Editors note: Saltwater Portrait interviews are usually painstakingly arranged. An acceptable person is found and an interview is requested. The story is written. This Saltwater Portrait came about differently. It’s the result of what might be called random selection. This time, the writer opened the Zwaanendael Club’s 2005-2006 Lewes telephone directory, fanned the pages, closed his eyes, ran a finger down a page, stopped and read the name E.T. Poole on Pilottown Road. The rest went like this.
The phone rang a couple of times.
“E.T. Poole, please.”
“He’s dead,” said the woman on the other end.
Her name is Nancy Brandt. She’s E.T. Poole’s daughter. Instantly the chances of actually speaking to Mr. Poole evaporated. But Brandt, who says she doesn’t believe random events are actually all that random, said she’d be game for an interview.
“Normally, I just hang up on people because it’s just a solicitation. I don’t know what possessed me not to hang up on you,” Brandt said later about the call.
“My father was a Delaware River and Bay pilot,” she said.
“So I could interview the daughter of a river pilot?”
“And my husband is a published author,” Brandt said.
“What’s his name?”
“Charles Brandt. He wrote, “I Heard You Paint Houses.”
The book chronicles Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran’s involvement in the murder of Teamsters Union boss Jimmy Hoffa and is said to be the most credible account of how Hoffa died.
Lewes is the kind of place where serendipitous happenings happen with uncommon frequency. Brandt calls occurrences like these “God shots,” those times when things seem to fall into place perfectly, as though through divine intervention.
Brandt’s manner is fast-friendly, instantly warm. Her laugh comes as naturally and easy as her smile, tip-offs to the profession she worked in for years.
“I was a dental hygienist. I worked in Wilmington. I still keep my license up,” she says.
She and her family live in the Pilottown Road house in which she grew up. A home her parents bought in the early 1940s after her father had finished an apprenticeship as a pilot and “started to make some money,” she said.
“He was from Philadelphia. I was told that he was one of the very first men to get on the river without being one of the good old boys, meaning the job going down from father to son type of thing,” she said.
Brandt’s mother, Margaret Victoria Collins, was from Smyrna. She was the daughter of Dr. Ernest Collins, a prominent ophthalmologist in the state.
Brandt’s home is encircled by Lewes history. The home next door was that of renowned Delaware artist Howard Schroeder and his family.
Brandt’s best friend growing up was Schroeder’s daughter, Gail.
“Gail and I were the best of friends. She died about a year ago. There were six kids in that family and we had fun at that house,” she says.
She remembers riding her horse Trigger – she says that was the horse’s name when it was purchased from the Prettyman family – bareback on Pilottown Road.
“We could ride all over town. There were no houses back over there. We could go down to the beach. We could ride down the railroad tracks to Rehoboth. It was lot of fun,” she says laughing at the memory of the times.
She also remembers working on a painting as a youngster with Schroeder in his backyard.
“I’ve looked for that but I never could find it. Maybe he sold it,” she says.
But Brandt isn’t without her own Schroeders. A few of the artists’ works grace her walls; one of them titled, “Backyard Gossips” includes subliminal images of herself and her friend, Gail.
Though not a writer, she is a writer’s right-hand woman.
“I do help my husband. He writes and I do a little bit of his editing just to make sure he gets things in the right sequence. He gives me a lot more credit than I deserve,” she says.
“I wanted to be a river pilot but they didn’t have women back then. I asked my dad to take me up the river numerous times but I never got a chance to go,” she says.
Brandt says her father had a heart attack at age 50 and retired from the pilot’s job. Fortunately, their Pilottown Road housing lot was deep, enough to accommodate two homes.
“At that time they didn’t have any pensions. I was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania and it was very expensive. So they sold that lot to send me to college,” she says.
Next to the lot was a blouse factory. “Yes, they actually manufactured blouses there,” Brandt says.
She says her fondest memories of growing up in Lewes are those she still shares with the people she attended school with.
“I am still close to just about all my classmates. There were very small classes at Lewes Special School and we have maintained fabulous relationships. We just had a lot of fun,” she says.
This year, she and her former classmates are going for a California cruise.
Another thing she remembers is Otis Smith’s menhaden fish factory. It was south of the present Cape May-Lewes Ferry terminal.
“Oh my God. That smell is like none that you could ever describe to anybody. You had to close your windows, it was so bad,” she says.
Brandt says Smith, a nine-term Lewes Mayor and town scion, once built a barn for a $50,000 bull he purchased.
“It was the talk of the town. I mean, a $50,000 bull and this gigantic barn. My mother used to say, ‘Listen, when I come back, I’m coming back as Otis Smith’s bull,’” Brandt says laughing heartily.
During the hour-long interview Brandt at one point said, “I haven’t thought about some of these things in years.”
“I believe there are no coincidences, you’ve got to pay attention. God shots are given to you all the time, they’re the little things,” she says.
It would appear that Earl Turner “E.T.” Poole is still doing a bit of piloting. He’s just moved his wheelhouse to a loftier plane.
