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WBM august 2013
H
e reveled in the
variety of different
cultures found
among the anglers
lining the pier’s
railings. Those
weathered wooden railings, carved
with pole holders and names, bring
a fond memory for Dalton.
“I probably spent much more
time out on the pier … actually
sitting up on that rail,” he says.
“You’d hook your legs around it
and sit out there for hours and hours,
just talking and fishing,” he says.
Another vivid memory for
Dalton came on the day when
Roanoke, Virginia, fisherman
Bobby Kentrolis caught the North
Carolina state record blue shark
from the pier in 1961. It weighed
in at 478 pounds. To date, no one
has caught a bigger blue.
“They had to take a front-end
loader to dig a hole on the beach to
bury it,” Dalton says. “You couldn’t
get away with that now, could you?”
While the main attraction at
Crystal Pier in the last 20 years has
been the Oceanic Restaurant, there
was a time when both the fishing
and the Crystal Pier Restaurant were
attractions all of their own.
The tradition of good food at
Crystal Pier began when Mike
Zezefellis, a Greek immigrant who
arrived to the United States in 1920,
bought the pier from the Hutaff
family in 1940.
In a Wilmington Star News article
from July 24, 1983, the then-retired
Zezefellis is described by Kim
McGuire as a round, balding 5-foot-
2-inch man who “always had a smile
for his customers. Speaking in bro-ken
English, he welcomed regulars
and tourists into his establishment
and made them feel at home.”
One of those regulars during
the 1950s and 1960s was Linda
Robinson, whose family lived at
the home across the street from
Lumina Pavilion, which was owned
by her father and uncles. The home
still stands at the northwest corner
www.airliegardens.org (910)798-7700