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Steinbeck Studies 15.2 (2004) 161-162



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The Sag Harbor Lions Club John Steinbeck Memorial Trust and Statue Project


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Figure 1

Soon after their marriage in 1952, John Steinbeck told Elaine in their New York City apartment, "I fell in love with the Pacific Ocean. And now I want to fall in love with the Atlantic." That week they drove to the tip of Long Island along Old Montauk Highway to take a look; turning north at Bridgehampton they saw a sign, "Sag Harbor." As they drove through the modest old whaling village, John, always taciturn, said—"Elaine, this is it!" And he meant it. For the Californian, Sag Harbor would become the supreme "it," indeed home for the final fifteen years of his life. There were many things he loved: the six-sided writing cabin he designed and named "Joyous Garde," recalling the Arthurian legends; the cove beyond his window, and his beloved Atlantic just south, with blues and striped bass off Montauk Point; walks to town, with a stopoff at the Black Buoy for a cup of coffee and some good talk with local fishermen, baymen, and merchants; and the Boston Whaler he bought soon after moving into their John Street house in 1955 that he called "Elayne the Fayre," culmination of his lifelong love of boats as supreme human artifacts. This love affair with the village of Sag Harbor is chronicled in his Sag Harbor letters and essays, as well as in his final novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, whose fictive setting, New Baytown, is certainly this town. John Steinbeck was, indeed, a Sag Harborite in the best sense, as no one loved the town and its [End Page 161]

people more. His legacy survives in the locals who remember this friendly, self-effacing man who was also a Nobel Laureate; and with the children of Sag Harbor, who read his books and are reminded that for him, as for them, Sag Harbor is home. It is only fitting, then, that we made palpable this legacy, made enduring his memory in a John Steinbeck memorial statue, the realization of which was a community project, one created under the auspices of the Sag Harbor Lions Club and supervised by the John Steinbeck Memorial Trust and Statue Committee.

The statue, a bronze bust created by Kimberly Monson, is a garland, as it were, of village affection for its illustrious citizen and neighbor, the man who, as Elaine's sister, Jean Boone, says "so loved Sag Harbor that he wanted to die here." The bust was unveiled on 4 June 2004 at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor; it will be placed in the future John Steinbeck Sag Harbor Archival Center in the John Jermain Memorial Library, a Center "whose goal will be to preserve John Steinbeck's Sag Harbor legacy."

Report from Sag Harbor

Manifesto [1965]
This is the second annual Sag Harbor Old Whalers' Festival, and it promises to be even more reverent and memorial and confused and historical and crazy than the one last year.

There will be parades and reenactments—a beard judging and a beauty contest for fish.

Not all attention will be on blood sports. Youth and beauty of the feminine persuasion will preside over the dancing and music together with many romantic inventions and conceits—all designed to create a Dionysiac spirit.

John Steinbeck
Honorary Chairman and running scared

David Lee was on the committee to create this bust.


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