moved from Seaford NY to St John USVI in 1972. This was a family vacation place for us since 1964.  I was 4. I still remember clinging to my father’s back as we swam around at hawksnest beach on the north side of the island. It was here I learned how to swim. It was here many years later, in 1996, I would experience a total loss, the wreck of my 53 foot motorsailer, Fiddlers Green, but that’s another story. My father had for a time, when he was married to my mother, worked at his father in law business, Meadowbrook Lumber. He took this knowledge and started St John Lumberyard. The business was successful and he was a member of the community. He donated to several organizations and paid for the fourth of July fireworks. We set them off down at the seaplane ramp right in town. Years pass, as they do and things change as they must. There came a time in 2008 when I would go back to St John after moving to Seattle. I had my Canadian girlfriend with me and had sorta hoped she would fall in love with the island. She didn’t, but that’s another story too. This is why I am writing and taking up your time, everywhere we went, people saw me and saw my father. They would come up with humorous and glad stories, appreciations for things my father had done decades, yes, decades earlier. Melissa and I were prohibited from buying our own drinks, we were handshook and backpatted and it was practically Hollywood. Taxi drivers refused fare, and thanked me for my fathers character.  No one actually knew my name. ” Oh, you’re Bill son, yes yes, oh you faddah done be a good man, me son, I remembah he yan Marianne so kynd dem” and then tell me a funny story about how my father helped them somehow. I also remember back when I was small, my father would walk into every business, every beanery, and bar and say, ” and here is my youngest…” I remember the beautiful mahogany hands of these ole time west Indian men and women, weathered and honest. They would watch me grow up, and I watched them disappear. No one lasts forever out on this beach old father time commands.

My father died in 2007 after losing the house, the business and his health. St John Lumberyard is still there, sorta, and so is Fiddler’s Green, and my heart.thanks Dad