Why do small island communities seem to produce such outsized characters every generation that define an entire era? Criehaven certainly has.
Criehaven is the outermost inhabited harbor in the lower 48 of the United States, 28 miles off Midcoast Maine on Ragged Island, also known as “Ragged Arse.” For three quarters of a century, the island was dominated by Robert Crie, who arrived there with his 18-year-old wife, Harriet, in 1849. Crie eventually bought up every single one of the island’s 300 acres, raised sheep, cut lumber and hired fishermen to hand line cod, haddock and mackerel for him, which he salted and packed on the island for the next 50 years. He so controlled every aspect of life on the island he was widely known as “King Crie.”
Fast forward to 1967, when a cruising yachtsman, Dick Krementz, third generation owner of a legendary family jewelry manufacturing company, happened to be sailing by Criehaven with his wife, Peggy. Dick and Peggy Krementz had occasionally day dreamed about owning a Maine island, but Peggy wanted sloping granite shores soaked in sunlight while Dick wanted cliffs with crashing surf. Peggy liked meadows, Dick liked dark spruce forests. They anchored off the island, rowed ashore and had a lovely picnic after circumnavigating the entire island. As they sailed off, they turned to each other and agreed that Criehaven had every combination of attraction they had ever dreamed of. When they got ashore, they went to a realtor and said that if any land ever became available on the island to let them know. The realtor told them the majority of the island had been put up for sale two weeks earlier. Dick and Peggy looked at each other and knew it was time to fish or cut bait. They decided they were going to fish offshore.
For the next 46 years, they spent the major part of every summer and eventually Thanksgivings and Christmases, too, on Criehaven, where they came and went aboard their lobster cruiser, the Peggy K. The pair became not respected members of the close knit harbor community, but close friends with each of the 10 or so lobstering families who maintain the fishing “privilege” in the productive lobster grounds surrounding the island. If 19th century Criehaven produced a “king,” you might say that the 20th century produced an “admiral,” and a widely admired one.
Late this fall, Dick Kremetz passed away at 86, and a small delegation of his island admirers travelled to his other home in Morristown, New Jersey for his memorial service before his return to Criehaven to be buried in the island cemetery.
When he was not clearing brush, cutting trails, mowing old fields and generally trying to tame the feral nature of Criehaven, Dick Krementz presided over a family jewelry manufacturing business that had been established by his grandfather, George, an immigrant from Germany, in 1866. The Krementz company specialized in manufacturing and selling collar buttons, which were used to fasten stiff detachable collars onto collarless shirts. Virtually every man in the country needed one. Eventually George figured out the process of gold plating the collar pins—using two sheets of gold plate around a base metal, which brought down the cost of the decorative buttons and drove sales into huge new markets. Another profitable market developed in shirt studs and Krementz cornered the worldwide market in this product. The company became one of the largest jewelry manufacturers in the country, advertising in Life magazine and on the back cover of National Geographic for many years. Last year, the largest market for shirt studs was Saudi Arabia.
But Dick Krementz’ great passion was gemstones. It is tempting to think that the spectacular sunrises and sunsets that he viewed from the old farmhouse on Criehaven, and were reflected in the swirling waters around the island, inspired his love of colored gemstones—tourmalines, aquamarines, sapphires and fire opals. He travelled the world over—to Brazil, India, Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar) and other remote locations, to find the most spectacular gems, returning each year again and again to his other great love—the island of Criehaven.
On my first introduction to Dick Krementz on Criehaven, I was called to offer any possible advice for the island that was suffering from a plague of rabbits. Someone had introduced the creatures to the island, with the misbegotten notion perhaps of adding to the island’s pastoral qualities—Watership Down offshore. But with the habit of rabbits being rabbits and in the absence of predators, they had reduced every garden to rubble and become such a menace you could not walk from the shore without threatening to squash one underfoot.
Dick Krementz was not what you would call an instinctive environmentalist, but understood the fundamental ecological proposition that ultimately only predators or disease could control Criehaven’s infestation. Dick was enamored of my account of the Australian approach to controlling rabbits on their much larger island—importing a fatal rabbit virus that had been successful in the short run. Aside from the fact that bacterial warfare was probably illegal and that getting ahold of the virus was virtually impossible, I explained that the ecological risks of yet another introduction in a closed system were very serious. But Krementz had recently discovered that rabbits had crawled off and died in his well, so my admonitions seemed at best academic. Plus he was further enraged that his own diameter had exceeded the diameter of the well, so he could not easily take matters into his own hands, as had been his wont, and descend into the well to clean it out himself. Finally and most enraging, the very idea that there might be government regulations that would interfere with his unalienable rights to of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, his countenance would begin to resemble the color of a blood opal.
Eventually Dick Krementz and the rabbits reached their own perilous equilibrium and I like to think that Criehaven offered its admiral lessons in humility. I also respect that Dick Krementz understood that it is sometimes better to ask forgiveness than to ask for permission—except when it comes to rabbits.
Philip Conkling is president and founder of the Island Institute based in Rockland, Maine.