"I said that's life, and as funny as it may seem
Some people get their kicks,
Stompin' on a dream
But I don't let it, let it get me down,
'Cause this fine ol' world it keeps spinning around

I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate,
A poet, a pawn and a king.
I've been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing:
Each time I find myself, flat on my face,
I pick myself up and get back in the race.

That's life
I tell ya, I can't deny it,
I thought of quitting baby,
But my heart just ain't gonna buy it.
And if I didn't think it was worth one single try,
I'd jump right on a big bird and then I'd fly"
...from lyrics of the Frank Sinatra song "That's Life"


July and Chuck Kimball.  ST. MARY'S TODAY photo

By Kenneth C. Rossignol

ST. MARY’S TODAY

ST. GEORGE ISLAND — It was just four years ago when a Hollywood woman, who is a double amputee, got one of those ‘too good to be true’ messages that she had won $5,500 and the enclosed cashiers check was the result of winning a foreign lottery she didn’t know she had entered. She ran to the bank and deposited the check and then began to pay bills and do some shopping.

It was ‘too good to be true’ and the bank, formerly known as Mercantile but now part of PNC Bank, told her, two weeks after the fact, that the check was phony and she was liable to the bank for all of the money. In fact, the bank boosted her checking account for her monthly disability check and cleaned her out. She was given notice that she would be paying the bank back for a long time.

A local builder learned of the woman’s misfortune and he had just had a good year. Just prior to Christmas, this builder, Chuck Kimball, went and visited the woman and gave her $1,000 out of his pocket. In addition, he went to the bank, which at that time still had a figurehead president in residence in Leonardtown. The builder gave a convincing request to the banker to write off the rest of the loss, $3,500, which was actually caused by them. As part of Kimball’s deal with the bank, he donated another $1,000 out of his pocket to the 2nd District Volunteer Fire and Rescue of Valley Lee.

The bank had a responsibility to its customers to warn them of such bank check fraud, an action that most banks take very seriously and use electronic and written warning notices as well as post signs at teller booths. But Mercantile, now PNC, had taken no such action and when the cashier’s check came in from a bank in a foreign country, the funds were immediately made available. Anyone trying to deposit a check of any significance in recent years knows that their bank will put a hold on the funds and deny availability for up to two weeks while the check clears.

But no one at the bank helped Connie Hewlett until Chuck Kimball came along.

Hewlett, who has artificial feet, stands on her own with braces and she has been standing on her own two feet for a long time. But she was defeated and despondent until Chuck Kimball decided to be her angel.

Kimball knows a thing or two about angels.

As a land developer, Kimball has been up and down and all around. Like the old Sinatra song, he has been a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king. He says he knows … "what it is like to poor and what it is like to be on top, and boy, is being on top better!"

But now Chuck needs an angel, but he couldn’t say so, as he explained there is a gag order on him and he couldn’t talk about his troubles. Others were not so encumbered.

After years of land speculation, buying and selling a marina a couple of times, selling C-Hawk boats with a flair for matching folks up to quality power boats, building houseboats until he was driven out of business by environmentalists who didn’t want people living in houseboats, putting together a land scheme which faltered, went broke and then was able to buy back the same project from the government agency which wound up with it after the bank went busted, Kimball has gone through nine lives and run out of feet to land on.

Kimball has built the nicest waterfront home project in the area at the Landings at Piney Point. That is the project he was able to conjure up in the late seventies when no one thought it was possible, saw it go bust in the eighties, come to fruition in the nineties and just last year Kimball remembered his late friend and banker Jack Daugherty’s phone call with the receiver for the, the RTC, the federal agency trying to sell the unfinished development. Daugherty guaranteed the funds for the check for Kimball in that call. Finally, The Landings was complete.

Kimball cruised into the twenty-first century with the optimism and vitality of the entrepreneur who made America great.

