‘That's why I love the Shore’

RIDGELY – Although he’s crafted many a model boat, he had never erected a model building. And this one was a challenge.

“I’m just glad it’s over. It’s done. And I’m proud of it,” Bob Anderson said of his model of the historic Ridgely Train Station. He attended the presentation of his model at the Ridgely Town Commissioners meeting Monday, Nov. 4.

Commissioner Brad Sears introduced Anderson as his friend, accompanied by Anderson’s daughter, Town Clerk-Treasurer Stephanie Berkey, who asked her father to construct the model. Sears said Anderson “spent months, if not the better part of a year” on the project.

Cathy Schwab of the Ridgely Historical Society called it “awesome”” and “perfect.” “It’s a cutie in miniature,” she said. “I like it.”

Anderson, 86, said he had “never built a house and never read a blueprint.” However, he’s used to facing and overcoming challenges. He was widowed in June, and keeps busy at his workbench in his room at The Pines in Easton.

The walls of his room are filled with evidence of his passions: the Baltimore Colts, Orioles and Ravens; his favorite boats rendered as models; and photos of his family, including a large framed picture of Sandra Anderson, his wife of 60 years, holding his arm as they walked down the aisle as newlyweds on their wedding day.

Anderson doesn’t let his projects interfere with his thrice-weekly outings to Dairy Queen with his daughter Stephanie Berkey. “La Familia,” he said. “Family first.”

The Italian expression harkens to his grandparents, who emigrated from Italy and settled in Baltimore. They became citizens following World War II and instilled in his mother and uncles a sense of pride in their new country, a hearty work ethic and a profound love of the water, which found expression in fishing and crabbing on the Patapsco River and the Chesapeake Bay.

Because of a poor relationship with his father, he prefers to be known as “just Bob,” he said. It was his Uncle Louie and Uncle Eddie who taught him to fish and crab from the time he was just a toddler. When he was 12 years old, Uncle Louie bought him his first boat.

Bob eventually joined the U.S. Coast Guard, but an on-board accident in Crisfield blinded his right eye in his early 20s, which made him ineligible to serve in Vietnam. He memorialized his Coast Guard ships by later building models of them.

After 40 years in banking, during which achieved vice president in a region that spanned the Chesapeake from Havre de Grace, Maryland, to Portsmouth, Virginia, Bob became a charter boat captain.

His hobby for years was filling a 3-car garage with a huge train garden, starting with the original Lionel model train Anderson’s father-in-law owned, and which his son Robert now has.

He began building model boats during the off-season of his charter business, spending winter days recreating his boats Bobalou and Boogalou. He began getting requests from friends to build replicas of their boats. “I never charged for them; I said, ‘All I want is a decoy. You give me the decoy I want, and I'll do your boat,’” he said.

“I enjoy helping people, I enjoy doing things for people, and I love people having a good time fishing,” he said. People are good to him, too, and he praises folks in Ridgely for their kindness towards him, like Brad Sears and Town Public Works Director David Crist.

“That’s just the kind of guys they are,” he said. “They're the people on the Shore, and that's why I love the Shore. That's why I love the Chesapeake Bay. It's my people.”

Anderson ticks off a list of places he’s fished – Alaska, Boulder Dam, Norway, Hawaii, Venezuela – and the fish he’s caught. “But I prefer the Bay because I was born and raised on it,” he said.

Now that the railroad depot is finished, he recently ordered packs of basswood squares for his next project, a 4-foot-long model of the U.S.S. Enterprise. He planned to begin the project before Thanksgiving.

“I got it all figured out,” he said. “It’ll be my last hurrah.”