We have wonderful memories of Bob on School Street....way back to when he ran the boat yard on Mill Pond !  Bob served as  Director of the Old Village Association for many years and more recently  set up a marvelous data base for the Association.  He was a great supporter of the principles of The Old Village Association and a great source of history in the village.
We will miss him.
Nancy and Bill Koerner

Bobby Walsh was a wonderful person and, in my view, one of Chatham's "finest kind" , if I may borrow a Maine-ism. Ah, so many Bobby Walsh stories and memories, I hardly know where to begin. So this may be the first of a series of installments, and there will likely be other forums. He was of Chatham's "Village," now referred to as Chatham's "Old Village." He was a close neighbor of our family on School Street, three houses down (north) from our old family house and even closer to our cousins, the Shepards, also on School. My mother's family were also Walsh's, but oddly, of no close relation. 
      My first memories of Bobby, were in the very early 1970s, when he took over running the Mill Pond Boatyard that Spaulding Dunbar owned. I had dropped out of college, and moved to Chatham, my mother's ancestral home, and the place of my summer vacations as a kid. My intent was to become a commercial fisherman, and that I did, buying an old wooden skiff for $100 and started out quahogging, and scalloping. Of course, the boat leaked like a sieve, and needed constant bailing -- a little dicey on  those winter trips down to Monomoy's Common Flats. I couldn't afford a mooring my first couple of years fishing, but Bobby (who was the effective deputy harbormaster for the Mill Pond in those days ) would let me anchor up or lay on someone else's mooring. That first winter, after things froze up, and scalloping was put on hold, Bobby let me haul up my boat into the Quonset Hut building (long gone as of the 1976 Groundhog Day storm --another story) and advised me on how to rebuild the skiff's wooden bottom planking he old way. After a few cold winter weeks, I got that boat so it finally didn't leak, or leak as much as it had anyway, and in the process got know Bobby and his crew at the time. 
     Around that time Bobby was beginning work on the first "Walsh" skiff -- an 18-foot wooden boat modelled on Arthur Gould's skiff that Arthur used to ferry summer folks over to North Beach.

My favorite memories of Bob are from Mill Pond Boatyard, where he taught me how to preserve and restore wooden boats.  He took a risk hiring me as some still believed  it was bad luck to let a woman work on your boat. He restored the1908 little yellow catboat, Pereladra and catabouts and whistlers that had originally been built at the yard. 
Bob was a perfectionist in the wood he used, the care of his tools and the finishes he applied.
He was also a very good bridge partner and challenging opponent at the pool table.    

A fine, long-time friend and neighbor. I'll never forget those parties in our 20s, Bob's showing up unannounced on my doorstep in San Diego after a spontaneous, solo, cross-country drive, his dogs, Reno and Similey, his Porche that would never start, and so much more. So long Bob.

OBITUARY

Mr. Robert L. Walsh

November 11, 1943 – October 31, 2018

Nickerson Funeral Home

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