ANCHORS AWEIGH and AWAY

by Ralph Kamhi

1996 

One of Cush's sailing principles, occasionally expressed but never neglected, involves entering a harbor. Sailors sail into a harbor. Engines are useful when all else fads, but entering a harbor is a question of volition a destination planned, plotted, and achieved on one's own terms and in one's own good time. One's own good time, the right time, sums up the Cushings' decision to weigh anchor and leave Douglaston after forty-three years.

But unlike the wake of their lovely boat, Tango, Cush's imprint is lasting and crosses many borders, reaching a variety of ports of call: locally Past-Commodore of the Yacht Squadron, president of the DMA, and Douglaston Music Group (as well as m.c. and dispenser of champagne); to a sterner world of service to one's country as a graduate of U.S. Naval War College and W.W H submarine captain; to an even wider world-Honorary Assistant Chief of N.Y. Fire Department; electrical consultant and lecturer to various fire associations, as well as a member of electronics and electrical engineer associations; and always a standard bearer for such groups as the New York Yacht Club, the Corinthians, Metropolitan Opera Guild, Italia Nostra (Rome), and English Heritage (London).

With him goes wife Barbara, whose trail started in Milford, CT, tracks up to the log cabin in Searsburg, Vermont, which her father (a Vermont legislator, later succeeded by her mother) her brother, and she built in the 'thirties and still standing to nursing school during W.W.H. With Douglaston came son, William( now a writer in California), followed by Susan, champion cookie-server for her brain injured association, and Joanne, third generation RN, and mother of three, living near the Cushings' new home port In Virginia Beach. 

We have it on fairly good authority that though Cush's regular admonitions to members to show their penknives (a must for all serious sailors) may be a thing of the past, his column Past Abeam will not be.