By Bill Sterling
Weather permitting, about 50 small planes will leave a Maryland airport near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge tomorrow morning heading for a tiny airstrip on Tangier Island to continue a tradition that was started 50 years ago.
The Christmas season on Tangier Is-land really kicks off with the Holly Run that was first started by a lone aviator and now includes more than 100 people and delivers evergreens to the island’s churches and toys to the youth.
The tradition began in 1968 when Ed Nabb, a Cambridge, Md., attorney who of-ten visited Tangier to patronize his favorite sandwich shop, realized the holly trees and evergreens were no longer available because of rising waters.
Acting alone, Nabb loaded up his Er-coupe plane with two boughs of holly and flew them to Tangier, giving one to Swain Memorial United Methodist Church and the other to New Testament Church. Ad-venture and generosity guided Nabb’s life. He was elected to the Marine Racing Hall of Fame in 1947 and funded thou-sands of dollars in scholarships.
The event is always set for the first Saturday in December, but rain postponed the flight last week. With good weather, pilots will depart the Bay Bridge Airport in Stevensville, Md., tomorrow morning with numerous bags of holly and one special passenger, Santa Claus, bearing gifts for the island’s kids.Many of the pilotsmakingthe 71-nautical mile flight to Tangier Island are employees or students of Chesapeake Sport Pi-lot, a flight school based in Maryland’s Queen Anne’s County.
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of that first flight, the pilots have expanded its mission of bringing holly to the island by also giving away school supplies to the island’s teachers. “Chesapeake Sport Pilot looks to help the community in any way it can,” said Helen Woods, owner of the school and organizer of the event for the past eight years. “Teachers on the island can’t just run out to Walmart like we can.”
The group this year is also helping to spay and neuter the feral cat population on Tangier.
“It’s a really wonderful holiday tradition,” added Woods. “The details have evolved over the years, but the spirit re-mains the same.”
For more than 30 years, the group was met at the airport by Virginia “Ginny” Marshall, who led the pilots and their passengers to Swain Memorial United Methodist Church, where alarge crowd would gather. Marshall would lead a discussion of life on Tangier.
Now 91 and no longer able to greet the pilots, Marshall fondly recalled those early days of the Holly Run. “Mr. Nabb was just a wonderful man,” she said. “I often had him here to the house for lunch. We looked forward to his visit every year, and I know he enjoyed coming to Tangier with the holly each Christmas.”
The group piles into Lorraine’s for lunch after delivering the holly to the churches. Lorraine is Marshall’s daughter and recalls waiting on Ed Nabb when he first started making his visits to the island. “He just had a big heart and en-joyed helping others,” said Lorraine, whose daughter, Jamie Parks, also works in the restaurant. “We enjoy having the pilots here each year. It really starts the Christmas season for us.”
Hedy Bowden, 71, also has been among the Holly Run greeters for over 30 years and continues today, usually escorting Santa Claus to the church on her golf cart. “All the kids on the is-land look forward to the day and gather at the airport to see Santa come off the plane,” she said. “We take Santa to vis-it any kids who are sick and unable to make it to the airport. It’s a wonderful thing they do for the island.”
Nabb passed away in 2002, but his son, Ed Nabb Jr., is an honored guest today. “Tangier was his getaway place. It was a good excuse for him to fly his plane, have some great seafood, and visit with friends and talk about things that did not have to do with legal issues since he practiced in Maryland,” said Nabb Jr.
Unlike his father, who never attend-ed law school and was among the last to read for his law degree, Nabb Jr. was busy with law school and thus did not make the Holly Run trips in the early years. However, he also got his pilot’s li-cense and when a second plane was purchased in 1986, Nabb Jr. became a regular. By then, the number of planes making the trip was growing each year.
“Before we had computers, we would copy the information and mail to all the pilots. It became quite a process to coordinate everything to make the trip,” re-called Nabb Jr.
Early on, one of the participants would wear a Santa Claus hat and hand out candy canes to the young ones. Nabb said that changed when Jim Schultz took on the role of Santa Claus. “He looked the part. He didn’t need anything but the suit. When he agreed to make the trip, he said he had one condition — that he be al-lowed to buy presents for the children out of his own pocket. And that’s what he did right until he died in 2012.”
Ralph Hoover has taken over as the Holly Run Santa, very capably filling some big shoes, with his wife Laura ac-companying him as Mrs. Santa Claus.
When Nabb Jr. retired, he handed the reins off to Woods. “She has done a great job of organizing the Holly Run. There’s a cutoff limit of 50 planes because of the limited parking space on the island. All the credit for the Holly Run today goes to Helen and her team,” said Nabb Jr., 68, who still looks forward to the Tangier visit each year.
In 1968 when Ed Nabb first start-ed flying evergreens to Tangier, the is-land had more people and considerably more land than it does today. As documented in numerous newspaper stories, TV accounts and, most recently, a book, “Chesapeake Requiem – A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island,” by Earl Swift, who spent 14 months liv-ing among the islanders, Tangier’s population has dwindled from more than 1,200 in the early 1900s to approximately 480 today. Its land mass has shrunk by two-thirds since 1850, from 2,173 to 789 acres and is now losing at least nine acres a year.
Scientists have projected that without some dramatic change or steps to prevent erosion, Tangier Island will not exist in another 50 years. In August it was announced that construction of a $3 million seawall is to be completed in 2019. But Tangiermen have heard such announcements before and know time is growing short for action.
Chris Gunther, who flies each year and handles media requests for the Holly Run, said he hopes the tradition of hauling ever-greens to Tangier will continue for many more years. “I am happy to be a part of the history of the Holly Run,” he said. “It is a great way for two communities to come together. Pilots have a great excuse to fly one last time before winter sets in. People from Tangier Island open their church, museum, and restaurants for us. I am pleased we are able to help in the ways we do.”
