By Rob Hedelt
REEDVILLE
--For more than a century, the round, 130-foot brick smokestack here has been a dominant landmark on the Chesapeake Bay. Recreational boaters sight it from miles away as a marker for Reedville and the tip of the Northern Neck.
Old-time captains used it more deliberately as a precise navigational aid, lining it up with other structures to revisit a rich oyster strike or hot fishing spot.
People living near Reedville or visiting from the water know the stack--it's attached plant is long gone--as the gateway to the water-oriented community.
"People have said it's our version of the Statue of Liberty," said Blaine Altaffer, who grew up in the small waterside town 90 miles from Fredericksburg and still calls it home. "When you come by it on Cockrell's Creek, you know you're home. It would be a shame to lose this monument to the start of the fishing industry here."
Because a lightning strike and the ravages of time are threatening to topple the stack, Altaffer and a group of Reedville and Northern Neck residents are launching a campaign to stabilize and preserve the structure built around the year 1900.
It's called "Save The Stack," and the collaboration of "born heres" and "come heres" has launched a campaign to raise $350,000 this summer to do just that.
It helps that Omega Protein, which has a menhaden processing plant and a fishing fleet based on the property where the stack sits, has either given or pledged a total of $86,000 to the effort. It has also indicated it will donate the stack and the land it sits on to the Reedville community.
The plan is to landscape the area around the stack, and to install a sign on the water side, visible to passing boats and nearby homes, that would interpret the stack's history.
Monty Deihl, general manager of Reedville's Omega operation, comes from a long line of Deihls in the menhaden industry, and has been a big proponent of the project.
"It's a symbol of the start of our fishing industry here," said Deihl of the stack that once served the fish processing plant of the Morris Fisher Company. "I really believe we need to preserve this piece of our history."
Deihl, who has been working closely with the newly formed "Save The Stack" group, told the crowd at a town meeting last week that the top 30 feet of the stack is where the worst damage is, with a crack extending down the western side, probably from a lightning strike.
"With water getting in, the bricks are starting to come down," he said of the rounded, pie-shaped, numbered bricks that get smaller near the top to create a taper.
Deihl said Omega has already brought in consultants to take a look at the stack.
They set the basic cost of restoring it at $250,000, though a needed study of the ground under the stack and other project costs sent the total to $350,000.
The plan, according to the group, is to repair the stack, install steel bands inside for structural integrity, put a clear cap on the top to keep water out and provide a new lightning-strike system.
The general manager said a costly part of the project is the scaffolding a contractor will need to get the work done. If wind and weather extend the work, the costs can escalate, he said.
With the study of the ground under the stack scheduled and the fundraising campaign kicking off, the "Save The Stack" group is optimistic that it can be restored by this fall.
"We're trying to fast-track all of this," said Altaffer after the meeting. "It really is in danger of coming down if we don't do something fast."
He said the campaign will include several phases, from "adopt-a-brick" programs where people can pay from $20 to $5,000 and more to direct solicitations and appeals to businesses in the Northern Neck.
Most compelling at the meeting were comments from longtime residents.
Charles Williams, a former menhaden captain himself, remembers going out with his father, a watermen, and seeing him use the stack to navigate.
"That was before they had a GPS or LORAN," he said. "He'd line up the stack with a church steeple and then find two other points 90 degrees off. And we'd go back to the same spot the next day to find those oysters."
Fred Rogers noted that the stack is a remnant of one of the first fish plants on the East Coast, sitting at what's now the last.
"It's part of our heritage, something we can be proud of," he said. "I have to be a part of keeping this stack up. If it falls down, that's the end of an era."
A website, savethestack.org, is expected to be up by the end of the week. Information on the project or making tax-exempt donations is also available at the Reedville Fishermen's Museum at 804/453-6529.
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