.”

Though she was successful at various forms of artwork, Kowalski knew jewelry making was her path. “I cannot fathom anything more exciting.”

After college she moved to the Outer Banks, which had been her family’s vacation destination since she was eight years old. “It was just love at first experience, for all of us,” she said. “We lived at the beach the whole two weeks we were here.” By ninth

grade, she told her best friend in English class that when she grew up, she would move to Nags Head and open her own store and make jewelry. continues on page 33 Summer Stevens photo

A look inside Jewelry by Gail.

Outlook 2021 • 31

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Outlook 2021 • 33 continued from page 31

But, as she soon discovered, not many people who graduate with an art degree go on to create art for a living. When she would reconnect with her talented colleagues and discover that no one was in the fine arts field, she was astounded. “There are just no jobs,” they would say. But Kowalski was determined to follow her dreams. So in 1977 she started Jewelry By Gail at the R&R Junction as an independent artist. In 1982, she moved a few blocks down the road to her current location and renovated a few years later. “I can’t believe it’s been 44 years,” she said.

Her style has changed over the years, but the source of her inspiration has not.

Kowalski looks to the rhythm of the sea and the movement of the waves when she designs her signature organic fluid style of jewelry. As she describes her process, “There’s always discovery, no matter what.

A stone talks to you. If the stone doesn’t agree, it won’t happen. I know it sounds crazy but that’s the way it is.” Each piece of jewelry she makes is unique. She rarely makes symmetrical pieces; instead she creates “asymmetrically balanced” jewelry.

Even earrings are not identical, though

when together, they’re a seamless match.

Kowalski specializes in one-of-a-kind jewelry, either displayed in the showroom or made by customer order. The second room at the shop features jewelry made by other design partners. Clients seeking a custom piece will select several styles they like, then talk with Kowalski about the type of jewelry they want and who it’s for. Unlike many artists, she doesn’t start with a drawing. “So much of it is feeling,” Kowalski said.

“I look at the hand, the finger, the finger joint. Somehow you translate that person into whatever design style they’ve chosen.”

After more than four decades of creating custom jewelry, she’s only had two or three clients unhappy with the end result. As a rule, Kowalski senses exactly the desire of her clients. Symbiotically, that’s her greatest joy as well. “The piece isn’t done until the right person is wearing it,” she said, “knowing you made that connection, you got it right.”

Getting it right is a team effort. Gold/ silversmith Eric Fewox is Kowalski’s righthand bench assistant. They work together in design, gem selection and settings, as well as in restyling or resetting jewelry.

Randy Snider serves as master stonecutter and Mark Womack does marketing and maintains the website and social media accounts.

Jewelry By Gail offers not only unique jewelry, but unique processes as well. They do design techniques called splash, torch fusion, seaweed, woven and wave, each unique but with the similar themes of flowing water that runs through them all. Splash elements are created by dropping molten gold into water – the result is gold that bursting with movement and life.

One piece, a naturally fish-shaped pearl atop a splash and seaweed design. Says the product description: “This fish appears to be surfing gold waves with a champagne diamond sparkling in the sunlit sea.” The pendant costs $5,200.

Some items are more, some are less than $100. “I try to hit a lot of price ranges,” Kowalski said. If someone desires a piece of custom jewelry, the shop serves a wide range of budgets.

Jewelry By Gail is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday at 207 E Driftwood Street in Nags Head or find them online at www.jewelrybygail.com. 

Summer Stevens photo

A close look at Kowalski’s offerings.

34 • Outlook 2021

Father-son team does ‘whatever it takes to keep a pool running’

by Philip S. Ruckle Jr. Sometimes all that’s needed for a little relaxation is a swimming pool.

There is, however, a little more to pool ownership than just keeping it full of water.

Ask almost any pool owner what’s the most important thing to know about having a pool and they will likely tell you proper maintenance heads the list.

A substantial investment much like a finetuned motor vehicle, swimming pools require a certain degree of maintenance in order to function properly.

While some homeowners are up to the task, not everyone has the time nor are they able to perform the manual vacuuming, filter back washing, cleaning skimmer baskets, necessary water testing and adding chemicals as needed.

That’s where Lynn Davis and his son Matthew of Lynn’s Repairs come in.

“We do whatever it takes to keep a pool running,” said Lynn.

Certified and licensed to provide regular cleaning services, they take care of about 40 pools from Whalebone to Corolla. The fatherson team also takes care of various types of repairs and warranty work on almost any pool equipment from Carova Beach all the way to Hatteras Village.

It’s part of a repair business that was started

by Lynn in 1994.

Philip S. Ruckle Jr. photo

Matthew Davis, left, and his father Lynn operate a family pool cleaning and repair business that until 2006 included Lynn’s father, Victor Davis.

The p o o l cleaning part of the business came about in 1998 when Victor Davis, his father, needed a more flexible work schedule than the one his auto parts job provided. Lynn helped set up and trained him to clean pools. Before long they were working together as a father-son team.

