PILOT Recollections
We were unloading logs behind the south parking lot when a young woman who was on the project disturbed a nest of (ants, termites, wasps??) These insects got up under her pant legs and she began dancing around. She ran off aways, stripped off her trousers, brushed off the bugs and came right back to work.
- Karel denTex (1980s)
The best PILOT job I ever had was when Revell Carr decided that the gravestones outside the Fishtown Chapel did not belong there and needed to be returned to North Stonington from whence they had come.
As a result we spent the day digging up gravestones, some of which went down 3-4 feet. The question from the visitors of course were: "What are you doing?"
"Grave Robbing" was our favorite answer, but there were a number of others such as "looking for treasure" or "trying to get to China".
- Bill Ridgway (1970s)
The first PILOT weekend I attended was in the Spring of 2002. It was a very cold, windy, rainy Saturday, and instead of painting fences, we were to white wash the Buckingham House kitchen. It was warm, the fireplace was roaring, the company was good; but the white wash was NOT going on smoothly. Our arms were dying.
After lunch, the supervisor said that we needed more lime, and the head of building and grounds said that there were ten bags of white wash in the cellar.
No wonder our arms were killing us. We had been using garden lime and it was going on like paste. Since then, Rosenfeld here I come!
- Charlie Fairbrother (2002)
"...Way back shingling roof(s) with Peter Sanger, Rudie Schaefer, Harris Parson, Bill Ridgway, Danny Miller, Sallie Boody, robert Boody, Carol Ridgway, and others - it was a huge long roof near the YTB and listening ot Rudie Schaefers' hysterical jokes. He is still at the jokes but luckily, we all have our feet on the ground. Very wonderful days but onward we go."
- Kandi Sanger
"I was working at the Seaport when the PILOT program started in 1973. The staff were told not to join as this was a program to satisfy a big donor and her friends with playing at Mystic. This friend wanted more behind the scenes involvement and wanted to do something useful rather than (look) and party. Thus the involvement was born. It was work for the staff to select projects that had a short learning curve. We would set things up and then do the take down after the weekend. The real value was to get members involved in the Seaport. To make them feel part of the group (The Seaport Family) Are we really accomplishing anything for the Seaport or just making work for the staff?
- Bill Stamm
"One weekend a group of us were assigned the job of bringing an upright piano from the Seamen's Inn to the shipyard. We successfully got the piano out of the Inn and up onto a pickup truck (with much grunting and groaning). Rudi Schaefer, who was not one of our crew, decided that, as long as we had the piano on the truck and were going along Greenmanville Avenue everyone needed some music. So, he played, the rest of us sang and the people we passed on the street were greatly amused."
- Sandy Riegel (mid '80s)
"Recall painting the mill saw red and green on a PILOTS weekend probably in the late 1990's. Hearing Waldo Johnston's tale of bringing in a fresh cut Christmas Tree only to find it had a bee hive with and the family had to scramble to get away.
- Breck Lardner (early '90s)
"When Flora Fairchild was mothering the PILOTS she was always after us to provide her with more names and addresses. Finally in bid to get her to change the subject, Jane & Rudie Schaefer and I made a big presentation to her at the evening's dinner of a beautifully wrapped New Haven telephone directory."
- Bill Ridgway
Interested in becoming a Mystic Seaport PILOT? Or are you already a PILOT and know someone who might be interested? Please call the Advancement Office at 860.572.5365 or email chris.freeman@mysticseaport.org for additional information.