February 22, 2012 – The number of fishing ships calling Reedville home has ebbed and flowed over the years, but one icon has stood watch over the menhaden industry’s ups and downs for more than a century. Thanks to overwhelming community support, the 110-year-old, iconic brick smokestack will live to see the future.
After sustaining several lightning strikes, the smokestack was nearing ruin. It was at this point that concerned locals banded together to form the Save the Stack Committee, which has since raised nearly $250,000 to repair the Reedville landmark.
“There’s been an awful lot of community support and grassroots support,” said Monty Deihl, committee member and Omega Protein plant manager, pointing out fundraising efforts such as lemonade stands from local children. “Even the ones who didn’t grow up here all of their lives realize that it’s important to the history of the town and the industry.”
Committee member Maurine Gillmer is among those that didn’t grow up in Reedville but realized what the stack meant to the town.
“I just felt how important this was, and in the process of being on this committee, it’s been very evident that the people in the town, it’s rekindling memories of their childhood and their relatives out on the water…it’s very special,” Gillmer said.
Most people assume that the smokestack’s original purpose was to vent steam from factory boilers. Standing on the oyster-shell layered point where the smokestack is located on Omega Protein’s Reedville complex, ruins of similar structures are visible in the distance. Though no one has a definitive answer why only one stack remains standing, committee member Charles Williams said that it “was constructed a whole lot stronger.”
Deihl said that before restoration work began, it could have been dangerous to stand under the stack. Its top was falling down and an open crack ran the length of the towering chimney, a wound caused by lightening. A Georgia-based firm that specializes in chimney reconstruction performed the restoration work, Deihl said.