“Dad cleaned them and I fixed them,” explained Lynn. “I also repaired decks and some other home maintenance type work and even did a few roofs when I was younger.

Sometimes you just do what you have to do to feed your family.”

After a while Lynn’s son, and Victor’s grandson, Matthew joined in making it a truly family business.

“I’ve been cleaning pools since I was 12,” said the younger Davis proudly.

Graduating from Manteo High School in 2011, Matthew tried his hand at a couple of other occupations before gravitating back to the family pool business. Today he credits restaurant work with helping develop his communication skills and working the air conditioning business helped him learn about Outer Banks businesses overall.

“I also developed an appreciation for not having to lift air conditioners every day,” he added with a chuckle and a grin.

Then there was a short break in the family business when Victor passed away in 2006.

“We needed a little time off to regroup,” explained Lynn. “Then we restarted everything in 2008.”

Today, based out of Wanchese, Lynn and Matthew continue the business focused on pool cleaning and pool equipment repairs, emphasizing the importance of proper maintenance.

“Chemical balance is the key,” said Lynn.

He went on to say that having properly balanced water chemistry is an important step toward reducing skin and eye irritations and it helps prolong the life of the pool and pool equipment.

“We’ve done this long enough now that we are at the point that we understand what we’re doing and it’s all fairly routine,” he added.

And as Lynn approaches retirement age, Matthew is there to carry on the family business. 

Outlook 2021 • 35

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36 • Outlook 2021

Courtesy Dawson Pugh

Middle Creek Farms: Continuing the family legacy

by Summer Stevens

Summer Stevens photo

Preston Pugh inside a tractor tire at Middle Creek Farms.

Dawson Pugh wakes up every morning and gets to do what he loves. “I love to drive a tractor and I like growing food that people can eat.”

Middle Creek Farms in Engelhard farms several thousand acres and has grown corn and soybeans for over a century. Pugh’s great grandfather, Preston Mooney, started the farm in 1920, then called Middleton Farms.

A potato bag from the original Middleton Farms is framed in his office, which is the house where Pugh himself was raised.

As a fourth-generation farmer at Middle Creek Farms, Pugh has seen his ups and downs in the farming industry. “Our biggest challenge is hurricanes,” he said. Five out of the last 10 years, the Hyde County farm has suffered from big storms that have all but eliminated the corn and soybean crops for

the year.

For this reason, Pugh has invested in produce crops, for the principal reason that he can harvest them before hurricane season starts. He farms green beans, fresh market potatoes, broccoli, watermelon and the famous Mattamuskeet sweet onions, named after the lake located three miles from the farm.

Not that diversifying is new to Middle Creek Farms. “I remember my daddy trying new things,” Pugh recalls. “We’re always looking for new opportunities in produce and trying new crops.” Though currently the farm grows corn only for feed, Pugh would like to get back into growing sweet corn. But the hard part isn’t growing a new crop, it’s the rest of the process, such as packing it, cooling it and finding refrigerator space to

Outlook 2021 • 37 keep it in, then finding a supplier to sell it.

After harvesting, most of their current crops are sent to Pamlico Shores Produce, which Pugh co-owns with his lifelong f r i e n d , Hunter Gibbs.

Gibbs handles the selling, food safety and the packing shed aspect of the business, while Pugh does the farming.

It’s a lot of work, but farmers are used to hard work and long hours. During planting season, Pugh and his team of nine employees will work 14-16 hours a day. “We try not to work on Sundays,” Pugh says. “We have a good group of guys.” Middle Creek Farms employs additional people in the summer during harvest season, but farming for the Pugh household is a family affair.

Pugh’s wife Bethany manages the onion sales, as well as does all of the bookkeeping for the business. They sell onions directly to the public from their packing shed, Pamlico Shores Produce, in 25 or 50 bags. Even their four children join in for onion season, greeting customers and helping with sales. One of the benefits of the COVIDrelated school closures was the opportunity for Pugh’s oldest son, seventeen-year-old Steven, to have an opportunity to see firsthand what happens at the farm during the spring season.

“He said ‘I thought I wanted to

Summer Stevens photo

Dawson, Bethany and Preston Pugh farm to farm, but now I know it,’” Pugh said. There’s no pressure for their children to become fifth generation farmers, and both Dawson and Bethany Pugh agree that in this industry, “You’ve gotta love it!”

And Pugh comes from many generations of people loving this land. “This is some of the oldest farmland in the country,” he said.

Neighboring farms might find wood stumps or other debris in their fields, but not at Middle Creek Farms. “It’s been cleared so long ago,” Pugh said.

Middle Creek Farms is going to keep the legacy going, doing what they love, and pursuing excellence. “If we’re going to do it,” Pugh said, “we’re going to do it right.” 

