504633_AnnualReportTXT_FINAL

During my first year of teaching at East Carteret High School, one of my Harkers Island students told me about Shell Point where
new parents take their newborns for their first view of Lookout Lighthouse. This visit is to start the precious new life in the right
direction …to look to the light. I have always loved this story. Thus it seemed to me to be a great symmetry that the Core Sound Waterfowl
Museum & Heritage Center should be located near the Point as this marvelous facility sought to preserve the past, affirm
the present and point to a safe harbor in the future on the most precious part of the North Carolina coast.”
Sunny Newton, Beaufort
A PLACE
The groundwork for a facility dedicated to waterfowling
traditions in eastern Carteret County began
in February of 1992. The Core Sound Waterfowl
Museum, Inc. was created and a 21-member Board of
Directors was appointed including carvers, area businessmen,
and local government representatives. The
first meeting took place in March where a preliminary
proposal for a museum project was presented. After
investigating all the undeveloped sites on the island it
was determined that a tract of land within the National
Park Service property at Shell Point provided
the greatest potential for a museum project. It was
decided to pursue a lease agreement with Cape Lookout
National Seashore as a building site for the Core
Sound Waterfowl Museum.
This proposal was presented to North Carolina’s
Congressional delegation and to the Superintendent’s
Office of Cape Lookout National Seashore. With
the approval and support of the late Senator Terry
Sanford, Senator Jesse Helms, Representative Walter
B. Jones and a special interest from former Representative
Martin Lancaster, the appropriate meetings
were held and a Memorandum of Understanding was
signed on November 30, 1993, allowing construction
of the Waterfowl Museum within Cape Lookout
National Seashore on Harkers Island.
We had a home and the work began.
Core Sound Waterfowl Museum founding chairman, Billy
Smith, and Assistant Superintendent, Chuck Harris, sign
the Memorandum of Understanding for a long-term lease on
16-acres of maritime forest on Shell Point for the construction
of the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum. (November 1992)
Billy Smith and the museum’s first member and founding board
member, Guy Tucker, plan their bidding at one of the museum’s
first auctions at Harkers Island School.
Core Sound’s
Founding Leaders
1992 Core Sound Waterfowl
Museum Founding Board of Directors:
Billy Smith, John Civils, Karen
Amspacher, James Davis, Jr., Bruce
Etheridge, Ted Garner, Jr., Jerry Gaskill,
Jack Goodwin, Carl Huff, Purcell
Jones, David Lawrence, Don Manley,
John Nobles, Jim Phillips, Ronnie
Smith, Jim Spencer, Guy Tucker, Don
Walston, Roy Willis, David Yeomans
Memberships for the Core
Sound Waterfowl Museum opened
in August 1992 with Guy Tucker
the first member. After a successful
first decoy festival fund-raising effort,
the museum operation moved into a
temporary facility (the former clinic
building) in May 1993, and visitors
began experiencing a glimpse of
the waterfowling traditions of Core
Sound year-round with school programs,
small displays and carvers on
the porch weekly.
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