LEFT TO RIQHT: Tom Tosto, who captains the 

 reunion barge, tells a tale about Lukens to visitors. 

 A visitor arranges flowers (or a departed loved one. 

 Qary Norman, foreground, looks back ot Lukgns and 

 his ehildhood as the barge departs for South River. 



differ, but countless other far-flung hamlets 

 perished when they couldn't cope with change. 



"The coast of North Carolina is littered with 

 dozens, probably hundreds, of communities like 

 Lukens," says David Cecelski, a coastal North 

 Carolina native who teaches history at Duke 

 University. "What seems exceptional to me about 

 Lukens is that its descendents still care about it 

 and try to honor it and look after it." 



Water Ways 



The annual Lukens gathering had its 

 beginnings in grief. The barge that transports the 

 reunion parties also carries caskets and mourners 

 to Lukens' main cemetery, now owned by the 

 county. Lukens has always been, for all practical 

 purposes, beyond the reach of roads. 



"We were going over there at the funerals," 

 explains barge captain Tom Tosto of South River, 

 whose wife, Bertha, grew up in Lukens and was 

 buried there in 1997. "That wasn't the time to 

 visit and get reacquainted." 



Thus, about 15 years ago, the happier 

 assemblies began. 



The pretty graveyard, also known as 

 Buzzard Bay Cemetery and the largest of seven 

 on the peninsula, remains the barge's destination. 

 The land that once was Lukens now belongs to a 

 hunting club and is off-limits. Nothing of the 

 town can be seen anyway. The mantle of oaks 

 and pines has covered all traces of the neat homes 

 once scattered along the bank; the fences, 

 footpaths, flowerbeds and boats are gone. 



The cemetery itself, sloping 

 high above the river, is an essay in quiet 

 contemplation of days past. An enormous live 

 oak shades headstones dating to the mid- 1800s. 

 Ballast stones from early trading ships mark 

 graves of unknown age for unknown souls. 



Though settled two centuries before, the 

 town didn't get its name until 1913, when it 

 acquired a post office. William Lukens was a 

 Pennsylvanian who built a sawmill and 

 established a post office named after him on the 

 west side of the South River. After the mill 

 closed, the post office — and its name — moved 

 across the river, where it soon claimed a comer 

 of Banks' general store. 



Lukens would be considered remote today, 

 but not in its heyday, when water was the main 

 mode of transportation. What roads existed often 

 were impassable. 



"If you went anywhere, you took the 

 sharpie and went to New Bern," recalls Tosto, 

 who grew up in South River. But land travel had 

 improved by the 1940s, along with other 

 advancements. Good jobs and an easier life 

 elsewhere beckoned, perhaps hastening Lukens' 

 dissolution. 



"By then the automobile and the prosperity 

 had become available," Tosto says. 



So today, to borrow an epitaph from one 

 of its tombstones, Lukens is gone but not 

 forgotten. 



Going Home Again 



Gary Norman, now of New Bern, was six 

 when he and his sister, Sara Jane, and the rest of 

 his family joined the exodus. 



"I remember walking this shoreline 

 catching soft crabs," Norman says, as the barge 

 casts off from the cemetery dock. With no 



refrigeration or supermarkets, he recalls, the 

 food supply was a constant concern. Everybody 

 kept livestock, tended gardens, fruit trees and 

 vines, and worked the water. Norman recalls a 

 community spirit that might explain why town 

 ties have remained so strong for so long. The 

 men joined forces to hunt deer, he says. "They'd 

 cut that venison up and everybody got a share, 

 regardless of who killed it." 



Neighbors visited each other, helped each 

 other and trusted each other, Norman recalls. 

 "There never were any doors locked." 



Lukens was not complete paradise, of 

 course. "In the summertime, the mosquitoes 

 were so bad, they'd take kerosene and paint the 

 screens with them," he says, and the foul odor 

 would permeate the houses. 



Lukens had its share of hardships and 

 heartbreaks. It took hours to get a doctor. Life 

 often was cut short, as the many infant graves 

 testify. Men and women had to labor long to 

 raise families while contending with hurricanes, 

 hot summers, bitter winters, rattlesnakes and 

 water moccasins. 



Still, Lukens is where many choose to 

 spend eternity. 



Gwen Hardy Rose and her twin brother, 

 Guion Hardy, of Harkers Island, brought flowers 

 to the cemetery, where their father was buried in 

 1954; their mother, in 1993. 



Gladys Hardy had told the twins, now 56, 

 many happy stories of life in Lukens. She had 

 left Lukens before they were bom, but her heart 

 was always on the east side of the river. Now, 

 she lies under the spreading branches of the big 

 live oak. 



"She always said if there wasn't but a little 

 piece of her left, she wanted to be put over here," 

 says Rose. "She loved Lukens." □ 



14 HOLIDAY 2003 