38 • Outlook 2021

N.E.S.T. volunteers: Protecting sea turtles for over 25 years

by Summer Stevens It’s just past sunrise when the ATVs begin their slow trek along the quiet beaches of the Outer Banks, volunteers scanning the shoreline for the delicate sea turtle nests that appear in late spring and into the summer. Though the rental houses are packed, there’s only a few early risers on the beach at this time in the morning, not enough to obscure the turtle crawls, which look like tractor tire tracks in the sand.

The driver slows and spots evidence of a nest. He peers into a depression in the sand about twenty inches deep, gently brushing away the sand to reveal dozens of small white eggs. Sea turtles lay between 100 and 120 eggs every two to three years, laying three to four clutches of eggs in a season.

The mother sea turtle is nowhere to be seen.

A healthy adult sea turtle only comes ashore to lay her eggs, then retreats back into the ocean, leaving her tiny offspring to fend for themselves.

There are many dangers facing the ping pong ball size eggs. Sea turtle nests are vulnerable to predators like birds, ghost crabs, dogs and foxes. Ocean overwash can destroy the nests. Light pollution also affects the hatchlings, who naturally head toward the brightest horizon. Artificial light can confuse them and make it difficult to reach the ocean.

So in 1995, the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles (N.E.S.T.) was founded by Millie Overman, with the purpose of protecting sea turtles from the Virginia line to south Nags Head. According to the organization’s website (www.nestonline.org), “N.E.S.T. is committed to contributing to the preservation of these species through research and rescue and rehabilitation efforts and to fostering greater understanding and appreciation of these species and their hab-

Photos courtesy of N.E.S.T.

itat through education and enhanced public awareness.”

N.E.S.T. is an all-volunteer organization, with 300 people currently serving in areas including ATV nesting patrols, nesting response, nest sitting, stranding response, rehabilit at i o n ,

Outlook 2021 • 39 public education, fundraising, communications and board of directors.

“We receive a great amount of support from our OBX community!” said director-at-large Christian Legner, who has been volunteering with N.E.S.T for 14 years. “From visitors to locals to businesses we enjoy seeing initiatives like Skip The Straw and beach cleanups help to conserve sea turtles and their habitats.”

Though N.E.S.T. does not reveal the location of the nests to the general public, the eggs are well protected. When hatching time draws near – about 60 days – volunteers will quietly sit beside the nests in the evening, protecting the nests from predators and from light pollution. The goal is to make sure as many hatchlings as possible reach the ocean. N.E.S.T. volunteers typically care for 10 to 20 nests in a season.

Ensuring the hatchlings’ safe passage to the surf is not the only goal of N.E.S.T. From the organization’s inception, they have been rescuing injured and sick turtles, with the goal of rehabilitation and release back into the wild. In the 1990s, because there was no facility to treat injured turtles, according to the N.E.S.T. website, “The first injured turtles were treated in the living rooms of N.E.S.T. volunteers.” A facility was eventually built at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, and in 2014, that facility was upgraded to the Sea Turtle Assistance and Rehabilitation (STAR) Center, where N.E.S.T. volunteers still care for the turtles.

N.E.S.T. receives hundreds of calls a year from community members and tourists who have spotted sea turtles. The organization screens and investigates each call, transporting injured turtles to the STAR Center. In the winter months, N.E.S.T. rescues turtles stunned by the cold water and stranded in the Pamlico Sound.

Many of these turtles are also taken to the STAR Center for care.

In 2021, N.E.S.T. will continue its mission to care for sea turtles, coming together as a community to protect these unique creatures. “Anyone and everyone can help marine animals and their habitats,” Legner said. “Small changes, no matter where you live, make a difference!” 

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There are five species of sea turtles. Not all nest on Outer Banks beaches, but all can be found in our waters:  Loggerhead (threatened)  Green (threatened)  Kemp’s ridley (endangered)  Leatherback (endangered)  Hawksbill (endangered) DID YOU KNOW?  Sea turtles can be cute, but they are wild animals. They aren’t used to being close to humans and will typically avoid interactions. All species have strong jaws and flippers and their power should be respected.  A mother sea turtle might abandon her nest-laying activities if bothered by lights, noise or approaching people.  If you see a stranded sea turtle, call (don’t email or Facebook message) the N.E.S.T. hotline at 252-441-8622.

HOW YOU CAN HELP PROTECT SEA TURTLES:  Reduce marine debris, especially single use plastics.  Limit light on the beach during nesting and hatching season by turning off ocean-facing lights and closing blinds.  Remove beach furniture overnight and fill in holes during the day.  Call the N.E.S.T. hotline if you spot a stranded sea turtle, nesting females or hatchlings.  Be a N.E.S.T. volunteer! Training information is available on their website (www.nestonline.org).

40 • Outlook 2021

Peace Garden Project grows food and community

by Summer Stevens

Michelle Lewis, founder of Peace Garden Project, has a unique approach to building community: she starts with food. “Everybody understands food,” she said. “You might not understand racial injustice, so we start with food.”

