Fall 2008 - Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum

18
Photo by David Harp
Mary Parks Harding
Dorchester County
My father was Bronza Parks. He is most famous
for his skipjacks, commercial fishing boats, and
fast motorboats. Counting the little ones and
all, he built over 400 boats in his lifetime. The
ones that are most famous, I suppose, are the
skipjacks. The first one he built was the Wilma
Lee, and then the Rosie Parks, Martha Lewis,
and Lady Katie. The Martha Lewis was named
after my mother’s mother. The Rosie Parks was
named after my father’s mother. And the Lady
Katie was my mother. And those boats happened
to be named after my grandmothers because the
boats were built for my father’s brother and also
his brother-in-law.
“My father first started building boats probably
around 1932 or ‘33. They were built in the
side yard of our home right along the county
road, right at Wingate. My father had a fairly
large piece of property attached to our yard
and he built a long shed-like boathouse. It was
50 feet long. Then he wanted to be able to build
two boats at one time, so he added another 50
feet, and then another 50 behind that. By then he
had some mechanical tools. He had a big band
saw, but when he started everything was done by
hand. He added the last two 50 foot sections so
he could now build five boats inside. Others were
built outside, but he still had a lot of space. If the
weather was bad he could go inside and work on
other boats. And do you know my father never
ever had a blueprint. He never ever sketched out
blueprints. I think he probably just figured it
out. He never ever worked with anybody else. He
was kind of an artist in his own right. He’d work
all day long, and they had to work very hard on
the heavy lumber. At night he’d go down to the
boathouse and feel the sides of the boats to make
sure they were nice and smooth.
veloping its first Chesapeake Folk Festival, Buckley seemed
like a natural connection.
Buckley was on hand on July 26 to talk to visitors about
the work he is doing and his new book, but his involvement,
and that of WRNR, went further. Buckley and the station set
up audio equipment and recorded the presentations on the
“Shore Stories” stage, where local tradition bearers of the
Bay met and discussed family fishing, crabs, eating local,
life and song on Smith Island, the African American town
of Bellevue, pound netting, and remembered log canoe sailor
Jimmy Wilson. Buckley and WRNR then donated the
audio recordings of these unique discussions to CBMM.
“Michael Buckley’s and WRNR’s generosity in recording
the ‘Shore Stories’ at the Chesapeake Folk Festival was
invaluable,” says Melissa McLoud, director of CBMM’s
Breene M. Kerr Center for Chesapeake Studies. “Recording
these one-time conversations provides much greater access
to the living traditions of the Chesapeake Bay.”
The Museum is not the only educational institution to
align itself with the Voices Project. Buckley has become the
program manager of Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center
for the Study of the American Experience. He is working
with students to document the vanishing voices of the Bay,
teaching the techniques of conducting oral histories, and nurturing
the curiosity that will lead them to look for stories in
unusual places.
“Through my work at Washington College, I’m striving
to develop this same gift of inquiry and enchantment in my
students,” says Buckley. “The Voices Project equips students
with the skills and confidence they will need to greet
and engage fascinating people who are so often sequestered
behind their work.”
With an award-winning radio show, a new book, and a
job working with students and scholars at one of the nation’s
top liberal arts colleges,
Michael Buckley is
building a reputation as
the oral historian of the
Chesapeake Bay.
Michael Buckley’s new
book, Voices of the Chesapeake
Bay, is available
for sale at CBMM’s
Museum Store. Oral
histories are excerpted
with permission.