Hank Ghittino
Growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, I built plastic models of cars, planes, and ships. When slot car racing was popular I made a few of those. The only wood boat I built was a jet engine hydroplane propelled by fuel pellets lit off by a fuse. As I grew toward adulthood, life happened, and modeling went away.
When my late wife Eileen and I were freshening up our kitchen with a nautical theme, I enlarged some photographs we had taken from our boat of the tall ships leaving the Lynnhaven anchorage for the Parade of Sail in OpSail 2000 and Sail 2007. We wanted some ship models but everything we had seen in stores was junk.
Eileen introduced me to Pat Roll, a neighbor of her parents. Pat was a skilled, experienced modeler. While I had developed some fair amateur woodworking skills from house and yard projects, Eileen had more confidence in me than I had in myself to build a ship model. Pat coached me through my first build and taught me some of the tricks of the craft. My first model turned out pretty good. I enjoyed building it and decided to continue with ship modeling.
Pat and I became friends, discovered the Hampton Roads Ship Model Society and joined together. I’ve learned a lot about building ship models from the other members and from the newsletters of other ship modeling clubs that are circulated through HRSMS. I had no idea that there are so many people building ship models. Now that I am retired and widowed, ship modeling fills some of my time, and I find the monthly HRSMS meetings a pleasant reprieve from the community meetings I attend and facilitate.