The organization, started in 2016 in New Rochelle, New York, exists to grow healthy communities through growing food. The fresh fruits and vegetables, grown locally in Manteo, are then given directly to people in need, without any paperwork to fill out or questions asked. Last year the Peace Garden Project partnered with the USDA’s Farmers to Families program to distribute over 145,000 pounds of food. But there’s a lot of learning and community involvement that happens to make this possible.

Lewis and two interns from Duke University mentored a team of middle school and high school students through the Youth Leadership Institute, a six-week program that teaches not only gardening, but leadership skills, art classes and a strong work ethic. The students receive a Chromebook and a $600 stipend.

They primarily work at one of the three gardens in Manteo. The main garden, which also houses a greenhouse for starting seeds and growing winter produce, is located at BeachLand Farms on Fannin Mill Road in Manteo.

The other two gardens are located on the grounds of private residences in Manteo.

Plans for several more gardens are in the works: on the

beach, in Elizabeth and in Currituck. Peace Garden Project is also partnering with Dare County Children and Youth Partnership to create a seven-acre interactive garden for children with an emphasis on learning about wetland species.

Lewis is passionate about community growth. Not physical growth, but relational.

“We want to provide safe spaces for people to have hard conversations,” she said. The organization focuses on environmental justice and food justice. “There are issues in every community. But it’s amazing to see what growing food will do to transform a community.”

She recalls the impetus to start the organization five years ago, at the Methodist church where she served as pastor. The relationship between t h e

church and its Jewish neighbors had been tenuous for years. After starting the first peace garden on the church grounds, a bridge was formed. Neighbors began to tend the garden. As the crops grew, the relationships healed.

“Counties have been transformed in places where our gardens are located,” Lewis said.

Beyond food distribution, the Peace Garden Project offers workshops, nutrition and cooking classes. There are many ways to get involved. Community members who have a skill to offer – art, dance, business – are encouraged to contact Lewis about teaching a workshop. Donations are always appreciated and can be sent to Peace Garden Project, PO Box 1811, Manteo, NC 27954.

For more information or how to get involved, visit online at peacegardenproject.net or email PeaceGardenpr@ g m a i l . com.

Outlook 2021 • 41

42 • Outlook 2021

New Rodanthe Bridge ‘is built to last, that’s for sure’

by Summer Stevens

Construction manager Jared Arno is on his way to the field when he hears an emergency siren blaring. But it doesn’t alarm him. In fact, he hears this sound dozens of times a day coming from his pocket. It’s the ringtone on his cell phone. “It’s so I can hear it,” he said. That sound has to compete with massive heavy equipment in operation, the hum of the surf in the distance, and the wind that never stops on the soon-to-be-completed Rodanthe Bridge.

Arno is in charge of the day-to-day field operations of the 2.4-mile bridge project, including safety, quality, equipment, labor and subcontractor coordination. He works for Flatiron, the general contractor for the project. He oversees five superintendents, two on-site subcontractors and 90 hourly employees.

Interestingly, because this bridge is built from both sides and works toward the middle, Arno runs identical crews on both the north and south sides, dividing his day between each crew. “It’s challenging managing that many moving parts and pieces,” he said.

His job starts at 6:30 a.m. with a meeting with superintendents and engineers to plan out the day. He coordinates meetings, trucking and crane use with workers out in the field. The day with the crew begins with a safety meeting and after

Summer Stevens photo

Rodanthe Bridge construction manager Jerad Arno. that, Arno said, “I put out fires,” solving problems or addressing issues that inevitably come up daily in such a large-scale operation.

Additionally, because the water in the Pamlico Sound is so shallow – only about two feet in some areas – Flatiron is using an alternative method that is designed to protect sub-aquatic vegetation. “It has only been done a few times in the country,” Arno said. Typically, bridge projects use barges to haul heavy equipment and precast concrete beams to the right location. In contrast, the Rodanthe Bridge project has built an ever-moving railroad

Outlook 2021 • 43 trestle, which they call the Advancing Rail System, alongside the bridge that moves right along with the progress.

As the bridge is built, Arno’s team will disassemble the ends of the trestle and transport them to the front of the “line.”

The innovative technique is designed to have less impact on the envir o n -

ment. “I don’t think people realize how many temporary structures we have to make to build a bridge,” he said.

The construction site is filled with specialized equipment. DEAL, based in Italy, supplies some of the massive heavy specialty equipment the project uses for the trestle system. The largest crane Arno’s crew uses has a capacity of 440 tons. Each of the piles, which are used to stabilize the bridge, is 150 feet long and weighs 150,000 pounds. The piles are driven 135 feet underground using a massive diesel hammer.

The sheer scale of the project is tempered somehow by the surrounding beauty. Crews work 10 to 12 hours a day, so they often see the sun rise and set. Despite the long hours, crewmembers wouldn’t trade it: “I don’t think I could work in an office,” Arno said as he looks at the glittering sound on one side and the Atlantic on the other. “I like being outside.”

