An anchor for the Island: Family gives the community a permanent gift

The first problem was how to move it. But that was easily solved, Robert Jr., Earl, Jefferey and Anthony Reiter said, as they stood around the enormous anchor in the grassy field next to the Center Firehouse off Thomas Street. 

Robert Jr. laid a hand on the cast iron and said the move happened about a month ago. “I have a back hoe,” he said and shrugged, as if it was no big deal to hoist the 4,000-pound relic of the sea, which is a permanent symbol of the Reiter family’s deep roots on Shelter Island, and the maritime heritage of their hometown.

“And we put the anchor into a trailer and put the buoy in a truck,” Earl said.

Islanders remember the anchor, with its two huge iron buoys, in its place for decades outside “Bob’s,” the family’s restaurant and fish market on North Ferry Road. As Anthony Reiter said, when the market was sold, part of the agreement was the family would keep the anchor.

A former Shelter Island fire chief, Anthony is now a Fire District commissioner. He said his colleagues on the District’s Board were unanimous that the anchor should be next to the firehouse. The resting place is fitting, since the Reiter family has a long history serving as firefighters, a tradition going back to Bob Sr., and his wife Kolina’s family.

The anchor needed some work, which family members did themselves and paid for the whole process. Earl and Jeffery crafted and installed a new cross post of white oak for the anchor.

“This is the third one,” Earl said, laying a hand on the post. “There was the original, and then Al Kilb helped Dad put in a new one when that rotted out.”

Nothing had to be done with the anchor itself — and getting close to it you have the feeling nothing ever will — but the chain had to be reforged here and there, and Earl took it to North Fork Welding and Steel Supply in Greenport to have it done.

The care the family took with the restoration and placement is apparent, with small,  barely noticeable concrete pads in the grass to support the anchor and, as Robert pointed out, the whole structure is aligned perfectly, pointing toward the flag pole at the corner of Route 114 and Thomas Street.

Where the anchor came from before Bob Sr. brought it from the Greenport waterfront to the Island in the 1960s is a mystery.

According to Victoria Berger, executive director of the Suffolk County Historical Society, the anchor is known as a “wood stock,” used on almost all large American and British ships throughout the 1700s to the late 1890s. 

“It was such a common item for nearly 200 years, with very little design change, that it would be impossible to identify which ship this anchor would have come from,” Ms. Berger said.

In addition, she noted that since these anchors “deteriorate or weaken, they would often be replaced, which means that there were several to spare, scattered around most maritime ports. Determining the precise provenance of this particular anchor would be nearly impossible.”

But the family lore on how it came into their hands was related with smiles all around by the men standing in the field next to the anchor.

“Dad said it was from a British warship, but I don’t know about that,” Earl said, indicating with a smile that sometimes it’s better not to let facts get in the way of a good story. But there is the firm possibility that, what Anthony called “our family heirloom,” could have anchored a vessel flying the Union Jack.

“All I know,” dead-panned Robert, “is that it was from a really big boat.”

They told the story of how years ago Bob Sr. somehow got the anchor into the back of his Dodge pickup and drove it down Main Street in Greenport with part of it occasionally dragging along the pavement. The Reiters speculated about the expressions on the faces of the men working on the North Ferry boat when a pickup truck dragging a two-ton anchor showed up in line.

Bob Sr. was born in Greenport, and passed away in 2017 at age 84. He worked on the boats clamming, scalloping and going offshore for sea scallops and gill netting.

One night, the family story goes, working as an usher at the movie theater in Greenport, Bob approached Kolina Mal Nevel, who was there with friends from Shelter Island, and told her, “Someday I’m going to marry you.”

To which she responded, “You gotta be kidding me.”

But Kolina, a harelegger, eventually came around and they were married in 1960. The family moved to Shelter Island in 1962 and Bob worked as a full-time bayman. Bob and Kolina purchased what became Bob’s Fish Market and Restaurant in 1969, where the anchor greeted customers at the side of the road.

Kolina Reiter passed away two years ago.

“People saw that anchor there for years and years,” Anthony said. “And now they’ll see it for years to come. We didn’t want to just put it on our property and have it disappear. We decided to put it where everyone can enjoy it. It’s part of who we and all Islanders are.”