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By Lisa Loy
Deep in a quiet, wooded neighborhood in Kitty Hawk, Ellen and Victor Berg built their cedar shake home on a high ridge surrounded by dogwoods and hickory. She calls it their tree house, which conjures up memories of childhood play, but it’s also their studio, so by definition, a place in which to work. As I was welcomed inside, I realized this home was more, much more.
It’s a gallery, displaying not just Vic and Ellen’s creations, but the works of numerous artist friends. It’s party central, site of the Starvin’ Artists’ Christmas Party, 21 years’ running, that averages 300 guests. It’s a waterfowl guide service, providing information and bookings for 8 hunting guides. It’s a Romper Room for two Chesapeake Bay Retrievers – Gabby, old and affectionate, and Bonita, bold and affectionate, and capable of clearing the coffee table with one happy wag. But perhaps best of all, it is the kitchen of the author of A Dunderhead’s Guide to Game Cookery. Ellen, much admired for her talent at the stove, led me, the starving writer, to her sunny kitchen where we joined Victor for a perfect brunch of quiche and fresh fruit.
The design of their home, built by Rob Lawson Construction where Ellen’s brother Ed Donohue works as the Project Manager, suits their busy working and social lifestyle. Ellen designed the house.
“I just did it on my brother’s computer; it was before CAD. I used a simple home design program, very basic. It was fun, or I should say funny, because I didn’t know how to use a computer and the bathrooms kept ending up outside the house.”
The studio is open to the main living area, in the way modern restaurants have theater style kitchens with only counters or windows between the staff and the diners. Victor and Ellen’s workspace, primarily dedicated to painting (the power tools are housed in their Kill Devil Hills workshop), gives them a relaxing atmosphere in which to work. They can entertain and enjoy conversation with friends that drop by and simultaneously keep on schedule to supply the more than 20 galleries that sell their work.
Individually, Ellen and Victor each traveled a long road before creating their personal Shangri-La. Ellen, slight in size but not in smile, did not realize there was an artist inside her until she met Victor. She lived in Chicago as a child and moved with her mother to New York and subsequently Tacoma Park, Maryland. Although no one in her family was an artist, it was always present. Her mom was the assistant to the curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and Ellen was able to see and learn from an insider’s perspective.
Ellen was very close to her mother, and although it’s been 12 years since she passed away, she still misses her. “We were very close. It doesn’t get any easier.”
Victor pointed out the mother and daughter giraffes that Ellen carved in memory of her mom. “After my mother died, I thought I’d do a series every year, but that’s as far as I went, typical Ellen,” she smiled, “a series of one.”
As an adult, Ellen became a nurse and the mother of two sons, Stephan and Jonathan, during a previous marriage.
“I was a registered nurse and had three years of pediatrics, a year of emergency and then intensive care,” she said. “My last year was with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). They had started researching on AIDS patients. It was difficult, a very difficult year, and it burned me out.”
She found solace on the Outer Banks where she would often come to camp with her children.
“I always wanted the truck to break down on the way home,” Ellen said. Eventually, they relocated.
“When I first moved down here the nurses weren’t even allowed to do blood pressures. The only place down here was the emergency room, in what is now Britthaven. And I interviewed with the doctor there for the job. He said, I’d love to have you honey, but you’d be bored to tears here.”
Rather than continue in nursing with “a better than 50 percent pay cut,” she chose what came naturally, the restaurant route, enjoying stints at the old diner at the Kitty Hawk Pier, A Restaurant By George, and Gandalf’s Staff, now the site of Tortuga’s Lie.
Ellen excused herself to answer the phone; the caller was a gunner wanting a reservation. As I was to witness repeatedly during the interview, Ellen is a first-rate multi-tasker. Victor counters his wife’s whirl of activity like the dad, Mr. Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. He’s an intense observer, appearing unaware on the surface, who casually reveals his wit at just the right moment.
So the conversation shifted to Victor’s background. He was born in Georgia but only lived there briefly. As the son of a Presbyterian minister who joined the Navy, they found themselves moving every few years. One of four children, Victor was the only one to inherit his father’s passion for hunting. Because he was in the Navy, they lived near the water, and the ducks. From the Great Lakes to New Orleans, his Dad knew how to find the ducks, and from Norfolk, they found the Outer Banks.
I asked him about learning to hunt as an 8 year old; did he have the patience?
“I’ve always been able to sit around and do nothing, “ he smiled. “It’s my strong point, and I managed to find an occupation where it’s rewarded,” Victor answered.
“You know I had an old single shot 20 gauge. So it was kind of like Barney Fife, you get your one bullet.”
“His dad was a big hunter,” Ellen, back with us now, interjects. “He ended up having one of the largest collections of antique decoys on the East Coast.”
“He started collecting pretty much before it was a fad,” Victor said and remembers many drives out to the
country. “So he was going through boat houses and attics. He would buy a whole string of decoys, keep one or two that were the best, and then sell the rest of them so that those one or two were paid for. After a decade of doing that, he had a fair collection of decoys.”
His dad was also a decoy carver and in 1980 he began to teach Victor. Vern’s competition carvings became well known nationally, and together they embarked on carving marathons for Duck’s Unlimited. Ellen showed me the bottom of a Pintail hen where Vern had written a dedication to his son, “For Victor, the best of the series of 255 hens we made for Ducks Unlimited Special Project in 1982. T. J. Hooker made the drake Pintail to match this hen, and the average sale price for the pair was about $1,250. It took us a long year, but I loved you then, and love you still! Nice Carving! Dad.”