But being outside along the North Carolina coast can be unpredictable.

Some weeks go as scheduled and crews can work all week; other times rain and storms prevent progress. The goal is 137 feet of bridge per week on each side; totaling 274 feet. At this rate, the bridge will be completed toward the end of 2021 or early 2022.

“I love driving by every day and seeing the two sides getting closer and clos-

er,” Arno said. The project broke ground in August 2018. The south side started first, and the north side is completing the bend. Pretty soon, he said, “it’ll just be a straight shot toward each other.” Once the two sides are connected, the concrete barrier railings will be poured and the bridge will be open to the public.

Not everyone is happy about the construction, however. Local residents and kiteboarders have expressed concern about the bridge obstructing their view and their hobby, respectively. But Arno, who has been working on bridges for 20 years, says this response early on is common. “In the end, when people start using the infrastructure we’ve built, people appreciate it,” he said. “Overall for the Outer Banks, it’s a good thing.

People don’t like change, but in the end it’s good.”

It’s especially good for those who get stranded on either side of that section of NC 12 during a winter wind or northeast storm. “The ocean starts washing over the road,” Arno said, pointing to an area on coastline without any vegetation that doesn’t function as a barrier during high winds. “The bridge will bypass that road,” he said.

“A major hurricane can take out the Outer Banks, but this bridge will stay standing,” said safety manager CJ Frum.

Arno agreed: “This bridge is built to last, that’s for sure.” 

44 • Outlook 2021

Sanctuary Vineyards: Cheers to family farms

by Summer Stevens

For seven generations, John Wright’s family had been farming in Currituck County. But small family farms, according to Wright, are endangered.

So in 2001, his family farm made the decision to remain viable by choosing a new path: winemaking. Wright earned a certificate in viticulture and the family opened up Sanctuary Vineyards, which seeks to provide sanctuary to migratory birds and weary travelers alike.

“Many people tend to come here on the way to the beach,” Wright said. “They’re stressed. They like to come here and look at the farmland and rest,” he said.

The vineyards stretch along thirty acres of neat rows and gentle trellising. Wright grows fourteen different types of grapes in the rich sandy soil.

And as it turns out, Currituck County is perfectly positioned for vineyards. “A lot of people don’t know that the best wines in the world are grown in maritime climates,” Wright said. The area does not get extreme hot or extreme cold, and the wind helps keep vines clean. The soil is sandy and welldrained. “People don’t realize you can make really high-quality wine in this corner of North Carolina.”

So why aren’t there more vineyards in Currituck County? According to Wright, the land is more valuable when you develop it.

“Currituck is growing rapidly – not with crops, with housing,” he said. Thankfully, the Wright family is committed to keeping the family farming tradition alive.

In 2015, they gained the attention of the

North Carolina Winegrower’s Association and were awarded Grower of the Year, an esteemed award given to one vineyard out of several hundred growers.

As a smaller vineyard, they produce 50,000-75,000 bottles per year, ranging from really dry to really sweet. The best seller is Wild Pony White, a dry white wine blend of Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnel; a portion of the proceeds benefit the Corolla Wild Horse Fund.

Another winemaker favorite is Morton, an everyday red table wine. “It’s easy drinking and not very oaky,” Wright said. “And at $15 a bottle it’s very affordable for a wine made in North Carolina and bottled by hand.”

In fact, Sanctuary Vineyard’s entire process is free from the mechanization common in larger operations. It’s all done by hand, from the bottling to the hedging and pruning and positioning of the fruit. On a typical day, Wright spends several hours a day in the field.

His favorite times are in the early morning and the late afternoon, when the light is gentle.

Wright also heads up the marketing for the vineyard. “We’re always looking to innovate,” he said. He looks for unique ways to “bring customers in, maintain their trust and find new ways to market and package the wine.”

One of his principal goals in the family business is to make it sustainable in the long term.

He accomplishes this through special events and weddings. “We like to offer places for people to congregate,” he said.

Pre-COVID, Sanctuary Vineyards hosted family-friendly festivals for up to a thousand guests with hayrides, food and games.

Though nothing major is planned for 2021 thus far, Wright hopes to bring back special events as well as tours through the vineyard.

In the meantime, customers can still enjoy wine tastings at the vineyard, and all wines are available to purchase in a variety of methods. For local customers, Sanctuary Vineyards delivers directly, or customers can choose to have bottles shipped through sanctuaryvineyards.com. Enthusiasts can join the “The Bunch” wine club and opt to agree to purchase two shipments per year.

Sanctuary Vineyards is located at 7005 Caratoke Highway in Jarvisburg. They can be reached at 252-491-2387 or on Facebook and Twitter. 

Courtesy Brooke Mayo Photographers

Outlook 2021 • 45

Scarborough Boatworks: ‘Entirely custom from day one’

by Summer Stevens Summer Stevens photos

In the 1970s, when Ricky Scarborough Sr. needed a boat for crabbing, he decided to build one. Someone took notice and offered to buy it.

