“We’d catch so many fish, Paul used to tell us he’d baited the water before we came out,” Keeley says. When the four sisters started families and life got busy, they still found time to meet on the beach. McIlvoy was the first, with three girls. Lindsay and Shelton followed, having two and four, respectively. Keeley had one child per year for nine years in a row eventually rearing 15. Life jackets served as beach babysitters. “I remember all those little orange life jackets bopping up and down the beach,” Lindsay says. Summers spent in Young Apartments, holding kite-flying contests and build-ing forts on Shell Island are among their memories of raising little ones here, but most of the memories for the rest of the family, especially the younger Keeley kids and the grandchildren, began at the beach cottage at 7 West Atlanta Street on Banks Channel. The McIlvoys bought the house from Mr. Newell, of Newell’s variety store, in 1971. Thirty years of fishing, shrimp boiling, ice cream churning, kite flying, card-playing, sailing, kayaking and beach-going ensued. The sisters would sit at McIlvoy’s big, yellow Formica table, peeling pounds of shrimp, going on about the fish they caught that morning, the sides they would fix for dinner, the latest report from the priest at St. Therese Catholic Church, or how one of them put less sugar in their ice cream than the other. “You just don’t need that much sugar,” McIlvoy would say. Photos of 50 or more people on the cottage porch capture family gatherings before the more than 40 grandchildren came along. The house is gone now, demolished in 2002 after it was sold. The patri-archs, all of whom have passed, rest in the heart of the family. But these women, who have held their families in their palms, continue the tradition that has brought this sprawling family together year after year. The day the McIlvoy cottage was sold in 2002, generations of family gathered, like always, on the Banks Channel porch for a picnic. 51 One Place Twice the Fun! Porters Neck Center 8211 Market Street (next to K-38 Baja Grill) 910-319-7057 University Commons 341 S. College Road (next to TJ Maxx) 910-769-3150 Cupcakes • Smoothies Frozen Yogurt www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
2014-9
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