Island Profile: Summers on Burns Road lead to ‘new normal’ as a full-timer
Andrew Ward’s parents lived in Brooklyn Heights and, having been introduced to the Island by their neighbors, rented for a number of years until 1971, the year Andrew was born, when they bought a house at the end of Burns Road, opposite St. Gabriel’s.
Andrew says that “is where I grew up, in the summers. When I was a teenager, my first job was over at the Pridwin in the kitchen and all the people that were working there were kind of cool guys. So I ended up being friends with some of them, and some of them were year-round people. I used to come out in the winter, when [at] our house, the pipes would be drained and the heat shut off, but there would be electricity, so I’d come out and stay there and hang out with friends that lived here year-round.”
When the family moved to Summit, New Jersey a question was raised — to do the Jersey Shore thing as most of their neighbors did, or stick with the long commute to the Island. The Island won — the sailing was better, and his dad was an avid sailor. “I went to boarding school for high school so I sort of lost touch with my school friends in Jersey, and then in the summer we’d be here. So by the time I was 16 or 17, if people said where are you from, my answer was Shelter Island.” Forget New Jersey!
He went to West Virginia Wesleyan for college but didn’t finish. “I went to Florida, majored in bartending. Came back and went to massage school, a year-long course. I made a decent living at it for 12 years. But it’s hard on your muscles.
“Then a friend opened a bar in the city and was doing really well, so that seemed like a good idea. I was geared towards that style anyway, not that going to a bar enables you to run a bar but I learned a lot from him and had been helping out a lot. It took a long time to find the right spot, between 13th and 14th on Second Avenue.”
So Andrew and four friends became partners, bought in and opened up six years ago. “We’re doing pretty well in spite of the hard times, not as good as it was, but we’re making it through.” He used to manage Friday and Saturday nights “until four in the morning — as far as the bar scene, I was getting a little bit over it, didn’t really want to do that any more.” He’s still an owner, but not a working one.
When he broke his ankle badly three years ago and ended up with a cast and crutches, he and his wife, Arden, made an interesting discovery. They were living on the 5th floor of a NYC walk-up, “And we’d come out [to Shelter Island] every weekend, all that winter of 2007-08. Everything here was so much easier without the stairs: walking the dog, going to a friend’s. So Arden got to know the Island in the fall and winter, knew it was still nice.”
His wife, now the mother of 5-month-old Christopher, works from home. She’s an efficiency expert for the operating rooms at NY Presbyterian Hospital. She makes sure that the 40-odd ORs are running efficiently, with the title of Senior Revenue and Operations Analyst for Perioperative Services. Although this sounds like a job that would require on-site time, in fact she can analyze all the figures by computer.
When they were thinking of trying to make the move here a full-time operation, she thought of looking for work at Southampton or Greenport, when Andrew asked, “Why don’t you just ask them if you can work from home?” She did, they said yes, and the hope became a reality. And they love it.
He’s on a bowling team — “The Thunderballs, with my friends, one day a week — that’s great in the winter to go out and bowl. If you’re used to 15 lanes on either side, it’s a little different here, but I think it’s excellent, a great way to pass the winter.”
And then there’s the Polar Bear Club, of which he’s sort of the linchpin. They meet every Sunday at noon at the beach in Hay Beach.
“Two years ago, at a New Year’s Eve party, I said I’d always heard about it — it seemed pretty crazy, but this year I’m going to do it, dive in New Year’s Day. We looked at the weather forecast, some friends said, ‘We’ll do it with you, we’re in.’ Christian Langendal and John Wilutis.
And Christian said that you’re supposed to do it every week, so we said okay, that sounds good, every week, that should be good for you. Last year a lot of people came, I think the most we had was like nine. This year, definitely less. We go in at noon, you don’t want to go too early, give it a chance to warm up a little bit.”
They like Hay Beach, where “the wind seems to come from the other direction. And it’s a good beach, gets deep rather quickly so you can run and dive in, which is nice. In that kind of cold you don’t want to have to wade in slowly.” His Polar Bear expertise was helpful to the library, as he served on the committee that organized its Thanksgiving Day Splash-in fundraiser.
Having made the transition from second-home resident, morphing into a full-time Islander, both parents work from home, “the new normal,” as he puts it.
Andrew couldn’t be happier. “I’m Mister Stay-at-home Dad. It’s really terrific, amazing to be able to spend so much time with Christopher. He’s amazing, such a good baby. And you see many more people out. It’s pretty busy in the winter now — I love it, I think it’s terrific. It used to be you’d see one person on the street, but not now. It’s the age of computers.”
The new normal.