Rock Hall

Twenty-five thousand ducklings can't be wrong. That's how many baby ducks — give or take a flock — that Cliff Brown and his all-volunteer Maryland Wood Duck Initiative helped peck their way into the world. The network builds and manages 1,900 wood duck nesting boxes on 75 sites statewide. Outdoors magazine Field & Stream calls Brown the "Nest Protector" and named him a finalist for its 2012 Hero of Conservation award. It has also given his group a $5,000 grant. The Rock Hall resident is featured in the October issue, and he and five other recipients will be honored Thursday at a reception at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.

Lawrence W. "Larry" Simns Sr., a fourth-generation waterman and longtime advocate for the Chesapeake Bay and those who make their living from its waters, died Thursday of bone cancer at his Rock Hall home. He was 75. "Larry stood sentry for the watermen of the Chesapeake Bay for over 40 years and courageously carried their banner into the 21st century," Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski said in a statement. "He fought to preserve their traditions and their opportunity to work on the water like their forefathers," she said.

A lot of people are introduced to Rock Hall by way of the Chesapeake Bay. A home port for many out-of-town pleasure boaters, this former fishing village has almost as many slips (1,421) as it does people (1,600). In summer, Rock Hall swells with tourists drawn to the Eastern Shore town for the boating, the natural environment and, as the local business association frames it, "life the way it used to be." It's also a town with a great sense of humor. Where else is New Year's celebrated with a rockfish dropping at midnight?

Twenty-five thousand ducklings can't be wrong. That's how many baby ducks — give or take a flock — that Cliff Brown and his all-volunteer Maryland Wood Duck Initiative helped peck their way into the world. The network builds and manages 1,900 wood duck nesting boxes on 75 sites statewide. Outdoors magazine Field & Stream calls Brown the "Nest Protector" and named him a finalist for its 2012 Hero of Conservation award. It has also given his group a $5,000 grant. The Rock Hall resident is featured in the October issue, and he and five other recipients will be honored Thursday at a reception at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.

In view of the many disturbing events on the international scene, I recently decided that it was my duty, as a journalist, to visit Cleveland. My objective was to find out how they're coming along with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You "hep cats" out there may remember that back in 1986 there was a competition to see which city would be the site of the hall, and Cleveland won an upset victory over cities more associated in the public mind with the entertainment industry, such as New York, Los Angeles, Tehran, etc.At the time, a lot of people were surprised.

The body of a New Jersey man was found in the water at a marina in Rock Hall, Maryland Natural Resources Police said yesterday.Robert P. Bielenberg of Little Falls, N.J., was reported missing by his friends Thursday morning after they failed to find him on his 38-foot sailboat.Divers found the body in the water near the landing at 11:52 a.m. Thursday, officials said.The body was taken to the state medical examiner's office in Baltimore to determine the cause of death, officials said.Mr. Bielenberg was an airline pilot with Air Aruba.

C ROCK HALL -- Sometimes the winds of change blowing through this little town on the Chesapeake Bay are so loud that people can't sleep at night.A debate over noise control in Rock Hall has been going on as the mayor and four council members prepared to discuss tonight whether sailors should be legally responsible for the clanging sounds made by sheets and halyards -- the cables used to regulate the height and angle of sails -- as they strike the aluminum masts...

About a third of the way across the Atlantic Ocean, sailing buddies Ed Kurowski and John Schnoering encountered a 50-mph gale. Heavy seas swamped the cockpit and forced the men to drop all sails.Despite the tempest, the two men successfully completed their first trans-Atlantic crossing this week.The trip, which began at Rock Hall on Memorial Day weekend, ended Monday when the sailors navigated the 29-foot Island Packet Celtic Joy to a landfall on the southwest coast of Ireland.The 27-day voyage, which took two days longer than expected, was unusual because most sailors attempting to cross the Atlantic use larger vessels and take the warmer southern route.

ROCK HALL -- One man's solemn tribute to a declining way of life was unveiled yesterday in this small Eastern Shore town.A 16-foot-high statue of Capt. Stanley Vansant, who spent most of his 81 years as a waterman and master boat builder, will stand at water's side in Rock Hall harbor as a reminder of days gone by, but it won't be the only reminder.Hundreds of the 3,000 work- and head-boats he built still work Chesapeake Bay and its quiet coves and harbors."If this were Japan, Captain Vansant would be a national treasure," said sculptor Kenneth Herlihy, creator of the bronze statue, which shows the captain tonging for oysters.

