Winds and surf up along the Carolina coasts as a Nor'easter bears down... a great day for roaming the beach at low tide...

Story from St. Thomas-based One Paper on Nicky Russell, a former program director at WVWI Radio on St. Thomas...

On Island Profile: Nicky ‘Mighty Whitey’ Russell

by Molly Morris

May 6, 2007 -- It's said that if you remember the ‘60s, you weren't really there. It might be said that if you've lived on St. Thomas any time in the past four decades and don't know of Niles Nicky "Mighty Whitey" Russell, you weren't here -- or at least you weren't having much fun.

Russell, 57, has been an integral part of local entertainment history since he started making it himself. In 1967, at the tender age of 17, he decided that he was ready for the great white way, or the St. Thomas version of it -- Carnival Calypso Tent. Announcing himself as the "Mighty Whitey," he strode on the stage and sang his own songs, “Tonight I Wearing the Crown” and “Move Your Muddah Ass."

Russell came in second, no mean feat for a teenage white boy among the established West Indian Calypsonians. He competed in 1968, as well, with the same result. But he had crossed a cultural divide and never looked back.

St. John author, boater and radio personality Fatty Goodlander calls Russell "my favorite 'spiritual' lagoonie." He says of Russell, "He'd be a boat bum if -- well, if he could afford a boat. Just imagine a guy who passes the hat among that crowd. I'd say more about Whitey, but he always sings out fearfully when he see me, 'Doan' harass me ass.'"

Storytelling comes as easily to Russell as singing. He loves to talk, to tell stories, to be around people. It feeds his amazing energy. He delights in relating one favorite.

"People still think that I won Calypso Tent," he says. "I came in second in 1967 and in 1968, but I was in line at Banco Popular one day and (the late) Gerry Hodge, Carnival Committee chair in the ‘70s, got into an argument about it," he says. "Gerry insisted I won, and he and the other guy got into a fistfight over it right there in the bank, both of them on the ground."

Sitting in the Frenchtown Deli, it's hard to get a few words in as old timers recognize Russell, anxious to share a few mutual memories. "I hear you mention Bamboushay, and you're right: There's nothing like that old club today," an admirer tells him. "You're one of the few who remembers, and you're still at it. That's good."

Thinking back on his arrival here at age 10 in 1961, Russell says he was a seasoned traveler before the family -- parents, and sisters Nadine, Pam and Marilyn -- came to St. Thomas. "We had lived in about six states already before we moved here," he says. "So I was used to meeting new people. It makes you outgoing; you're not afraid."

He got his first taste of the limelight early on. "My dad loved to get on stage and do magic," Russell says. "He had performed in World War II, entertaining the troops. When he'd do his shows, he'd bring me along. I loved it from the get-go."

Russell credits teacher Dottie Fabian for his way with a guitar. "She was my mentor," he says. "I would play and sing at All Saints, where I went to school, and at the Charlotte Amalie High School.

"After high school I played with a lot of bands, including Hank Quetel's Drifting Buckaroos. I worked at Rudy Thompson's Oasis bar and the Ship's Store, which he owned with Dick Holmberg. I'd play for $20 and all I could eat and drink. And I'd get jobs at all the little clubs around the island, like the Bamboushay. I played at 75 percent of the clubs around town. It was always good for a few bucks."

After taking music courses at the then College of the Virgin Islands, Russell moved to Texas, where he studied radio and television at the University of Houston. When he came back home, Russell launched what turned out to be a 25-year career from a pool table at the old waterfront saloon, Trader Dan's.

"I was playing with this guy, Jeff Chapman," he says. "I played him for his pants, then his shirt, and finally he says to me, 'OK, let's play for my job.'" Russell was thus introduced to Radio station WBNB.

"I went up and applied, and they said they'd call me," he says. "And they did after Jeff quit. I had a six-hour DJ shift. Then somebody else quit, and somebody else after him, and I was on full time. I was station manager and general sales manager." Bob Noble and Bob Moss owned the station in those days -- legendary radio personalities themselves, the two B's in the station's call letters.

On stage, Russell plays alone with his stories and his guitar. "Over the years I've been in lots of bands," he says. "But I like to play solo. It's easier and you don't have to worry about everybody else showing up." He likes to sing what he likes to sing, and to sing it the way he likes.
"I don't necessarily sing songs the way they're written," he says. "If you wanted that, you could just buy a CD."

He has his heroes. "The Mighty Sparrow is the greatest," he says. "And Lord Kitchener, too -- all those old calypsonians: Lord Nelson, Calypso Rose. Carole King is the greatest songwriter. She did all those songs for the Drifters, James Taylor -- she wrote for everybody."

