Through the years, the size and the price of the boats increased dramatically, but his attention to detail never wavered. He prided himself on “putting a little extra” into every boat he built.
He built several fifty-foot boats, though his preference was for the smaller ones, but the quality of his work is indisputable. The Big Dipper, a fifty-foot charter fishing boat built for and captained for many years by another Colonial Beach legend, Walter Parkinson, took two winters to build inside the shed at Stanford’s marina before being put into the water to allow the wood to swell tight. That boat is in private hands now, but it’s still seaworthy today.
Stanford Marine Railway
In one newspaper report, Clarence stood by while a Coast Guard inspector tested the seaworthiness of the Midnight Sun, a sister boat to the Big Dipper, and was unable to cause even the tiniest chink in its solid construction.
People came from all over the state for a boat built by Stanford. One man came back three times to buy his “heavenly” series of boats—Heaven’s Sake, Second Heaven and Heaven’s Above. Heaven’s Sake was another fifty-foot, twin-screw, mahogany-planked yacht.
In the end, though, Stanford thought the price would be too high if he truly charged what his exacting craftsmanship was worth, so he focused on the smaller boats he could build more cost effectively.
As Clarence operated the marina, Mary Virginia kept the books in the kitchen of their small home. Even after his death in 2006, she continued to keep the marina’s books and kept it operating until she finally made the decision to sell in 2014, after the death of their grandson, Stephan, in a pile driver accident at the marina. Stephan had loved working with his grandfather on the boats and took Clarence’s death hard. When he was killed just a few years after his grandfather’s death, Mary Virginia knew it was time to sell.
By this time, their small home on a neighboring lot had been moved to a larger piece of land across the street, where even now its address and the marina’s are often confused by visitors. It was a “Stanford” neighborhood, according to her great-niece, who remembers three Stanford homes in addition to the one owned by Mary Virginia and Clarence. Others, built by Charles Knox, belonged to Helen Stanford Knox, Viola Stanford Groves and Grace’s own family.
Through the years Mary Virginia rarely, if ever, questioned her decision to leave Florida as a young bride and settle in Colonial Beach. One of the few times, she recalls, was her first winter at the beach when she hung her clothes outside to dry and they froze. She laughs about it now, but found it pretty unsettling at the time.
She and Clarence raised two daughters, who graduated from the small local high school and went on to college—the oldest to Florida State. She still lives in Florida, not that far from where her mother grew up.
Mary Virginia’s married life at the beach revolved around home, the marina, going to the movies from time to time, fishing and crabbing, volunteering and her church. She volunteered for a variety of town events and charitable activities. She still has a very high regard for the efforts of Frances Karn, who always put together Christmas baskets, among many other things, for those who needed them. The town boardwalk is named for her, “as it should be,” Mary Virginia says.
She recalls when gambling came to town in the ’50s, she didn’t show much interest until she heard stories from her friends about their winnings.
“I told Clarence I thought we should go check it out.” She hit a jackpot that very first time and came home with about sixteen dollars in nickels. “I bought new paper shades for the windows.”
She remembers when roadways were paved with oyster shells, when author Sloan Wilson (The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit) and his wife, Betty, lived on their boat at the marina, when bullets flew on Monroe Bay during the Oyster Wars in the late ’50s and when friends found a skull that was later determined likely came from the dark days of those oyster conflicts, when men scrambling to make a living fought over rights to the oysters that then thrived in nearby waters.
Today oysters and crabs are scarcer than they once were, gambling has come and gone and the changes to the town don’t always sit well, but for Mary Virginia Stanford, Colonial Beach is home. She could go back to Florida where one of her daughters has settled, but doesn’t plan to.
She still crosses the street to visit the marina and boatyard that became legendary around town and beyond when her husband was building his beautifully crafted boats. The new owner has turned the showroom into something of a museum, with boating supplies and parts from years gone by, items that Clarence kept around just in case they might one day come in handy.
One of the first friends she made in town, Alberta Parkinson, who worked fishing charters with her husband on the Big Dipper, lives just up the street. Another, Ellie Caruthers, touches base often, as do Mary Virginia’s daughters.
She looks around her cozy home of more than seventy years and says softly, “I’d like to die here. I hope that’s what happens. I love it here. It’s my home.”
Mary Virginia Stanford
MUSKRAT RAMBLE:
Mike Stine
While just about everyone who grew up in Colonial Beach has spent time on the water fishing or crabbing or simply boating or water-skiing, very few started making a nice living in their early teens from trapping muskrats and otters as Mike Stine did.
Born in 1946 to a waterman from Deal Island, Maryland, who’d married and decided to settle in Colonial Beach, Mike grew up on the water. By then his father had found a more stable career working as a painter at
