The Island Inn

Recently the staff of the Ocracoke Preservation Museum discovered this undated photo on a thumb drive.

The building on the right is the Island Inn. The photo was taken about 1973 or 1974. Sometime around 1960 entrepreneur Doward Brugh had purchased the old Odd Fellows Lodge/Silver Lake Inn/Wahab Coffee Shop and re-named it the Island Inn. He owned the inn for only a few years. Pennsylvania natives, George and Emilie Wilkes were the next owners. They operated the inn from about 1965 to 1970, then sold the inn to Bill and Helen Styron.

JoKo, a popular artist who owned property on the island, decorated the dining room in a piratical-nautical theme. Walls were stained to look like the inside of a sailing ship, fishing nets and buoys were hung from the ceiling, and two large paintings (one of Blackbeard holding his severed head in his hands, and a beach scene) adorned the end walls. A small gallery selling JoKo's prints was established in the Inn.

I am wondering if any of our readers remember when Bill & Helen Styron owned the Island Inn.

Earlier this year I wrote a history of the Island Inn. You can read it here: https://www.villagecraftsmen.com/island-inn-lodge-no-194-independent-order-odd-fellows/.

This month's Ocracoke Newsletter is Lachlan Howard's essay about the Fresnel Lens and its use in theater, solar ovens, cameras, and industry, as well as lighthouse illumination. You can read it here: https://www.villagecraftsmen.com/the-fresnel-lens/.