THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994 TAG: 9406070149
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT
DATELINE: 940608 LENGTH: ISLE OF WIGHT
``There she comes,'' he says. ``See it? See that white antenna?''
At 66, Melzer can still see well enough at a distance, he admits, to spot the small boat, hooked by a cable to a larger work boat, inching its way out of the mud. The night before, he explains, the vessel had been run into the marshes.
{REST} ``The water out there wouldn't of covered my feet,'' Melzer says, pointing toward dirty white tennis shoes. ``Low tide. Damn fools!''
Chuckling, Melzer turns from the water that ripples in the sunshine. He bends his long legs and sits down hard on a bright, red plastic chair positioned strategically on the dock at Dock Side Seafood, the oyster and crab processing plant that Melzer refurbished and started operating in 1989.
From the chair, he can continue to watch the salvage operation, and he can watch for the next crab-laden boat that pulls in.
As soon as they see him sitting there, as soon as they are within shouting distance, the crabbers throw up their hands in greeting.
``Wishey,'' they say, smiling as they continue their journey to the dock.
On local waterfronts, in the Chesapeake Bay, to the Eastern Shore and beyond, everybody knows his name.
This man is a legend, says local waterman Buddy Chapman, who first heard about Wishey when he was still too small to ply the waters of the James with his father, also a waterman.
``As far as knowing peelers and crabs, Wishey is about the best around here,'' Chapman says. ``Everybody knows that.''
And everybody knows that nobody ever pulled a seine net across the bottom of the river with more flair or success than Melzer, says Herbert Sadler, retired from the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.
To state officials, Melzer has gained a reputation as the supreme authority on the James River, respected for his knowledge and his cooperative, gentle nature.
``He's an interesting gentleman. Very strong opinions, a wealth of information,'' says Mike Oesterling with the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.
Born on March 11, 1928, on 12 waterfront acres on Deep Creek in Newport News, Melzer was named ``Wilton.'' But one of six brothers couldn't say that, Melzer recalls, so he became ``Wishey.'' The name stuck.
Melzer grew up on the water, working first with his father, who also was a waterman. His formal education stopped in the first year of high school. Since then, he says, he's learned far more by simply being on the water than he would ever have learned in college.
``If I'd-a quit sooner, I'd of been better off,'' he says with a chuckle and a twinkle in his eyes. ``All I know is the water business, but I know that pretty well.''
Wanderlust struck soon after Melzer quit school. At 19, he went to Alaska and spent several months fishing for silver salmon.
``The water was so cold, if you went swimming, you'd turn blue before you got out,'' he says, recalling the adventure. ``And you had to quit fishing before nightfall because it took so long to come.''
Melzer fished for scallops in the Atlantic, for oysters, crabs and rock fish in the Chesapeake Bay.
Melzer, dressed in jean shorts and a plaid shirt opened to the waist, rises from his chair as the boat nears the dock. His face, beneath the wide-brimmed straw hat he wears, is brown and leathery from years in the sun.
Adjusting the straw hat with its bright green band equipped with spare toothpicks, Melzer leans back and stares overhead at the sky.
``That thunderstorm last night, I told 'em it was coming,'' he says, grinning. ``You work on the water all the time, you know what to look for.''
Once, when he was younger, Melzer says he was vocal about what he felt officials should know when it came to the river he staked claim on when he was born. But now, he says he's given up. He stays away from the meetings and conferences on issues affecting the waters.
So now, they come to him.
``I remember when we started a program to sample commercial fisheries in the James River in 1989,'' says Rob O'Reilly, deputy chief of fisheries management with the VMRC. ``Wishey was very cooperative, very accommodating. He went out of his way to get our data for us.''
Oesterling, who that same year helped Melzer set up Dock Side Seafood, says there's just nobody else quite like him.
``He was instrumental in one of our striped bass programs,'' Oesterling says. ``I don't know what we would have done without him.''
Melzer prefers it that way, waiting for the officials to come to him.
``Experience,'' he says. ``Nothing beats experience.''
When it comes to the river, and oystering and crabbing and fishing, Melzer hasn't always been right, those who know him say. But when he was wrong, he's been man enough to admit it.
``The only thing I ever had to give him a ticket for was a few too many shells in his oysters,'' says D.R. Minga, a retired VMRC inspector who spent years following Melzer's operations. ``He always had his license. Very cooperative. No fuss. No argument. I saw him every day. And he's always been as cool as a cucumber in any situation. `If you're wrong,' he'd say, `you're wrong.' And he'd go on about his business.''
If Melzer has a fault, his friends say, it may be his over-large heart. When he was planting private oyster grounds, Sadler says, he'd buy from other watermen whether the market was good or bad, whether he could afford it or not.
``He's been a lot of benefit to the working waterman,'' Sadler says. ``But, at times, he's been his own worst enemy.''
``He's so good hearted,'' Minga says. ``That's Wishey's worst problem. He's helped too many people, trusted too many people. He'd still do it now, I guess. I've never heard anybody say a thing against Wishey.''
He's made as much money on local waters as just about anybody, says Pittman. If Wishey were a normal man, he'd be a millionaire, Sadler says.
``He was once the third largest planter on private grounds in the James River,'' Sadler says. ``But he's always been good natured. Anybody could bum money off of him. And he's always been a fair-minded person. As far as doing anything to hurt anybody - he won't do it.''
Melzer was quite a ladies' man when he was younger, Sadler recalls.
``I've still got a picture taken in Alaska,'' Melzer says, chuckling as he gazes across the river. ``Three Indian girls hanging on me. Two on one side, one on the other.''
He was married once, has four children. One son followed him onto the water.
``He's in Chincoteauge right now,'' Melzer says.
But he says little more about his offspring. His nephew, Joe, and his great-nephew, Joe III, are the ones he has put his faith in now. The two of them run the seafood business. Officially, Melzer will tell you, he's retired.
When the crab boat finally ties up to the dock, however, he springs into action. His eyes search every basket of crabs. He converses with every waterman. He still takes special notice of the ladies.
``Now, these are some good crabbers,'' he says, complimenting a young woman in shorts, a tank top and white rubber boots.
The woman, from the Eastern Shore, crabs with her husband. They bring their catch to Dock Side because it is one of the few seafood houses left in the area. Once, there were 25 or more such houses on the shores of the James River.
Despite shoulders slumped slightly from age, Melzer is still taller than most of the men around him. When he works, hefting huge bushels of oysters from a truck pulled up to the back dock, he works with a youthful vigor, still muscular, strong.
``How about that hat? You oughta give me that hat, Wishey,'' the truck driver says.
``You don't want this hat,'' Melzer says, chuckling as he works. ``A man died in this hat.''
Melzer doesn't spend as much time on the water as he once did, but he still maintains close ties. He goes out once in a while in an old boat, does a little eeling, spends time at the processing house.
The rest of the time, he ``gardens.''
``That's what I tell neighbors,'' he says, his eyes sparkling mischievously as he pops a peppermint candy into his mouth. ``I'm the gardener.''
Melzer has made a fortune on the river, they say. And he's lost it. But many believe that he possesses more than money could ever buy. In the eyes of the watermen and others who know and love the river as he does, he has respect.
Everybody knows his name. Wishey.
``He is a gentle man,'' they say.
by CNB