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Health & Fitness

Sifting Through the Sands of Time

An enormously successful and talented artist who died in his Oak Beach home in 1976, Everett Walsh's life is currently the subject of a book in progress by great-grandson, Sean M. Walsh.

My journey began about two years ago.

I began writing a book about my great-grandfather Everett Walsh who died in his Oak Beach home in Babylon when I was just about to turn 9 years old. I was in awe of him then, but today I remain infinitely more respectful and amazed by the incredible life he led, the people he knew and associated with and as my father says, "his charmed life."

Indeed.

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Everett Walsh (1903-1976) was an enormously gifted artist from a very early age, born and raised on Webster Avenue in the Bronx. By age 16, he was already employed full-time as a "commercial artist" designing display advertisements for newspapers like the New York World, a job I believe he was given by a close relative, Robert Selfe Ament, another New York artist who was the creative art director of that same newspaper.

By 1923, just 20 years old, Everett Walsh would become a key man in several of the eccentric Bernar MacFadden's publications, designing magazine covers for Your Home Magazine and eventually he would become the creative art director for Liberty Magazine before launching into a career first as creative art supervisor for Warner Brothers in Manhattan, and by the early 1950s, the creative art director for Columbia Pictures.

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His connection to Babylon, though, seems to have little to do with the body of artwork he left behind - a trove of watercolor and oil paintings detailing some of Long Island's most pristine landscapes, Rockwellian sketches of the most intense and lifelike detail and much more.

Everett Walsh was many things - and a success at all things he seemed interested in - but above all he was a master pilot and man of the sea. His love of being on the water is reflected in just about everything his hands touched. He served as the head of the Freeport Tuna Club, the Freeport Boatmen's Association, he played an integral role in the re-establishment of the Southward Ho country club, was chairman of the Metropolitan AAU Basketball Tournament Committtee, Commander of the South Shore Power Squadron, Editor of its popular newsletter "The Pilot," a board member of the US Power Squadron, Fleet Captain of the Freeport Yacht Club, a member of the National Association of Art Directors, and on and on.

None of these things were reflected in his tiny obituary in the Babylon Beacon in March 1976, thus, my journey truly began right there.

Last April, I felt compelled to hop in the car and drive from Cape Cod to Babylon, NY and it was there, in the gorgeous, truly helpful Babylon Village Public Library, that I began to discover the clues I needed to start unearthing some sort of chronology of this incredible man's life. In my estimation, it was his artwork alone as one of the forgotten illustrators of the 1920s and 1930s during the Golden Age of illustration, that merited deeper inspection.

But what I uncovered along the way was a parallel path his life took as a man of the sea. It seemed that with each turn of every New York newspaper I poured through, invariably I would find his name there, emblazoned in the pages of Long Island's 20th century maritime history. Perhaps the most incredible facts uncovered was his role as a Lt. Commander in the US Coast Guard for the duration of World War II. In essence, just nearing middle age and with two sons and a wife to support, Everett Walsh, like so many other honorable men of that time, dropped his entire, flourishing art career in Manhattan in order to serve the country he dearly loved. From steering an entire Marine Corps Manuevers on Fire Island in 1938, to saving the lives of capsized boaters in Long Island Sound, to patrolling the South Bay for Nazi submarines, Lt. Commander Walsh's service was lengthy as it was of historical interest Babylon and West Islip, Freeport and beyond.

Like any passionate artist, though, he did not put his brush in the closet, so to speak - he left behind a vast trove of charcoal and crayon sketches of countless US Coast Guard servicemen between 1941 and 1945. I found a wire photo of one of those sketches for sale on EBay a few months ago - a sketch he had done of World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Jack Dempsey, a Coast Guard officer, and I acquired it. This led to the discovery of even more sketches, dozens of them, of an endless stream of World War II maritime heroes, men and women, celebrities and enlisted men alike.

It begs the question - how many Everett Walsh sketches and paintings and works of art now adorn the walls of homes on Long Island?

I'd love to know if you've seen one or have one.

Until next time, as he was fond of saying, "Thar she blows."

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