In 2005, Russell married fellow performer Janet Reiter of the Pop Tarts in a true island celebration at Magens Bay. "We had about 500 friends, and there must have been 50 or 60 musicians," he says. Russell has two teenage sons from a former marriage: Lancelot, 17, and Dartagnan, 19, who live in New Jersey.

Russell's career almost took a 180-degree turn last year when he decided to throw his hat in the ring for a seat in the 27th Legislature.

"I love these islands," he says. "I've lived here since I was a child. I'm sick of all the blatant cronyism, the corruption, the nepotism. I decided I could do a better job to re-instill grace and pride in our community, a return to a better way of life. People encouraged me to run."
Russell made a respectable showing at the polls for a first-time candidate, and says he doesn't regret the experience.

He is off soon for the St. Thomas Bacchanal in Melbourne, Fla., where he is an institution, an integral part of the beach party. He has played 12 out of the past 13 get-togethers for ex-islanders. He plays regularly three or four nights a week at Latitude 18, Bonnie's by the Sea, Havensight and Tickles Bar.

Now it's Wednesday night, and the performer takes the stage for his weekly gig at Tickles. Although he’s been doing this for about 40 years, it's like he's doing it for the first time. Strums his guitar. Big grin. He has a donkey in his backyard.

"Move your mudda ass from outside me yard," he sings. "Move your muddah ass, me son, I'm gettin' tired."

John H. Perry

May 18, 2006
Thursday Morning
West Palm Beach


John H. Perry Jr. died Tuesday night in Gainesville, Ga. He was 89.

Palm Beach Daily News City Editor Frank Houston noted in his obituary that the undersea-explorer and one-time owner of The Palm Beach Post and Palm Beach Daily News grew up on Palm Beach and taught the Duchess of Windsor to twist.

Houston wrote:

Mr. Perry was a pioneer of automated newspaper production and cable television in Palm Beach County, championed renewable energy sources and established the Perry Institute for Marine Science on Lee Stocking Island in the Bahamas, which he owned.
Despite his pedigree and fortune, Mr. Perry favored deck shoes, polo shirts and a Panama hat, and he divested himself of his publishing holdings to focus his attention on his underwater pursuits.
"I want to put into life more than I take out of it," Mr. Perry told Palm Beach Life magazine in 1989. "I don't see why I can't do something as significant as Thomas Edison."
Among the seven U.S. presidents he knew on a first-name basis, he grew up with John F. Kennedy in Palm Beach, and in 1937 took the future president and his sisters to the Bath & Tennis Club at a time when the Kennedys were looked down upon in town.
Gerald Ford was his boxing coach at Yale University; and Lyndon Johnson appointed him in 1968 to chair the newly formed U.S. Commission on Marine Sciences, Engineering and Resources.
During the 1950s, Mr. Perry was known locally as the "Twist King." He cut rugs at Ta-boó and the Bath & Tennis Club, where he taught the Duchess of Windsor the fad.
A former member of the Everglades, Bath & Tennis and Sailfish clubs, Mr. Perry once remarked of the island's social scene, "I own the ladder. Why should I climb it?"
He was an early proponent of renewable energy sources, and devoted a significant amount of time and financial resources to the development of such energy technologies as hydrogen fuel cells as well as a global energy plan.
In his Palm Beach garage, Mr. Perry built the first two-man submarine, called the Cubmarine, in the 1950s. Later, his companies built the underwater training facility known as the Hydro-Lab, which now resides at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. His numerous companies, including Perry Oceanographics and The Perry Group, hold the patents on many fuel cell applications and became longstanding suppliers to branches of the U.S. military and NASA.

John Holliday Perry Jr. was born Jan. 2, 1917, in Seattle to John H. and Dorothy Lilly Perry. By the time he was 7, his father had moved the family to South Florida, where he built an empire that came to include 28 newspapers in Florida and Kentucky, five radio stations, and magazine publishing and printing operations before his death in 1952.
"I was a little boy looking out the window of a train as it crossed over into Palm Beach in 1925," he once recalled. "The Breakers hotel was still smoldering after burning down. That was a long time ago, wasn't it? And we've come a long way, Florida and America."
Mr. Perry graduated from Hotchkiss in 1935 and Yale University in 1939, and briefly attended the Harvard School of Business Administration. During World War II, he served as a pilot in both the Anti-Submarine Service and the Air Transport Command.
As the heir to Perry Publications, which in 1947 had purchased the Palm Beach Daily News, the Palm Beach Post, Palm Beach Life and the Palm Beach Times from E.R. Bradley, Mr. Perry was recognized for pioneering the introduction of photo typesetting and computers for automated newspaper production.
While working as a newspaper executive in the 1950s, Mr. Perry once said he would come home and work into the night in his garage on what would become the two-person Cubmarine.
The 1962 invention landed him television appearances on To Tell the Truth and I've Got a Secret, and later was featured in several James Bond movies. By the 1960s, Perry Oceanographic had become the world's largest manufacturer of manned commercial undersea vehicles.

