Perhaps that explains her loyalty to the Colonial Beach Drifters and to the concept of keeping the tiny Colonial Beach school system separate from the county system, so that it continues to have its own identity. It’s a hot-button issue in town to this day, driven in part by those who are convinced their taxes would go down if the two systems were consolidated.
The school system is unquestionably small—some thirty-five teachers and fewer than six hundred students from kindergarten through high school, with a graduating class in 2016 of only forty-one.
“I still donate to everything in town,” especially any projects that will benefit the school, Diana says of her ongoing attachment to the school system. She was active in organizing a fifty-year reunion for her class that drew many old friends back to town, some of whom seldom return.
Pearson’s Seafood
Cultivating crabs
Pearson’s Seafood
Diana is not afraid to take on anyone, whether the subject is the school system or town politics. “I’ve been going to town council meetings since I was thirteen.” She remembers things others aren’t willing to take the time to hunt down in the minutes from years gone by.
“My problem is, what I think, I say,” she says with a shrug. “But at least people know where they stand with me.”
Thirteen was about the same age she was when she started volunteering with the legendary Frances and Jimmy Karn with the Chamber of Commerce. She credits them with teaching her and many others what community service and involvement were all about.
“I started working with the Potomac River Festival in 1958. We had beautiful floats back then,” she recalls nostalgically. “We used to have school bands and majorettes. Today groups don’t have the money to come, and bands have to turn in their equipment at their schools before Festival week.”
The energy that keeps her going today started way back when. “I was never a child to sit idle. I’d hand out trophies, whatever they needed. As I got older, I’d judge two or three categories during the parade.” She chaired the baby contests for fifteen years. And for her what mattered was the baby’s personality, not whether they were all cleaned up in fancy clothes and tiaras. “The littlest ones were a real joy.”
She was thirteen when she met Bobby Pearson while she was walking with friends on the boardwalk. “He asked me if I’d go for a ride with him. I told him he was too old for me.”
Bobby Pearson was born in the heart of town on Colonial Avenue to a family that already owned a successful seafood business. Even then he knew what—or most definitely who—he wanted, and it was Diana. She was only sixteen when they got married. “We had forty-seven wonderful years together” before his death.
Bobby’s father, George, started Pearson’s Seafood in 1935. He opened a small retail seafood store, first on Irving Avenue, then on Hawthorn Street. “He had one truck,” Diana recalls. The business moved to its current location on Colonial Avenue in 1961. “Bobby and I took over in 1971.”
They sold fish and crabs in season, as well as oysters, but eventually they gave up on oysters and concentrated on hard-and soft-shell crabs.
George Pearson had been a waterman on St. George’s Island before he came to Colonial Beach. He and his wife had four children. Bobby was the one who took to the seafood business and had a vision to make it grow on the wholesale side.
“One night Bobby came and told me I needed to tighten my belt because he wanted to work with his dad. I was about a size two then. I wasn’t sure how much tighter my belt could be, but I told him to go ahead.”
Father and son expanded their seafood distribution, added freezers and came up with a technological innovation that gave them an edge with the soft-shell crabbing side of the business. To this day that technology is still in use, she says, proudly showing off the room where they cultivate the crabs during the brief time when they shed their shells.
When the oyster supply started dwindling, they did away with their shucking room. “It didn’t pay to shuck ’em,” she says, echoing a conclusion others in town had come to. “And they weren’t good quality.”
The rockfish were dwindling, too, but they’ve since come back. She describes that as a mixed blessing, though, because they eat crabs.
Crab pots
After years of working with watermen from around the region, Diana describes them as “a good, hardworking group of men. A lot of them started in their teens or younger, following in their father’s footsteps, but it’s beginning to be a dying occupation. It’s hard work.”
Watermen are out at dawn checking their pots and hauling in crabs. In the afternoon they have to maintain their boats or clean their pots, if needed. “If a pot grows ‘hair’ on it, it won’t catch crabs,” she explains.
She says it’s not a job that draws a lot of women. Some wives will go out with their husbands, but very few go out on their own. “In 2016, there are none in this area,” Diana says. And she’s the only woman seafood buyer in the area.
While running the business started by her husband’s family keeps her busy, she still makes time to attend those council meetings, to participate in fundraising drives and encourage others to get active.
She admits it’s harder now to get young people interested in the way she was drawn to community service. They have too many other activities taking up their time.
“I’ve always been proud of Colonial Beach. It’s the kind of town where, when times get tight, people will buckle down and work.”
Over and over she stresses the need for people to get more involved, to show a greater interest in what’s going on in town.
That small-town atmosphere is what
