THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509150262
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL BEACON
COLUMN: Coastal Journal
SOURCE: Mary Reid Barrow
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
Before Agnes Simmons Winston passed away last week at age 93, she was the last living child of a surfman at the old Seatack/Virginia Beach Life-Saving Station.
``We lost a real piece of history,'' said Fielding Tyler, director of the Life-Saving Museum of Virginia, now housed in the old station.
Born just after the turn of the century when Atlantic Avenue was a dirt road and folks raised chickens and vegetables in their back yards, Mrs. Winston was the daughter of surfman Bennett Simmons. Simmons worked at the live-saving station at 24th Street and the Oceanfront and his family lived across Atlantic, also on 24th.
Today Bennett Simmons cuts an imposing figure in the museum's lower gallery in a life-size photographic cut-out, part of an exhibit depicting the brave surfmen who fought the seas to save lives. Throughout her life, Mrs. Winston maintained an interest in the history of her father's work and the museum is also fortunate to be left with a legacy of Mrs. Winston's own memories of those early days.
A video tape in the museum archives includes a segment where Mrs. Winston is playing the piano and singing ``Throw out the Life Line,'' an old surfman song, Tyler said. Two oral history cassette recordings also are in the archives. Anyone interested in the tapes can call the museum, at 422-1587, and staff will make them available for you to see and hear.
The museum also has Bennett Simmons' brass kerosene lantern on display in the lower gallery and a wooden bucket of his in the upper gallery, thanks to Mrs. Winston's generosity. ``She took great pride in her father's lantern, which he used when he walked the beach,'' Tyler said.
More memories are in the works. Just before she died, Mrs. Winston began writing a book on the early days in Virginia Beach. Ceal Hilliker, a friend who was working with her, vows to finish the book they started. ``We were working on it right up to her death,'' Hilliker said.
Julie Pouliot, who went to work for the museum a year after it opened in 1982, recalled that Mrs. Winston volunteered there from the beginning until just a few years ago. ``She was just an institution around here,'' Pouliot said.
``She would sit downstairs in the museum and tell stories to the people who came in, true life stories,'' she went on, ``and everyone would sit around mesmerized because she was such a wonderful storyteller.''
Once Mrs. Winston asked a group from the museum over to her 23rd Street home for lunch. Although she had a modern stove, she enjoyed cooking on an old wood stove, which had been in the house for years, Pouliot said. ``Just walking into that house was like walking into another museum,'' she said.
Mrs. Winston and her husband, Patrick Henry Winston, also deceased, built their shingled beach cottage on 23rd Street in 1926 and she lived there until she moved three years ago to First Colonial Inn, a retirement home. When she moved, Mrs. Winston had been worried about selling the house for fear it would be torn down.
``She wanted to sell it,'' son Bennett Winston said, ``but she didn't want to sell it.''
A group of young businessmen purchased and renovated the old house. Now a restaurant, Tautog's at Winston Cottage, the structure still retains the flavor of a home in the early days of the resort. Mrs. Winston was thrilled that her house was preserved, her son said.
Although her connection to old Virginia Beach and its history is Mrs. Winston's public image, her friends remember her for so much more, her spunk, her fine manners, her needlework, her ability to play the piano and, of course, her 1958 Chevrolet.
Fannie Molello, a life-saving museum volunteer and a close friend, fondly remembers the times she'd see Mrs. Winston out on the road. Up until a few months ago, she was still driving the old Chevy around town. ``She spoke of driving her elderly friends to their appointments,'' Molello recalled. ``Agnes was older than her friends!
``I'd come up and see Agnes at a stoplight,'' Molello went on. ``She had her white gloves and hat on, always dressed properly - very gracious and a one-of-a-kind person.''
Bennett Winston plans to drive the Chevy in his mother's funeral procession Monday. The service is at 2 p.m. at Virginia Beach United Methodist Church, where Mrs. Winston was one of the first members. Burial will be in Rosewood Memorial Park. The family has asked that memorial gifts go to the church, Order of the Eastern Star, Virginia Beach Chapter 75, or the Life-Saving Museum of Virginia.
P.S. THE COAST GUARD GOES TO WAR is the current exhibit through Oct. 8 in the lower gallery at the Life-Saving Museum of Virginia.
WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER Lawrence B. Wales will be the speaker at the Virginia Beach Audubon Society meeting at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Eastern Shore Chapel Episcopal Church, 2020 Laskin Road. Wales will present a slide program of his work at Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge. The public is invited.
A FEMALE GREEN AND YELLOW PARAKEET with a blue tail has been dining at Carolyn Ward's bird feeders in Landstown Meadows. If anyone is missing a parakeet like that, call me. I'll put you in touch with Ward. MEMO: What unusual nature have you seen this week? And what do you know about
Tidewater traditions and lore? Call me on INFOLINE, 640-5555. Enter
category 2290. Or, send a computer message to my Internet address:
mbarrow(AT)infi.net.
ILLUSTRATION: File photo by PETER D. SUNDBERG
Agnes Winston and her son, Bennett, were pictured last May at their
cottage on 23rd Street for a 1945 reunion of Oceana High School. The
renovated cottage is now a restaurant, Tautog's at Winston Cottage.
by CNB