PEOPLE & 



PLACES 



Preserving the Vast 



Karen Amspacher Holds onto 

 Harkers Island Heritage 



By Odile Fredericks • Photographs by Scott D. Taylor 



Q 



n a bleak winter 

 day, Karen Willis Amspacher 

 stands, tears in her eyes, 

 looking out across Core Sound 

 at Shackleford Banks, a pencil 

 gray line on the horizon. 



She has just turned away 

 from a sight that makes her 

 blood boil. For a moment, she 

 retreats into a memory of the 

 close-knit life here on this spot 

 of Harkers Island decades ago, 

 when her grandmother and 

 neighbors all had boats docked 

 a few feet from their homes. 



Behind her, family graves 

 lie in the sandy soil on a small 

 patch of land that she says is 

 the only remaining piece of 

 her grandmother's property she can afford 

 to own as real estate prices skyrocket. 

 Within a few feet of the graves, which she 

 has enclosed protectively in yellow rope, 

 red flags signal a new landowner's 

 intentions to build. 



"I can't afford to live here, but I'll be 



Karen Amspacher works to preserve Harkers Island heritage as the island is overtaken by new development. 



buried here," she says, then looks to a 

 nearby cluster of windswept oaks whose 

 contorted forms are hauntingly beautiful. 

 'The trees are so pretty. I can't blame these 

 people for wanting it." 



As development begins to engulf this 

 small island in Carteret County, Amspacher 



has emerged as a preserver of its vanishing 

 heritage. A mother, wife and former 

 teacher, she has managed to galvanize 

 financial and community support for a 

 museum in the most unlikely of places — 

 a rugged swamp island, once mostly 

 inhabited by boatbuilders and fishers. In 



26 EARLY SUMMER I99H 