That was the start of Scarborough Boatworks, which was incorporated in 1977 and is one of longest standing custom boat building companies in North Carolina.

The company has moved beyond simple crabbing boats and today builds luxury Carolina custom sportfishing boats. Ricky Scarborough Jr. apprenticed under his father and when Scarborough Sr. decided to retire in 2010, his son took over the company, continuing the legacy in a fresh innovative way.

Today, the company employs 45 full time employees in Wanchese, the “heart” of NC boatbuilding. They have three locations where different phases of the construction take place.

In recent years, with CAD advancement, the company has moved from the traditional plank-on-frame method to the cold-molded jig method to increase efficiency. The new process begins construction of the hull with the boat upside down using a custom-built jig, then flips the massive structure over and adds the house, deck and interiors.

“The process is entirely custom from day one,” said Sarah Scarborough, who has been married to Ricky Scarborough Jr. for 18 years and is an integral part of the day-to-day busi-

ness operations.

The process is two to three years, which starts by determining the length. Clients select how many staterooms, bunkrooms, bathrooms and interior layout. Scarborough Boatworks is currently building boats in the range of 60-75 feet in length.

Beyond being known for building extremely stable and seaworthy vessels, Scarborough Boatworks has a reputation for fine craftsmanship and quality interiors, all the details of which clients get to choose.

“You really get to know your customers,” Sarah Scarborough said. “It’s their baby.

They have pride in the fact that they helped design it.”

From the custom teak work to the cabinet work, the detail is what takes time. “There are no straight lines, it’s all curves,” she said. “My favorite part is giving our customers something to be proud of. Giving them a beautiful vessel that takes them to beautiful lands to catch beautiful fish.”

Scarborough Boatworks vessels are designed and outfitted for offshore sportfishing. “It’s a whole culture,” Sarah Scarborough said, when talking about a recent boat they finished that is now in Costa Rica, traveling the world after marlin, tuna and dolphin.

“Whatever [our clients] have done in life, they’ve succeeded. This [boat] is the fruits of their labor, their reward that they get to share with family and friends,” she added. 

46 • Outlook 2021

Single Fin: Thai-sushi restaurant brings modern twist to traditional flavors

by Danielle Puleo

The in-person dining experience is something almost everyone is familiar with.

The hustle and bustle of the prep kitchen, the soft conversations between friends and

Danielle Puleo photo

Art Maliyam, owner of Single Fin Thai-Sushi.

family members in the dining rooms, the fresh aromas leaving a trail behind each server followed by the sound of forks hitting plates are all familiar anyone who has walked in the door of a restaurant.

What really goes into running a restaurant? At that, what does it take to operate a fully functioning kitchen and dining room during a pan- Courtesy Single Fin demic? These are questions that Art Maliyam all restaurant owners and employ- is all about the ees have had to find the answers “wow” factor when to, especially over the past year. guests see their food Single Fin, a Thai-sushi eatery brought to the table. nestled in the heart of Nags Head, local support was on their side. closed its doors for over seven “We have to thank all the locals for their months during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ever-changing life as it was had been support . . . they still came to pick up and hit with even more curveballs as the pan- we still saw them outside the doors every demic forced restaurants nationwide to once in a while,” Maliyam said.

For Maliyam, owning and operating a shut down, leaving some having to close business is now a way of life. The restaurant their doors for good.

Art Maliyam, owner of Single Fin, said business got a hold of him quickly and 23 they were lucky to have had the support of years later he is still living out his dream.

“I am Thai and also cook Thai food since the community during the summer of 2020.

Going from seeing smiling faces enter I was 15 in the traditional way,” Maliyam their doors every day and night to provid- said. “When I opened the restaurant, I ing only delivery and take-out shifted the wanted to make it different . . . to make entire structure of the restaurant. However, them [the dishes] look more modern,

Outlook 2021 • 47

Courtesy Single Fin

Art Maliyam and his employees worked really hard to achieve a 100% sanitization rating at Single Fin. upscale but still keep it traditional tasting.

And sushi is my passion.”

Single Fin was established in June of 2017 and has collected multiple awards of a very short period of time.

So much goes into operating a successful establishment such as Single Fin. Maliyam referred to his three “key words” for how has been able to successfully run his eatery: quick, clean and quality.

“When talking about Single Fin, we can ensure that all the dishes that we serve, we use quality ingredients, including local fish of each season.” Quality ingredients play a huge part in the delectable dishes served.

During the pandemic, Maliyam said some ingredients were hard to come by, including certain Asian spices and foods such as mushrooms. “Stuff that was usually easy to get but now just out of stock,” he shared. “It was tough.”

“Clean,” the second big key word in running a restaurant well, came into play even more during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maliyam noted that his staff worked diligently day in and day out to keep the restaurant

fully s a n i tized, both with the hot and cold kitchens for both their Thai cuisine and sushi station. “We have had a 100% score on health and sanitization for the last two inspections . . . I have to credit this to my employees.”

