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Austin Strong at the Wharf Rat Club with one of his many friends, ca. 1945 Photograph by Louis S. Davidson From the NHA collection
AUSTIN STRONG
by his niece, HELEN WILSON SHERMAN He had a habit of looking at you, as if to bore into your very soul. His blue eyes examined you from under huge cliffs of eyebrows which were as black as his straight, gleaming hair. His cheeks were ruddy, his skin very white, and in all the years I knew him, I never remember him with a tan like most sailing enthusiasts. He had a small, permanent frown between his brows, but he smiled often, and his teeth were very white. Austin Strong was my uncle by mar riage to my father's sister, Mary Holbrook Wilson, a dowager lady who never got near the sun if she could help it. "Uncle Austin," as we called him (I was eldest in a family of seven who all adored him), never wore business suits while in Nantucket. He wore either sailor pants, cotton shirts of navy with a blue and white bandana at his throat and sneakers, or a navy jacket with brass buttons, white flannels, white shoes and a yachting cap with the Nantucket Yacht Club flag button on it. The yachting cap, at an angle, was always
