Bringing light to memories on Taylor’s Island: Shelter Islanders share stories of great times and laughter

The Smith-Taylor cabin on Taylor’s Island was the setting for a gathering to celebrate happy memories made in the glow of a ship’s wheel chandelier that hung above the fireplace until the mid-90s.

Thanks to some sentimental guys who wanted to see it back, it hangs in its place again.  

Taylor’s Island is a few acres of coastal grasses, rocks and two ancient pear trees with a century-old Adirondack cabin in Coecles Harbor. The Town-owned park can be reached on foot, when water is not covering the tombolo — a thin spit of sand and pebbles that extends from Taylor’s Island to the rest of Shelter Island. But the surest way to get there is by boat.

Pat and Steve Lenox, Louise and Keith Clark, Sharon and Rich Surozenski, P.A.T. and Bridg Hunt, Harriet Reilly, and Linda Zavatto all made their way out on Oct. 30 to celebrate the return of the ship’s wheel chandelier to the Smith-Taylor Cabin. 

All those present are members of the Taylor’s Island Committee and/or the Taylor’s Island Foundation, entities established by the Town in 2005 to manage and fund the restoration of the cabin and maintenance of the grounds.

An identical chandelier hung in the cabin during the years it was owned by S. Gregory Taylor, a hotelier who mostly lived in another one of his properties — the St. Moritz in New York.  

The ship’s wheel light disappeared from the cabin long after Mr. Taylor passed away in 1948 and left the entire property to the Town. That a replacement hangs there now is thanks to the efforts of Mr. Clark, Mr. Surozenski and Mr. Lenox, who dedicated the new chandelier to their fathers, Robert “Bucky” Clark, Stanley Surozenski and Stanley Lenox.

The occasion was a chance to visit the century-old cabin, light the chandelier and enjoy some stories. Like the time they all stopped off at Taylor’s Island after a long day of scalloping to do some drinking, because there was always booze in the cabin. Eventually Mr. Taylor left some bottles outside the cabin to save the fishermen the trouble of breaking in.

“One of the guys got pretty smoked,” Mr. Surozenski recalled. “He ended up shooting a hole in his own motor.”

What, you may ask, was a fisherman doing with a gun on his boat?

“Everybody had a gun on their boat,” Mr. Surozenski explained. “You needed a gun, because if you saw a duck, that was dinner.”

No guns and booze at this gathering, but they made do with ginger ale, shrimp cocktail, and cheese straws. These men and women lived here in the 1960s and remember a time when the creeks and bays teemed with life, the eelgrass was thick and bobbing bay scallops were so abundant they tickled your legs when you went swimming.

Pat Lenox and P.A.T. Hunt told stories of the hours spent shucking every evening during scalloping season, an all-hands-on-deck ritual that had to be performed on the day the scallops were harvested, no matter how many mollusks. Ms. Lenox said she coped with the withering scale of the job by looking only at a pile of 30 or 40 scallops at a time, because if she looked up at the mountain still left to shuck, she’d be too discouraged.

The ship’s wheel chandelier has six electric lamps, powered by a rechargable battery, since the cabin has no electricity. There’s no heat either, just the powerful fuel of memory and the unbreakable connection to Shelter Island’s past.