In 1969, after a three-year strike and a Supreme Court loss that required him to pay $1.5 million in back wages, Mr. Perry sold the family's newspapers to Cox Newspapers for around $70 million. In 1986, he sold Perry Cable, with its 87,000 subscribers, to Adelphia Cable for $130 million.
He founded the nonprofit Perry Institute for Marine Science in 1970, following his work on the Technology Panel of the Marine Science Commission, and was instrumental in the creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"He was a man who was way ahead of his time," said Dr. John Marr, executive director of the institute. "He was an incredibly gifted person in his vision, and extremely generous."

After his first two marriages ended in divorce, in 1966 and 1985, Mr. Perry married his third wife, Helena, in 1989 in Brussels. After one date, she once said, she never went out with anyone else. "He said something that wiped me out: He was making fuel from the ocean."
In 1990, Mr. Perry founded Energy Partners, where he continued to pursue his dream of clean, renewable and efficient energy sources. In 1993, he developed a zero emission vehicle, known as "The Green Car," a fuel cell/battery hybrid electric vehicle that presaged today's hybrid cars.
His efforts also resulted in the creation of a patented system that makes methanol from seawater. With his daughter Christiana, he published Methanol: Bridge to a Renewable Energy Future, in 1990.
"He's one of the most interesting Americans of our time," former U.S. Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., told Palm Beach Life in 1989.
Mr. Perry is survived by his wife, J. Helena Perry; a brother, Farwell Perry; three daughters, Christiana Perry Gregory, Francesca Perry and Alessandra Perry; three sons, John H. Perry III, Henry "Hap" Perry and Stan Perry; and five grandchildren, Lisa Montgomery Perry, Nathaniel Perry, David Perry, Perry Gregory, and John Gregory.

(WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA — The first known European exploration of North Carolina occurred during the summer of 1524, when Florentine navigator Giovanni da Verrazano, in the service of France, explored the coastal area of North Carolina between the Cape Fear River and Kitty Hawk.
Between 1540 and 1570, several Spanish explorers from the Florida Gulf region explored portions of the state, but again no permanent settlements were established.
Now, the word is out in North Carolina that modern-day explorer Garrett Foster, a former manager and editor for The Palm Beach Post, is on his way — to a land populated by Tar Heels, Blue Devils, a Wolfpack, home to hush puppys, barbecue, the Great Smoky Mountains, John Boy and Billy’s “Big Show” — and the birthplace of NASCAR legends Dale Jarrett, Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty.
There has been much discussion surrounding the impact Foster and his expedition will have on the state — most of it dealing with the fact that the one-time Florida Keys resident is known for establishing a following based on the practice of yoga.
A woman in Charlotte reports trying yoga once, but halfway through class, took off through the mall with a sudden craving for a soft pretzel and world peace.
One NASCAR fan at the Charlotte Motor Speedway told reporters he doubted Foster’s yoga practice would gain much traction, saying, “Perhaps he can work here at the track. When someone comes up and says, ‘Make me one with everything,’ he can sell them a hot dog.”
“Life is hard,” quipped the fan’s friend. “It’s breathe, breathe, breathe… all the time. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“Hey, Mack. I got one for you, responded a third man. “Why did the yogi refuse anesthesia when having his wisdom teeth removed? “ He paused for effect. “He wanted to transcend dental medication.”
“Hey, I got one,” said another fan, as the crowd grew around the reporter. “Why couldn't the yogi vacuum his carpet?
“I don’t know. Why?” someone asked. “He had lost all his attachments. Heya! Heya!”
A student on the campus at Chapel Hill was quick to quote Woody Allen. “Eternal Nothingness is okay if you’re dressed for it.”
Foster, in a preliminary excursion to the North Carolina coast, no doubt got an inkling of the obstacles he will face when he asked a novice yoga student, “Do you understand that you don’t really exist?"
The pupil replied, "To whom are you speaking?"
Another student — a bit more advanced in her training detailed for Foster her battle to combat her habit of biting her finger nails down to the quick. She had been advised by a friend to take up yoga. She did, and soon, her fingernails were growing normally.
Foster asked her if yoga had totally cured her nervousness.
"No," she replied, "but now I can reach my toe-nails, so I bite them instead."

Tropic Topics