LOCALS Marvin Creamer at his home in Raleigh.
From left to right: Designed For Joy co-founders Kristen Sydow and Cary Heise
SAIL AWAY At 103, local sailor recalls his journeys around the world by MIRANDA EVON
W
hen Marvin Creamer was five years old, his father had him stand at the Southwest corner of their barn in Vineland, New Jersey. Note, he told him, the place on the horizon where the sun sets. Day after day, Creamer watched to see if the sun set in the same place. Over time he realized the sun disappeared in different spots on the horizon with the changing seasons. “I regret never asking him why he had us watching sunsets,” 56 | WALTER
photography by S.P. MURRAY
says Creamer, who’s now 103 and living in North Raleigh. But that practice gave him one of the tools he’d need to achieve a lifelong dream: to sail around the world without navigational equipment. Creamer’s fascination with sailboats started at a young age, too. In 1921—the same time he’d watch the sun set–his father attempted to build a toy boat out of white pine board and home-sewn muslin. “By model sailboat standards, it was cruel,” he laughs. “But I thought it was the most beautiful thing on earth.” Creamer
and his older brother took to building real sailboats, teaching themselves how to sail and sailing out on the lake by their house. He knew at a young age that he wanted to be a sailor. His instincts came in part from his education—Creamer studied geography, later teaching the subject at Glassboro University (now Rowan University) before retiring in 1977. While he says he was never properly taught how to sail, Creamer took classes that would later help him—meteorology, oceanography and zoology. Between
