The Internationally Famous Whaleboat Races

It was Memorial Day weekend 1967. The day dawned bright and clear. Temperatures would climb into the mid-80s. There was very little wind. As a group of young men in their mid-20s dressed incongruously in dark slacks white shirts and neck ties walked onto Wrightsville Beach none of the 100 or so spectators whod gathered on Banks Channel to watch the proceedings knew they were glimpsing the only team that would ever lay claim to being champions of the “Internationally Famous Whaleboat Races.”

A.L. “Alley” Hart leader (and coxswain) of the three-time champion rowing team known as The Young Executives glances at an array of framed black-and-white photographs that decorate the walls of his insurance company office on Oleander Drive and remembers when. Like books in an old library the memories come down off the shelves. Metaphorical dust flies as he cracks the “spine” of those memories and as the “pages” turn details come into sharper focus: the smell of salt air and fish on that Saturday afternoon in Wrightsville Beach in the middle of that tumultuous decade they say you cant remember even if you were there.

But Alley Hart does remember and it lights up his face and voice.

“It was a special time ” he says.

Originally from Kinston North Carolina where he was a member of Granger High Schools state championship basketball team in 1956 Hart went on to Wake Forest University where in 1961 he became co-captain of the first Wake Forest basketball team to win the ACC Championship. Photos of that team which advanced to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament that year share office wall space (albeit somewhat secondary wall space) with his whaleboat photos.

Hart came back to the beach from Winston-Salem in 1966 when the Security Life and Trust firm for whom he was working offered him a position in a branch office here. He eventually went out on his own to form the A.L. Hart Insurance Agency and its this office that is home to those memory-sparking photos of college basketball champions and whaleboat racers.

The transition from basketball to whale boats was Roy Rudds idea. Rudd owned The World Famous Spot a popular bar and restaurant on 22 North Lumina on Wrightsville Beach which over the years played host to a variety of well-known athletes in the summertime including New Hanover High School graduates Roman Gabriel who quarterbacked the Los Angeles Rams (1962-1972) and the Philadelphia Eagles (1973-1977) and Sonny Jurgenson who quarterbacked the Washington Redskins from 1964 to 1974. Rudd sponsored a city basketball team at the time. Still athletic and competitive Hart was a member of that team which was called The Spot.

“Roy approached me one day ” says Hart “and told me about these lifeboats they had lying around down there on the beach and said Alley we gotta do something to liven this beach up.”

“It all happened kind of fast ” Hart says. “It couldnt have been more than a couple of weeks between him talking to me about it and the races.”

Hart and Rudd headed down to the beach where sure enough there were three or four steel-hulled row boats that had seen duty as lifeboats aboard WWII Liberty (cargo) ship and somehow on a trip up the Brunswick River to a ship graveyard had been left behind on the sand at Wrightsville.

“I picked the best one ” said Hart. “The one that wasnt beat up as bad as the others.”

The boat was overhauled and painted red and Hart started recruiting a team that would become known at The Young Executives because according to rules of Harts devising the team had to consist of “young executives under the age of 35 who had insurance with (his) company.”

“He always did know how to make a dollar ” says Jackie Bullard a member of that nine-man team laughing at the memory. “Thats why we threw him in the water so many times every year cause he wouldnt give us our money back.”

When all was said and done The Young Executives of 1967 were a team that included Hart Bullard Sonny Simpson Jim Nelson John Smith Tommy Yates Luther Brown Howard Mayo and Robert Boone. In subsequent years the team would include former Wilmington District Attorney Jerry Spivey attorney Dan Brawley Dr. Howard Armistead (one-time head of the county Board of Commissioners) John Pierson (who is presently a broker sales and office manager for Bryant Real Estate on the beach) and Harold Parker.

No one seems to remember exactly how many boats were on hand for the preliminary trial race that was held the weekend before Memorial Day but when the trial was over four teams remained. Two of them The Young Executives and a team called The Long Strokers from the Wrightsville Bio-Medical Lab would square off in the Memorial Day weekend finals. Two teams from the Wilmington and New Hanover County Lions Club met in a consolation race held prior to the main event. The Wilmington Lions team took the consolation.

In addition to appointing himself to the role of coxswain the only member of the team who would not actually be rowing the boat (“I was the smart one ” Hart laughs) Hart decided that his team needed a “maiden” who would champion their cause and act as a standard-bearer for their upcoming efforts in the race. Qualifications for the role were similar to those of the team itself: She had to be under the age of 35 and also had to be insured by his company. In place of the “young executive” requirement Hart decided that “she had to be pretty.” Jackie Bullards girlfriend at the time Vickie Pittman fit the bill and as the boys headed out onto the beach that morning she was at their side temporarily.

Pittman now Vickie Atkins lives in Fuquay Varina and hadnt thought of the Internationally Famous Whale Boat Race in years but when the memory comes down off her personal “shelf ” it brings with it a spontaneous laugh that like Hart lights up her voice.

“That was quite an honor ” Atkins says of her selection as Miss Young Executive. “I remember that day.”

What she doesnt remember though is that just prior to the race she was shanghaied by members of The Long Strokers team and went into the water on their boat. She retaliated by throwing The Long Strokers mascot a straw mermaid into the water.

According to newspaper reports the following day The Young Executives finished the course from the Coast Guard dock around the two government buoys and back in 10 minutes and 15 seconds. It was also reported that the victorious team had to scramble to avoid hitting the dock pilings and that coxswain “Alley” Hart had been dumped into the water three times in that 10 minutes and 15 seconds.