Victor pointed out that the hens require a lot more time to paint than a drake. Because hens are woody in color to blend in with the scenery like camouflage to protect their young, each feather on her must be individually painted. Drakes on the other hand, have big blocks of color. The theory is that such bold color is meant to attract the females.
As I was holding the hen, Victor politely said, “I don’t want to sound like I’m chastising you, but there’s no dowel holding the neck on, or in the wing. There’s a chance, if you hold it like that, the head will come off in your hand. All these duck’s, particularly with Dad’s, you should avoid holding by their heads.”
Ellen explained that Victor, like his father, is known for his one piece carvings, the art of which makes them all the more valuable to the collector. Victor is also regarded for his unique keel-bottomed decoys.
“My gunning decoys, like the red heads, I only do about 6 or 8 of those a year, they take so much more time. On the bottoms of them, I take so much time so they’ll float right,” he said.
Victor is featured in the books, Waterfowl Heritage by Neal Connolly, and Sporting Collectibles, by James Karsnitz. Like Victor, Ellen has won many awards in numerous competitions throughout the East Coast.
While Ellen jockeys another reservation, “all the guides are booked that weekend.” Victor and I continue the discussion.
When Ellen rejoins us I say, “So I’m hearing about when Victor first saw you at the vet’s office when your dog was sick and becoming each other’s Valentine up at Barrier Island in1985.”
She smiles another of her winning smiles, and changes the subject, explaining that Victor taught her how to carve.
“She was good immediately,” Victor said. “I’m slow, and she’s fast. So now I just get out of her way.”
She was a good student and within weeks they were selling her work too. At first she used patterns that Victor and his Dad had made, but by the end the first year she was making her own, and power tools became her constant companions.
Like Ellen, Victor’s life was forever changed by the AIDS virus. His brother, Vernon Berg, III, dubbed “Copy” as a boy, was a graduate of the US Naval Academy. He died from AIDS in 1999, but not before he eloquently told his story in the book, My Country, My Right to Serve, by Mary Ann Humphrey. Copy’s dismissal from the Navy for being gay is detailed, and he garnered national attention when he challenged it. It led to the Navy making its first status reversal from dismissal to an honorable discharge for a gay person. After the Navy, Copy returned to school and graduated from The Pratt Institute with a master’s degree in design and like his brother and father, he became a prolific artist, renowned for his museum quality paintings. Although his military service years occurred during America’s tumultuous withdrawal from Vietnam, Copy and Victor were very much focused on what was happening there. Their Dad was in Vietnam in 1969, attached with the Marine’s during the TET Offensive. As their chaplain, he was constantly on the battlefield, often giving last rites to the dying. And the dying came home with him; his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam eventually killed Father Vern Berg in 1984.
But before he passed away, he gave Victor more than his knowledge of hunting and art, he gave him a job as a duck plucker. Vern had managed to buy the 80 plus acres of marsh located near the Bodie Island Lighthouse and was running a guide service. Victor was so busy plucking ducks for the hunters every night, he didn’t have the energy to hunt during the day.
Victor recalled when the marsh went up for sale around 1977, his dad asked Victor if he’d rather have the marsh or the decoys. Victor didn’t hesitate to answer and his dad sold almost all the decoys to buy the marsh.
“If you draw a circle around it, it’s almost 80 acres. If you factor out all the creeks and ponds, I think it’s almost 44 acres of dry land.”
It’s located right behind the fishing center at Oregon Inlet. Pictures are on the website. You can get a real good aerial view of the marsh www.outerbankswaterfowl.com and go to the hunting adventures page. There is also a section of stories where Victor’s wonderful skill as a writer is evident.
“All those birds come out to the wild celery flats, and that’s right in front of my marsh.” Victor said. “They go back and forth across my marsh.”
The Bergs live by the seasons. He hunts non-stop from November to January. In February they vacation to a tropical place so Victor can thaw out. This year they spent the month in Costa Rica and loved it. Ellen says the pace was like the Outer Banks used to be. When they come home they start carving. Victor believes they do some of their most creative work in March because they are refreshed and the reality of the coming summer season hasn’t kicked in. By April they are in high gear “carving, carving, carving” so they’ll be ready to stock the shops and sell at festivals and shows.
Evidence of their creativity is all around them. His appears in the surfer he fashioned from a piece of driftwood, the rose he carved for Ellen, set off with leaves cut from a soda can, and the whimsical pink flamingo peeking out from behind Ellen’s guitar. She started playing some years ago after a visit to her son’s home in Asheville. She picked up his guitar and started playing with it. Stephan said, “Mom, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look that relaxed and at peace.” So Victor bought her first guitar the following Christmas. Now, she’s writing her own songs too.
Victor and Ellen Berg have managed to embody the lifestyle that so many fancy for ourselves. They didn’t go to school to become artists. They just did it. When they start a new project, they don’t always know where it’s going so they figure it out as they go, like Victor’s soda can leaves or Ellen’s computerized house plans. It never occurs to them not to try – this is the real legacy they share from their parents and more important than the most beautiful marshland. Just as the marsh is the ground zero upon which so much of life depends, it is the artist that gives us pause to think about life, deep below the surface of ourselves.
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