Celibacy

Alice Rondthaler (see our March, 2012 Newsletter) wrote these words in 1976:

"Well do I remember the years [before private telephones came to the island in 1956] when only emergency calls could be made from the Ocraocke Lifeboat Station. We put through one of these late in the 1930s to an Ocracoke summer friend who was being married in New York.

"This is how our telegram read: 'Sorry to learn that Celibacy is dying. Our profound sympathy.'

"It was a real emergency; the boy in the tower only asked, 'How do you spell the dying lady's name?'"

(From "The Story of Ocracoke Island," pages 35-36)

Our latest Ocracoke Newsletter is an account of the 2013 Portsmouth Island Christmas Bird Count. You can read it here: http://www.villagecraftsmen.com/news012114.htm.