2024 Grand Marshal
Shirley West Hogge
Our 2024 Grand Marshal Shirley West Hogge has literally been giving to the Guinea community, primarily through the children and their parents, since 1998. She has been in a unique position at Achilles Elementary to be thoroughly aware of the needs of Guinea’s children in the age range of kindergarten through 5th grade, seeing and, then, meeting their physical needs through love and compassion. This lady and her ‘partner-in-compassion’, Martha Wiggs, established a ‘clothes closet’ to furnish coats, shoes, socks, underwear and clothes anytime they became aware of a need – no forms, no questions asked, just fill the need – even making lunchtime runs to Peebles or Payless to make out-of-pocket purchases if the needed item wasn’t on hand in the ‘clothes closet’. On special occasions party dresses or dress clothes were bought for the children. Electricity bills were sometimes brought up to date and food was stocked in the parent’s refrigerators – all in caring for the children. Out-of-pocket, unreimbursed expenditures over this 20 year time-frame amounted to thousands of dollars, all given to help our children.
And then there were “Angel Trees” coordinated through the local churches to provide donated Christmas gifts to the parents for ‘Santa gifts’ for their children – presents, food, gift cards, cash and clothes – most years also involving last minute buying runs to Target!
The most labor-intensive efforts were after Isabel. Shirley and her ‘partner-in-compassion’ collected and distributed furniture, clothes, water food, beds, appliances, hotel rooms and even a van. Even months after the storm, when there appeared to be a need, she would send home bags of clothing for the students, their siblings and parents – again no questions asked just fill the need!
Then there’s the ‘waterman’ side. Generally starting down this path in 2007 as the pot-puller and cull-boy for her Dad, she learned the joy of working on the water and developed a healthy respect of the water. After her Dad passed in 2013 she took over his license and since then has run an 85 pot line, selling her catch to Elliott Belvin, whom she reveres as ‘one of the best waterman’ she knows. She further says Mr. Belvin and Mr. Steve Kellum were a huge influence after her Dad died, answering her questions about crabbing, encouraging her to keep going and offering their support in any way they could. She says there are many others out there who keep an eye on her when she’s out in what Billy Brown called her ‘bathtub’ – actually, her 16 ft Carolina Skiff. Those watermen, she says, are ‘some of the greatest men I have ever met.’
By the way, in July, the GHA sponsored a children’s day camp teaching the children the Guinea heritage crafts of crab-potting, making crabpots, tonging, knot tying, even fish cleaning. This lady’s demonstration of crab-potting, baiting the pot, dumping the crabs out, identifying jimmies & sooks, was videoed and appeared with rave comments on Facebook’s Workboat Life.
Her waterman roots go back locally to Ambrose West in 1764 and all the way up to her grandparents, Mr. Russell & Bettie Lee West, living at the end of Severn Wharf Road, where she grew up in the water, catching minnows & crabs and going fishing with her Grandmother. That’s where, at that early age, her love of the water and water-related work had its true beginning.
Interestingly, she was born and still lives with her husband on the same ½ acre of land her Daddy & Mother once lived.