Story by Anne Carson
and Photography by Marie Lynch
 

"When people come here to visit, they can get the geographic and geologic story of the formation of the region. We have three hundred years of human history and twenty million years of natural history. But we keep our focus tight, because we are strong in our mission: to tell the story of the water region here," Calvert Marine Museum Director Doug Alves speaks intently as we sit in his spacious office in the Administration Building that was once Solomons High School.

"One of our crown jewels is the hour cruise around the Inner Harbor on the Wm. B. Tennison. Then, you can see the importance of the life style, that it was a water borne community," Doug Alves continues. "Because we are so automobile oriented, we have lost sight of how it was to exist by water transport. The road system was so poor here, that transportation was faster by water."

Doug Alves gestures broadly as we begin our "fun tour" of this impressive complex on Solomons Island that spans nine acres and includes the Administration Building with a 6000 volume library and photo-documented archives, and an enormous Exhibition Building with an auditorium and a hands-on "Discovery Room." Enhancing the collection are a Boat Basin and Small Craft Shed that harbor several Chesapeake-built wooden boats; the 1899 log-built bugeye (the Tennison); a Woodcarving shop; the quaint 1883, cottage-style Drum Point Light House; the J. C. Lore & Sons Oyster House (a 1934 Historic Landmark seafood packing house located 6/10 of a mile south of the museum); and the 1828 Cove Point Lighthouse (the oldest working lighthouse in Maryland), at nearby Cove Point.

As a living laboratory on the water, the museum has blossomed since its inception in 1970, by the visionary Calvert County Historical Society who understood that the predictable cycles of life in this area were changing, that people would no longer be able to make a living on the water. Their laudable endeavor was the preservation of the local heritage with a maritime museum and the integration of its three permanent themes into the patterns of the community: Telling the story of the Maritime Patuxent from the 17th Century to the present; presenting the Estuary Patuxent through display of fifteen aquariums and a "touch tank" with live animals; and highlighting treasures from the cliffs through Exploration of the Marine Fossils that depict Southern Maryland's Miocene Age, ten to twenty million years ago when the ocean covered the region.

Today approximately 68,000 annual visitors, 2,300 museum members, and 250 volunteers benefit from this vision and partake of the varied offerings for all ages, ranging from cruises and concerts to marsh walking, boat rowing, and story telling. Such clubs as the Canoe/Kayak Club, the Fossil Club, and the Model Boat Club build skills and camaraderie while programs, like Young Salts, are as challenging with integrative maritime activities for preschoolers as Elderhostel is with its tidewater ventures for seniors. Keeping the art of boat building and woodcarving alive are the Patuxent Small Craft Preservation Center and the Southern Maryland Shipcarvers Guild, and keeping the energy of school aged youth focused on a water environment is the successful Summer Camp and Sharksfest.

"We don't want the stogy museum feeling here," Doug Alves assures me with a chuckle, and as I meet more staff, I am convinced he is right. The zeal here is contagious, and the reasons admirable.

"We are doing research so everyone can be enlightened, and we generate the images and models in-house," exhorts acclaimed Curator of Exhibits Jimmy Langley. He is the son of a museum Founding Father, the late Pepper Langley, whose numerous carvings, boat models, and name boards adorn the exhibits and whose pleasure in showing others "how" still seems visible in the faces he left behind. Perhaps too, it is Pepper's salty lore about the beloved creeks and river of his youth that one may hear again in the voices of the staff. Reflecting that "know how" with Jimmy Langley today is artist Tim Scheirer whose expansive murals illumine the museum and whose love of intrigue leaves undisclosed figures hiding in his paintings.

I follow the irrepressible museum director downstairs to the collections storage areas, where reside whale bones and dolphin skeletons, and he proudly digs out a seven-inch shark's tooth and part of a leatherback turtle shell, exclaiming, "The challenge is how we can take the dead stuff and make it live for the children!"

Living a long time may be just what is needed to see everything here, and I return on another day with photographer friend, Marie Lynch, to be greeted by the weekend coordinator Ed Ragan who tells us with a grin, "You can learn a lot here." Proof of this is evident everywhere and resounded in the Exhibition Building when we meet seasoned resident Jean Hooper who has been a life-long fossil collector and who is now living her dream as a Paleo Lab Intern. Today she is accompanied by her ten-year old grandson, Paul Michael, who is as keen on fossil finding as is his grandmother.

Rounding a corner with a scary sturgeon fish model flying overhead and the gaping mouth of the Megatooth Shark ready to swallow us, we see educator Bob Boxwell instructing preschoolers in the secrets of the tidewater. "Do you see the baby rockfish? Yes, that's our state game fish," he speaks gently to the little Salts oohing and aahing around him. Caught up in the adventure, we step behind the scenes of the aquariums to see baby sea horses riding up and down on pipe bubbles in their holding tanks and view Millie Milo, the sleek river otter, who poses for us on purpose.

Before we depart, we ask our accommodating guide to take us up on the observation deck for one last encompassing look at this chalice to a water community, respected in the realm of marine research with a Miocene Collection second only to the Smithsonian and influence as far reaching as South Africa. Appreciating the horizon framed by that entity that kept body and soul alive, we realize the significance of Doug Alves' reflection: "As we have grown, we have not forgotten our roots." For the true treasure here is that one can go back to a time when the water rehearsed the rhythm of life, and a community evolved and flowed with the tides. And one can be enriched by this returning, and, like a passenger on the Tennison Cruise bound 'round the harbor, one can come around full.