The third keyword Maliyam noted, “quick,” has really come into play throughout the course of the pandemic. Employees were nor mal ly trained to work fast and multi-task, functioning during high volume times.

Switching over to just delivery and takeout was no different.

“Some consider Single Fin as a fine dining place, but we also serve a big group of customers for takeout and delivery,” Maliyam said.

With multiple ways to order and provide quick service,

employees were tasked with completing their new necessary jobs both quickly and efficiently.

Following CDC guidelines, Single Fin adopted contactless delivery and contactless payment methods. Once opening their doors back up to the public in November, QR codes are pasted on all tables for contactless menus and ordering. Single Fin requires all employees to wear masks, wash hands regularly and ensure everyone is making use of the sanitization stations located throughout the building.

“I like that we have a very good team and good employees,” Maliyam shared.

With new challenges faced head-on, Single Fin managed to keep running and make it through a year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The dynamic nature of the restaurant business can be unforgiving but ever-rewarding, and Maliyam is happy to see his guests back in Single Fin. 

48 • Outlook 2021

Tyrrell teachers navigate pandemic challenges to reach students

Courtesy Tyrrell County Schools

by Danielle Puleo

Perhaps one of the most selfless occupations one could become involved with is teaching. Knowledge is a key ingredient in success and the only way to achieve such crucial understanding is to learn.

Teachers serve as guides, mentors, caretakers and so much more. Their days are, for the most part, spent sharing their knowledge with students and helping their students grow intellectually, as well as mentally and emotionally. While this is the core of an educational career, there is so much more that goes into the role of a teacher.

Tyrrell County has had its fair share of changes and challenges during the COVID19 pandemic, the school system being no exception. Having to learn and teach remotely was something no one saw coming.

Everyone involved had to come together to find a way to make it work.

“We lost the physical face-to-face for a year and we have been trying to figure out how to wrap our mind around all of that,” said Superintendent of Tyrrell County Schools Oliver Holley. “The teachers have adjusted well to all the changes…but none of us have taken a class on how to run a class during a pandemic.”

Prior to the pandemic, teachers across the nation had lesson plans in place with hands-on projects scheduled, in-person labs equipped, and materials ready to go at the start of the school year. Summers were spent preparing for classes that would soon be in session. Homework was graded regularly, cafeterias were full at lunch time and sports practices were set to start right after the class day ended. The COVID-19 pandemic changed all of that and so much more.

North Carolina’s governor Roy Cooper implemented an executive order in March 2020 mandating schools to switch to virtual learning; all classes were to be held remotely. For months, teachers were working with their students from their living room couches and home offices. It wasn’t until January 2021 that Tyrrell County Schools allowed a limited number of students to attend in-person classes while practicing social distancing.

Operating on a hybrid schedule, students of Tyrrell County have the choice to either learn in-person or virtually. Those students that have opted to come to into the physical classroom are grouped into sections and either go in-person on Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday, leaving Wednesdays

for deep cleaning. Virtual learners join their classmates during class session via Google Meet.

Michael Mills, a science teacher at Columbia Middle School, described the situation as something educators have had to “react to.”

“It has been difficult to plan for something you have not anticipated,” he said.

As students are walking into the classroom, others are joining the class virtually before the lesson begins. Mills said he will project his lessons on the Smartboard in the classroom so all students can see and learn together. Lessons are now recorded so that students can go back and review the information. This was enacted due to the lack of dependable broadband service in the area.

If a student loses connection during class, they can review the information when connection is revived.

For Mills, the pandemic has affected how he runs his classroom in many ways. “It’s challenging because I’m a science teacher and I firmly believe that we should be elbow deep in whatever we are doing instead of watching.” Lab experiments are now observed and completed digitally.

Outlook 2021 • 49 “We are trying to keep it as relevant as we possibly can to keep kids engaged,” he noted. Not only has teaching the lesson changed, but engaging students in the lessons has become a challenge through a screen. Mills shared that some students are extremely engaged, offering feedback and asking questions from home. Others, on the other hand, he has to constantly check and make sure they are present at their screens.

Anna Corbin, a mathematics teacher at Columbia High School, said she was one to walk around her classroom and check her student’s papers as they were working on math problems. “That’s become a lot harder with COVID,” she shared. Corbin said she now has to get “creative” with how she checks work. Jamboard has been a big help in allowing students to work out their problems on a program that she and the class can see so everyone is involved. “I can flip through pages and see what students are writing at that time,” she said.

Jennifer Brickhouse, also a mathematics teacher at Columbia High School, has had to change her teaching methods as well.

“My teaching style has changed a bit…I have to stay close to my computer now, where I normally walked the room more,” she noted.

Although the school cannot require students to have their cameras on during class periods, Brickhouse said she does require all her students to talk during math class.

