2025 Grand Marshal
Ronnie and Viola West

The 2025 selection is a first-ever Husband/Wife Co-Grand Marshals of our Guinea Jubilee, Ronnie and Viola West. The Ronnie was born in 1956 and his amazing partner, his beautiful wife, Viola was born in 1961. They were wed in 1981 and have been a hard-working, finely-balanced team ever since.
     Ronnie graduated a year early from Gloucester High School in 1973 but he’d already been working as a ‘cull-boy’ for his Dad and Mr. Ed Kellum since he was 13 years old. Then, after his graduation, and here is an employment twist we didn’t see coming – because of his mechanical skills, he went to work for Jimmy Harris at Harris Garage for a year and a half!
     Realizing he could earn more as a full-time waterman, he joined his Dad in his work crabbing, oystering and, sometimes, fishing. When the oyster business took a major disease hit in the late 1980’s, they switched over almost exclusively to crabbing.
In 1991, he bought his own boat from Mr. Bennie Belvin. It was an older 42-foot boat that had once belonged to Mr. Carroll Belvin, the ‘Brenda Gail’. He renamed her, knowing that was supposed to bring bad-luck, giving her the new name of his then 6-year-old daughter, ‘Monika E’.
     ‘Monika E’ worked well for him and his crabbing business prospered. So well that he bought a truck and ‘The Team’ started hauling his crab bounty to Baltimore – much to the astonishment of his Dad. That same year, a neighbor-friend, Wilson Seawell, offered to rent them a little near-by building that would give them a shipping point and also would provide an area to start steaming and picking his crabs and branch off into a new direction of selling crabmeat. So in the fall of 1991, the Virginia Blue Crab business came into being, managed by Viola. A couple of his biggest crabmeat buyers at that time were Bill’s Seafood at Grafton and Harpoon Larry’s in Hampton.
     Under the day-to-day management of his ‘better-half’ the business grew to where they employed eight pickers, expanded their line to include soft crabs and still transported bushels of live crabs up to Baltimore – he provided the product, and she did the marketing.
     In the fall of 1997, Ronnie placed an order from a Baltimore boat builder for a new, totally fiber-glassed, 46-foot boat with a 15-foot beam, which he took delivery of in February 1998, his new ‘Monika E’. One of his record day catches in her was 156 bushels of crabs!! This new boat helped him provide even more ‘product’ which presented even more expansion possibilities to the marketing manager, the Mrs., whose business motto was ‘from the boat directly to your table’. This concept cut out all the middlemen.
     Viola came up with the idea of a food truck in 2015, allowing them to sell their crabmeat, her renowned crab cakes, crab soup and crab dip at local farmers’ markets and wine festivals throughout the region – and they sold out at virtually every venue. What a magnificent business they created and managed – wisely!
     And with wise management, at his age 65, this awesome team made a joint decision to retire, to go from building a business to building a retirement life. They ‘retired’, i.e. – quit working, in June 2021. The Virginia Blue Crab, under their management, was shuttered in 2021, the food truck was also sold in 2021, and, to complete the transition completely, he finally sold his beloved ‘Monika E’ in April 2022.
     This focused team established goals, met them and retired to enjoy their lives. They’ve expanded their recreational traveling to Colorado, Niagara Falls, Nova Scotia, New Orleans – and enjoyed every mile of it!
     And, as you probably know, this dedicated couple is now, as of a February 8th diagnosis, facing another challenge together. We know with the Lord’s blessings and guidance they, together, will be successful with this as in their other team endeavors.