R. Benson DuVall, a former member of the Rock Hall Town Council and retired lumberyard manager, died of a heart attack Jan. 18 at Chester River Hospital Center in Chestertown. He was 86. He was born and raised in Anne Arundel County's Elvaton and graduated from Glen Burnie High School. He earned a certificate in architectural design from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1941, and served as an Army technician from 1944 to 1946.

Albert Wilbur Woodfield Jr., former owner of a Rock Hall wholesale seafood company, died Wednesday at his daughter's Centreville home of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 81. The son of a wholesale seafood merchant and a homemaker, Mr. Woodfield was born and raised in Galesville and was a 1948 graduate of Southern High School in Lothian. Mr. Woodfield was a partner in Woodfield Fish & Oyster Co. of Galesville, which had been established by his father. In 1965, he left the business when he purchased Hubbard's Pier and Seafood Inc. in Rock Hall, which he owned and operated until selling the business in 1988.

It's 1943. First light colors the summer Chesapeake Bay off the fishing village of Rock Hall, revealing a 6-year-old boy rowing a wooden skiff, struggling to do it quietly, so not to scare the blue crabs his great-grandfather dips as they run their trotline. The crabs back then came up "thick as mosquitoes at dark," several at once attacking the eel baits tied along the trotline. As they work, the old man teaches the boy skills he'd need in the water business; he also speaks with sadness about how the state arbitrarily changed the fishing rules, ending his long career as a top bay captain.

Cracker Jack, popcorn, and candy for $32! And $16 muffins! And there are hungry people in this country, or so I thought. But these pigs in the U.S. Department of Justice aren't going hungry. Typical of everyday Democrat-run government. Nothing but the best whether it's junkets to Spain or lunches. When are the voters going to snap out of their acceptance of this free-loading Obama administration? F. Cordell, Rock Hall

How do we love thee, oh small towns of Maryland? Let us count the ways. When earlier this year, a Budget Travel magazine poll named Lewisburg, W.Va., as "America's Coolest Small Town," it got us thinking: aren't Maryland's small towns worth bragging about, too? Apparently Baltimore Sun readers think so. In an online poll, we asked you to name some of the top small towns in the state, and a slew of candidates emerged. Yet one town stood out among the pack: historic Rock Hall, a scenic fishing village on the Eastern Shore.

Elly Wierda, a volunteer who was a member of the Dutch Resistance during World War II, died July 7 of cancer at her Rock Hall home. She was 88. Born Elly Klein Bog, the daughter of a wealthy textile company owner and a homemaker, she was raised in Amsterdam, where she received her education. During World War II, she joined the resistance movement in her homeland. With the cessation of hostilities in 1945, she went to Germany seeking art that had been looted during the Nazi occupation of Holland.

Sally B. Mangels, a homemaker and former Homeland resident, died Saturday of cancer at Hospice of Queen Anne's in Centreville. She was 78. Sally Black, the daughter of C. Warren Black, president of the Arundel Corp., and Alice Maxwell Black, a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Homeland. Several months after graduating in 1950 from Notre Dame Preparatory School, she married Roger N. Mangels Sr. The couple lived in Homeland until 1964, when they moved to their farm in Rock Hall.

On a clear day, you can see the Francis Scott Key Bridge from Rock Hall. It's out there across the Chesapeake Bay, about a dozen miles and a half-century away.The proud heritage of this Eastern Shore village in its heyday is captured in a painting on the wall behind the soda fountain in Durding's Store on Main Street. It is a scene of a bustling horse-and-buggy business district.The whir of the avocado-green Hamilton Beach milkshake mixer in Durding's helps visitors travel back to the days before downtown fell on hard times, pulled down by the dwindling commercial fishing industry.

Albert Wilbur Woodfield Jr., former owner of a Rock Hall wholesale seafood company, died Wednesday at his daughter's Centreville home of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 81. The son of a wholesale seafood merchant and a homemaker, Mr. Woodfield was born and raised in Galesville and was a 1948 graduate of Southern High School in Lothian. Mr. Woodfield was a partner in Woodfield Fish & Oyster Co. of Galesville, which had been established by his father. In 1965, he left the business when he purchased Hubbard's Pier and Seafood Inc. in Rock Hall, which he owned and operated until selling the business in 1988.

Eight Rock Hall men were charged last week with rockfish poaching, the first arrests under a new system that imposes penalties based on the severity of the crime. On Feb. 23, Natural Resources Police charged William Howard Beck, 43, with possessing striped bass greater than 36 inches and mutilating the tail to mask the size of the fish. Officers said they caught Beck when they checked J & J Seafood in Rock Hall and found striped bass with cut tails. The next day, officers charged John Franklin Riggs, 43, with failing to check in striped bass during the required times.