BRIGANTINE BAY BITS

May 1998 Table of Contents - Current Issue of The Abaco Journal - Abaco Bahamas' Home Page

BRIGANTINE BAY BITS
by Lee & Natalie Roach

We've had many interesting guests at the villas over the years. I recall with great fondness the folks from Germany who were out on the docks, which were ankle deep under water, with a video camera taking pictures during the height of Hurricane Erin. They thought it was a great adventure and wrote back later to find out when the next hurricane was scheduled so they could make reservations!

The day before, a French couple with two children who were staying on Green Turtle Cay, made the mistake of looking at a map of Abaco and concluding they would be safer on the mainland during the hurricane. They knew Mark Carroll and called him for help. Mark found out we had one villa open and got them on the last ferry over before the storm. On the morning of Erin, the woman appeared at our door wanting to borrow an umbrella to go food shopping (French!) in 'city centre'. I could hardly hear her with the wind noise and had to practically drag her into the villa to keep the door from flying off. I explained to her that an umbrella would not work too well and that since the power had been turned off before daylight, there would be no shopping that day. Then I realised that, of course, they had no food and began to organise a community feed for all of our guests. We had one portable generator to run one stove burner, one microwave oven and one refrigerator. Everyone combined what they had and with the help of our daughter Theresa and her husband-to-be Billy McGough we had a wonderful dinner that night, complete with wine and candles of course!

I'm writing this just before Easter, off the island, and will try not to get too windy since we've had enough this March, so here's part one of the 'My Hero' story.

Amongst our recent guests were Delta Captain Bruce Hain and his wife Marie. Marie's father is one of my boyhood heroes but I never knew who he was. Neither did hardly anyone else in the world until recently, and yet a picture of him - along with one other person - is supposed to be the most copied Life magazine photograph ever. It is certainly the most widely recognised. I'll give you some information and hints and invite you to guess what this is all about by next issue. By then I should have an autographed copy to send along with part two of the story. The photographer won a Pulitzer prize for the photograph.

I was ten years old at the time. Marie is now in her mid-thirties (whoops, sorry!) I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing even though I was 16 miles away at the time. It involved a very joyous occasion. It was that kind of day. I wished I were the guy in the photo. I went on to become a commissioned officer in the US Navy. I believe that just about everyone reading this, no matter what their nationality, has seen this picture. And as a final giveaway, the names of the subjects are Edith Shane of Santa Monica CA and Carl S Muscarello of Brooklyn NY.

Part two in the next issue of the Journal!

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