The Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest and most important tributary in the history of our great nation. As my grandfather, Donald Faulkner once told me, “Bunk, fortunes have been made on her, wars have been won and many hearts have been broken out on that water.”
To me the Chesapeake Bay is home. Her tide ebbs and flows with my heartbeat and it is a bittersweet relationship I have had with her. As I write this, my memories flash back to when I was four years old learning to crab, fish and tong with my father on his work boat. Then it moves forward to a fateful February day in 1979 when the words of my grandfather again ring in my memory as he pointed out to the bay from the parking lot of the old Tilghman Packing Company and he said, “Bunk, your father and your Pop-Pop George are out there somewhere. The boat sank but they are going to find them soon.” I lost my father, Muir Cummings, my grand father George Cummings, my Uncle Garland Phillips and two cousins, T.R. and Rusty Cummings.
My world changed.
I wasn’t mad at her. I didn’t hate her. I learned above all else to respect her.
Many may wonder why write something so personal on a campaign website? Because the health and vitality of the Chesapeake Bay is very personal to me. Even more so, I am deeply concerned that very little through more regulation is going to make any difference for a variety of reasons.