Her “less is more” approach to teaching, which she adopted a few years back, has helped her transition to this new style of teaching. By giving her students a few thought-provoking questions to see how they find the answer rather than a multitude of questions simply solving equations, Brickhouse has watched students succeed.

With the shortened schedule, there is now just enough time for less.

“I wanted to make sure

less is more but that the students would want who perform lower than others have a good support system; they are able to go to their to do it,” Brickhouse said.

Casey Council, an ELA teacher at Columbia house and make extra phone calls to their Middle School, said she has seen many of educators if need be. However, her “high-flyher students gain a much bigger apprecia- ers” seem to be taking a break.

“We’re trying to do anything and everytion for school after not being able to attend in-person classes for several months. “Just thing we can to instill that sense of comknowing the importance and value of per- munity that they so badly need,” Mills said. sonal relationships really stands out now,” “Children have lost a lot of time with the reinforcement they need.”

Council commented.

Not only have students lost out on a Council has been teaching students for 19 years and was heartbroken after hearing the lot of time, but educators themselves are news that she would not see her students’ finding less and less time in the day with all faces in person. She realized the weight that the changes that have been implemented. would hold on how some students viewed “It’s really hard to disconnect,” Corbin commented. “I sometimes Google Meet during their schoolwork.

Council, along with the other teachers, dinner and FaceTime students late at night. has seen a decline in student performance Personal time for myself has been more of when it comes to some of their learners. “I an issue now.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has completely have students in eighth grade now that I had in seventh grade last year…and I have altered the life of educators in Tyrrell County. a handful that do absolutely nothing and I Despite the rapid changes that have come know they are so capable,” Council shared. their way, teachers continue to pass along “It breaks your heart when you know what the knowledge they always have and will continue to, whether through a computthey are capable of.”

Brickhouse noticed while everyone was er screen, Plexiglas or face-to-face. Day or learning from home that some students night, they have made their students a first “didn’t apply themselves as much.” What priority while accepting the challenges and she bears witness to now with this new moving forward to grow the generation of tomorrow.  hybrid learning schedule is Courtesy Tyrrell County Schools those students

5 0 • Outlook 2021

Sugar Shack Fish Market & Restaurant looks forward to best season yet

by Summer Stevens

Step into the Sugar Shack Fish Market & Restaurant along the causeway in Nags Head and you feel instantly happier. The walls are bright turquoise and bins of fresh potatoes, yellow onions and lemons line the seafood case. A giant chalkboard advertises daily fresh fish offerings like mahi mahi, flounder, salmon and catfish, or shellfish like scallops, mussels, clams and shrimp.

Dine in at the restaurant and choose from options like the bacon-wrapped sea scallops platter, grilled buffalo tuna, the popular shrimp and oyster po’ boys, or Alex’s favorite, the Caribbean fried shrimp wrap. If the weather is warm, customers love the dog-friendly patio seating with soundfront views and a firepit.

Husband-wife team Andy and Alex Couey, owners of Sugar Shack Fish Market & Restaurant, are hoping for a great season. In the two short years they’ve owned the restaurant, they’ve weathered a major hurricane and the COVID pandemic. “Our third season should be a breeze!” laughed Alex.

“We’ve been able to stay open all year and keep our staff safe,” Andy said. They spent eight weeks last summer offering only to-go orders. The challenging situation could have been tragic for the business. “But my wife didn’t kill me and the customers came back,”

Summer Stevens photo

Alex and Andy Couey joked Andy. “People were delighted we were still here. It’s been an outpouring of love,” Alex said.

Customers come for the friendly environment, the fresh fish, and…the banana pudding! “It’s an old family recipe,” Alex explained.

For Thanksgiving and Christmas, Sugar Shack offered family size banana pudding orders.

“We had two staff members doing nothing but making banana pudding from 10:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. and it was all gone,” she said. “It’s becoming pretty famous,” Andy agreed.

For the Coueys, the best part of owning

a fish market and restaurant is the people.

“I love to learn people’s story,” Alex said. Despite the hundreds of people they see throughout the week, she will often remember customers’ names, their orders and where they’re from. “Our number one thing is customer service,” Alex and Andy agreed.

They are able to provide such a welcoming environment because Alex and Andy work to provide an enjoyable work environment.

Sugar Shack has a staff of five in the winter, and up to eighteen in the peak summer season.

“We have a really good team,” Andy said. “We look hard for good people,” he said. “We try and make it a positive fun vibe so that our staff wants to be there,” added Alex. “When you walk in here, you don’t know we’re the owners. We blend in, and we do the same work as everyone else,” she said.

“I’m looking forward to another successful year,” Andy said. Summertime is non-stop for the Coueys. The day starts at 8:30 a.m. when they arrive at the restaurant, set up the fish case and call local fishermen to see what’s fresh. Tourists here for the week will sometimes stop in two or three times. “It’s the greatest compliment we could ask for,” Alex said.

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