Wooden boat restorer Donald Andrew Thibeault, Jr., who learned his skills at Flyer’s Boatyard in Provincetown, died at his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. on Feb. 23, 2024. He had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in early January; he and his wife, Kathleen, spent his last 45 days with “deepening closeness,” she said. Don was 70.
Don learned boat building as a teenager and nearly 50 years later worked for Moores Marine on the restoration of John F. Kennedy’s presidential yacht Honey Fitz in West Palm Beach.
The son of Donald Andrew Thibeault and Marie Allene (Smith) Thibeault, Don was born on Sept. 9, 1953 in Coudersport, Pa. He grew up on various farms where his father worked, one being an experimental high-altitude truck farm that grew peaches and potatoes in industrial quantities. Don learned to farm by helping his father grow food for the family. A love for the land, and later the sea, never left him.
Don spent boyhood summers in Provincetown, where his mother owned and operated the Joshua Paine House on Tremont Street. In his teens he worked at Flyer’s, where he became best friends with A.J. Santos, Francis “Flyer” Santos’s youngest son. They crewed together on a sailboat, and in addition to renting boats, Don taught boatyard clients how to sail.
Impressed by Don’s skill, Flyer took the boy into his boat-building shop and taught him “the dying art of wooden boat building,” Kathleen said.
Don’s family moved in the 1960s to Falls Church, Va., where his father took a job with the federal school lunch program. Don had a predawn paper route in middle school, which gave him the means to purchase his first freshwater fishing rod and reel. He also earned enough for tuition at Bishop O’Connell High School, from which he graduated in 1971.
Don studied forestry and wildlife at Virginia Tech, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1975. He served in the Peace Corps for several years in Honduras, where he worked in a remote forest area on the Honduran Pine Industry Project.
He also did community development work, teaching forestry and firefighting skills. The area was so remote that on the weekend of his sister’s wedding it took Don two days to get to a telephone to offer his congratulations. He returned fluent in Spanish, which helped him throughout his life.
Unable to find a job in forestry and with graduate school out of reach — forestry programs required 10 years of field experience for admission — Don came to Provincetown to work again with A.J. at Flyer’s boat-building shop. He also helped at the Paine House.
In the late 1970s, Kathleen Carney, a nursing student, and a friend booked a weekend at the Paine House, and when she returned to school, Don wrote to tell her she had left some of her belongings behind. Kathleen returned to find the abandoned items consisted of three bobby pins and a bit of ribbon. The couple married on Oct. 10, 1982.
Don and Kathleen decamped to Florida, where Don worked with the Spencer Boat Company in Palm Beach County. He started on the bottom crew, but moved on to caulking hulls, and from there, Kathleen said, “his status skyrocketed.” After 25 years at what became the Rybovich Spencer Boat Company, Don left to do more specialized restorations, including the Honey Fitz, at smaller boatyards.
As a craftsman, Don “was honest and unfailingly principled,” Kathleen said. “He earned respect and admiration throughout South Florida.”
Don loved his summers in Provincetown and spent much of his free time helping at the West End Racing Club, founded by Santos in 1957. He also worked with Santos on his legacy project — the half-scale model of the Schooner Rose Dorothea, now on permanent display at the Provincetown Public Library.
Don found peace in long early-morning walks in the woods, making note of the secret spots for wild blueberries and beach plums. One of his favorite activities, Kathleen said, was to slip off his mooring in the predawn hours and head east to watch the sunrise over the open ocean while the sea creatures awakened all around him.
Don instilled this same love of the ocean and nature’s quiet beauty in his children and the many others he mentored. He was also famous for his blueberry jam, based on a recipe he inherited from his mother but with a bit more spice and less sugar.
Don is survived by his wife, Kathleen, of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; sons Andrew of Olympia, Wash. and John of Jacksonville, Fla.; daughter Madeline of Houston, Texas; sisters Terry Ciccotelli of Fort Lauderdale and Peggy and husband Bob Sudberry of Fairfax, Va.; scores of nieces and nephews; his best friend of 60 years, Arthur (A.J.) Santos and wife Meagan of Truro; and friends and colleagues too numerous to name.
He was predeceased by his parents and by his youngest sister, Nancy.
A Memorial Mass of Christian Repose was celebrated on March 2 at St. Clare Catholic Church in North Palm Beach, Fla. A celebration of Don’s life is planned for Provincetown in late July, with details to be announced.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Don’s honor may be made to a charity of choice.
