August 30, 2016 — The Lewes Historical Society’s Lewes Lunch and Learn for noon, Friday, Sept. 9, will feature Joanne Guilfoil with “Joe Hudson, Ted Freeman, and the Menhaden Fishing Industry” at Hotel Rodney. This is the first Lunch and Learn of the new season.
As best friends in high school, local boys Joe Hudson and Ted Freeman played football on the first team in the area and were “really hurt by those Rehoboth boys,” as Joe Hudson recalled. As 10th-graders in the late 1940s they traded work for flying lessons, and then began flying out of the Rehoboth Airport.
During this presentation, learn how these two best friends became pioneer fish spotters flying for Otis Smith, before graduating from high school, the Lewes School, in 1948. Attendees may be surprised by the significant impact their influence had on changing the developing menhaden industry, which by 1956 recorded the haul of fish at over 2 billion pounds.