May 2016 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 7. J F N M M
FREEPORT – Nestled on the line between Brunswick and West Bath, on the Bruns- wick side of the New Meadows River, is a boating business known as New Meadows Marina. For 30 years this marina has been operated by John Fitzpatrick, who has had a very interesting path from charter fi shing off New Hampshire when in high school, to a short stint in the merchant marine and back to running a marina in New Hampshire. Sometimes things do not work out and one ends up on a diff erent path, which is what brought John and his family to Maine and the purchasing of the marina in Brunswick. When asked how it all came about, John
said, “It is a long story. When I was a kid I spent summers on Hampton Beach and there was a state trooper who had a boat and he would go out fi shing and lobstering and he would take people out on charter in a 19 foot Lyman Islander. He asked me to go out with him when I was like 12 years old and I went out with him a few times. He then asked me if I wanted to be his mate when he took out his charters and I said sure, because I loved it. He used to go over to Littlefi eld’s fi shing parties on the weekends in Seabrook, New Hampshire. They had three party boats next door to what is now Eastman’s. The Lit- tlefi elds and Eastmans were kind of tough competitors. He would pick up on Saturday and Sunday mornings the overfl ow. I did that for a couple of years and at one point his friend, who was a lobster fi sherman, said to me, ‘do you want to go with me when he is busy?’ I said, ‘sure.’ I fi shed the rest of that season lobstering with him. At one point he didn’t show up, and the Littlefi elds asked me if I wanted to go out on their boat as a mate. When I got done that day they said, ‘any time you want a job you come and see us.’ I worked with them a few times that year,
and the following year I started full-time on one of their boats skippered by Joseph Lester Cole, who went by Hunker Cole. He was the typical sea captain kind of guy who spent his whole life on the water. During the war he would run oil up and down the coast. He knew more about the ocean and the sea than I will ever know. That came natural to him, not through books, just pure experience and he taught me a ton.” One of Hunker Cole’s closest friends
was Bill Eastman, but he also got a long with the Littlefi elds. He was like a second father to John, teaching him a lot about the ocean and fi shing. This soon became a passion for John and as he worked his way through his senior year of high school he had a decision to make, what to do after graduation? John said, “I was considering going into the Marines and my mother panicked and she went up to the guidance counselor and said, ‘you’ve got to fi nd a school for my son.’ She came up with the merchant marine schools. I applied to Mass. Maritime, Kings Point and Stonehill College. I got accepted to Stonehill, but I didn’t want to go there; I got accepted to Mass Maritime and I got accept- ed to Kings Point. I went to Mass Maritime and came home on weekends and worked with Hunker on the boats until I graduated. I went through Mass Maritime and got a job with General Electric (GE).” John had gotten a degree as an engineer.
He fi gured that there were much more op- tions for an engineer than a deck offi cer. The job with GE certainly did not work out. They hired him and three other Mass. Maritime graduates to be gas turbine engineers. GE was trying to fi nd a way to lower their bids and one way to do this was create their own Installation and Service Engineers (I&SE). However when they tried get them trained
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John Fitzpatrick of New Meadows Marina in Brunswick and Freeport.
the I&SE department stopped them. They then tried to get them to learn the material by reading the manuals, but that was not going to work for John. He was then sent to South Carolina and then ended up in Philadelphia. There he was going to assist as they installed a giant gas turbine in a plant. John explained, “The unions controlled everything. When the turbines arrived as a package the union said you have got three choices. We can cut all of that pipe off and weld it back together, you can send the turbines back, and send just the turbine, or you can pay us half a million dollars. This wasn’t for me. There was a tug tied up in the river and I went down and asked how tight was it getting on tugs these days? He sent me to the union hall and they hired me. I gave my notice to GE and I went on an oceangoing tug, INTREPID. I did that from December through June and
decided that I was going to have some fun at Hampton Beach for the summer and then I would go deep sea in the fall.” John took a job at Hampton Beach
Marina, where he fi rst started fi shing out of. His plan for working there for the summer turned into much more. He started dating the owner’s daughter, Bev and together they began changing the rundown marina into a successful operation. John said, “My father- in-law was trying to sell the marina and that if I liked it potentially I could stay there and be part of the family. One year led to two and promises were made, but ultimately my father-in-law decided to sell the property. He sold it for a big number even though it was supposed to be the marina that Bev and I were going to end up. So, we came up the
Continued on Page 23.
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