A ship led him to a sea change

By Steve Landwehr
STAFF WRITER

October 13, 2008 06:46 am

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Everyone's life has a story. In "Lives," we tell some of those stories about North Shore people who have died recently. "Lives" runs Mondays in The Salem News.

SALEM — Robert St. Pierre Jr. wore a size 13 wedding ring. Think about that. That's about as big a ring as a jeweler will make without charging extra.

Now imagine St. Pierre's fingers turning out the tiniest anchor and capstan you've ever seen, so small 100 of them would fit easily in the prescription pill bottle where he stored parts for the model ships he made.

"He had so much patience," his wife, Barbara, said. "And he loved woodworking."

He was working on a model of HMS Bounty before he suffered a freak accident that left him a quadriplegic last spring. He actually finished the model, but was unhappy with the result and took it apart to redo.

If it is to be completed again, someone else will have to take over. St. Pierre, who was more widely known as Joe, died Wednesday, Oct. 1, at Salem Hospital. He was 68.

His is a story of how one thing can change everything, and the joy that can bring to a man's heart. It's also a little bit about the sadness of finding it so late in life, though he had no way of knowing just how late it was.

He was one of five children born into the family moving business, St. Pierre Movers of Salem. His father had him working part time when he was 11, and he quit school at 16 to work full time. It would turn out to be the only job he ever had.

"Joe had a rough life," Barbara said.

The couple met at Collin's, a long-defunct Peabody bar where Barbara liked to go dancing every Friday night. Too bad for Barbara — Joe wasn't much of a dancer.

After a one-year engagement, the couple married and raised two girls, Ruth and Patricia Ann.

"He was good to his kids, and he was always a good provider," Barbara said.

In the winter, when the moving business got slow, Joe would always find another job to keep the money coming in.

His father had been a hard man who expected much from his oldest son. Joe's grandfather was even tougher. Joe didn't fall into that kind of mold when raising his own kids.

"He took them places he could never go," Barbara said. And when Ruth had her kids, "there was nothing he wouldn't do for his grandchildren."

Whether it was his "keep your nose to the grindstone" upbringing or simply his nature, Joe didn't make a lot of friends in the first 65 years of his life. What celebrating and socializing he did was with the family, and that was enough.

Then he met the second love of his life, and that was the one thing that changed everything. And it was all on a whim.

Smitten

Three years ago, during Salem's Heritage Days, Joe asked Barbara if she wanted to go downtown and check it out.

As usual, free tours were offered on the tall ship Friendship, the replica of an 18th-century East Indiaman that has become a popular Derby Wharf tourist attraction.

It was love at first sight, and it seemed to awaken things in Joe that had been dormant all his life.

He learned the U.S. Park Service, which owns the ship, was always looking for volunteers to help maintain the Friendship. Joe signed up.

"It started out three days a week," Barbara said. "That lasted about a week."

It was soon five days a week, or even six. He especially loved working with the ship's rigging, and he became such a devoted worker he was the only volunteer who had a key to the rigging shed.

"I felt like I was his mistress and she was his wife," Barbara jokes.

It was Joe who made the fancy rope lanyard for the ship's bell, and he frequently came home covered in pine tar, the traditional ointment used to protect a ship's lines from sun and salt water.

"It's like perfume to me," Joe told Barbara, who didn't exactly share his opinion of the powerfully scented goo.

Although he had spent some time scraping boat bottoms at Dion's Yacht Yard at the head of Salem Harbor as a winter job, just about everything Joe knew about boats and sailing and the sea came out of a book.

"He loved reading," Barbara said.

Angels

The Friendship opened Joe's heart to the kind of friendships he'd never known, driven by the devotion to the vessel he shared with fellow volunteers.

Last March, Joe came home one afternoon and bent low in the hallway to pet his beloved mini dachshunds, Daisy and Dolly. Somehow, he took a tumble, landed awkwardly, and broke his neck. The accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, with just a tiny bit of movement in the fingers of his left hand.

Her loss is still fresh, and Barbara frequently says how much she wishes she had Joe back.

"But not in the condition he was in," she said.

After a couple of bouts in rehab, Barbara wanted to bring Joe home, but there was no ramp to wheel him in and out of their Cushing Street home. Friendship volunteers learned of her plight and spent a weekend building one, along with a little deck so Joe could sit in the sunshine and fresh air.

"They were my angels," Barbara said.

There was a black pennant flying from Friendship's mast last week, and her lower yards were cockbilled, tilted downward. It's the traditional mark of respect sailors give to a fallen comrade.

"I thought it was wonderful he loved her so much," Barbara said. "She was his life — I wish he'd found it sooner."

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