As the first few years of the first decade of this century began, Kimball saw opportunity where others saw decay and neglect. He bought the old Swann’s Pier and Oakwood Lodge properties, turned them both into bonfires and in their places, built new and desirable waterfront properties. The old trailer park at Piney Point caught Chuck’s eye about ten years ago and he went into that property and churned it into new salt box style duplexes, all with water views, access to the beach and oriented to the water.

What had been a troubled part of the Piney Point community became an asset and boosted local tax collections as families quickly bought all of the homes.

Kimball always made his adventures a family affair. His two sons were mechanics, boat salesmen, carpenters, and eventually construction managers. His wife July was the designer, office staff and executive sales coordinator. When Chuck Kimball would romance a buyer with grand vistas of fun and frolic on the riverfront, his family went to work to make his visions come true for everyone. Kimball knew he had married up and July provided grace and style to Chuck’s bluster and bulldog persona.

When Kimball applied for a bank loan he suddenly discovered that the Federal Government had declared his wife dead, with a payout for a grave marker having been made. Kimball thanks Congressman Steny Hoyer for bringing his bride back from the dead, when John Bohanan was able to convince the government it had made an error and the notation on Kimball’s credit report was corrected to show July alive and well.

Not long ago, Kimball showed that his visionary talent was still alive. He viewed a new Evans Seafood at St. George Island, complete with a lodge for visitors to stay, a pier to host a fleet of charter boats and all of it built above the flood levels of visiting hurricanes.

Many hurdles were crossed as Kimball figured he would have one big last accomplishment in his long life. The barrel-chested Marine worked long and hard to gather permits, appear at hearings, pay engineers and attorneys, finagle bank loans, schmooze land use officials, capture the imagination of the neighbors on the island and finally, after several years, got his permits.

Evans was finished and some months later, the lodge was done and all open to the public.

The River Creek Lodge was the first and only new hotel to be built on the Potomac River south of Washington in more than 150 years.

But by the time the reality of all this came to pass, the United States and the rest of the world plunged into a depression, deep and dark and dangerous.

Kimball’s options of selling the lodge and restaurant to an operator got caught up in the inability of buyers to obtain loans as banks tightened credit, despite the bailouts designed to encourage lending.

The financial reality of servicing monthly mortgage payments arrived as revenue was diminished and refinancing made impossible.

At this point, various financial arrangements are being sought by Kimball with his bank but his home is listed for sale, which sure isn’t a good sign. Chuck Kimball had to pledge his home to get his financing, showing his commitment to his final development.

Chuck Kimball is a product of American ingenuity and has left a trail of responsible developments, quality construction and gained hundreds of friends and admirers in the process. He has made St. Mary’s County an immeasurably better place, replacing worn out and tired old structures with new homes. He brought to life an old farm on the water next to the oil tank farm and convinced folks to buy impressive big homes. Kimball improved the tax base incredibly with his work.

Kimball may lose everything and if he does, he won’t be the only one that loses. We all lose when the brave and the spirited are beaten.

Angels have visited Chuck Kimball before and just four years ago, Chuck Kimball made the bell ring for Connie Hewlett. Connie will tell you she believes in Angels.

Time will tell if an Angel appears again for Chuck and July and helps them find a way to keep their dream alive.

 

Chuck Kimball in front of the new Evans Seafood as it began to rise up over the flood plain.  ST. MARY'S TODAY photo	In the dining room of the old Evans prior to it being burned down to make way for the new building.
The River Creek Lodge under construction, is now finished, the first new hotel on the Potomac River south of Washington to be built in 150 years...and due to critical area laws, it may be the last.  ST. MARY'S TODAY photo	The new Evans Seafood stands where the old building drew folks who would stand in line for an hour to get a table with brown paper and trays of steamed crabs, hush puppies and crab cakes. ST. MARY'S TODAY photos

Bugs Evans, on the right of this large photo with his son Ronnie as they check out a bushel of crabs, was the founder of Evans Seafood in 1962. ST. MARY'S TODAY photo