PROVINCETOWN — It has been nearly 50 years since the select board approved the idea of a memorial statue dedicated to local fishermen lost at sea. It’s a monument that remains unbuilt.

Several committees have tried, unsuccessfully, to execute the project, which was first conceived after seven fishermen died when the Patricia Marie sank in 1976. At least four separate fundraising campaigns have been initiated to pay for the memorial’s design and construction, which is expected to cost half a million dollars. The most successful one so far, by a committee operating in the early 2010s, raised an estimated $26,000, according to records obtained by the Independent.

The quest to build a Provincetown fishermen’s memorial has amassed its own knotted history, one that has unfolded alongside the evolving history of the town. Now, Lisa King — who was a teenager when her father, Billy King, died captaining the Patricia Marie — is leading a new fishermen’s memorial committee that hopes to finally get the job done.

“This town is in transition,” King said, toward becoming mainly a vacation place. “We need to honor the past, to acknowledge the fishing history of this town.”

That vision is energizing a renewed funding appeal from a committee King founded in May 2023. The group hopes to raise $500,000 to cover the cost of a design by local sculptor Romolo Del Deo, son of Provincetown painter Salvatore Del Deo. While a location has yet to be officially approved, King said she hopes the memorial will be placed in Lopes Square.

The plan for Del Deo’s 16-foot-high, 14-foot-long bronze depicts two fishermen in a dory perched atop a vertical wave. The statue would sit on a bronze base, into which Del Deo plans to engrave a list of all the Provincetown and Truro fishermen who have died at sea — more than 900 names, according to King’s research.

Del Deo first created a model for the design in 2011. He pitched it to a previous fishermen’s memorial committee — not the same one King leads now — that accepted it and presented it to the town for approval in early 2013.

Town records show that Del Deo’s dory design was unanimously approved by the Provincetown Art Commission, the Provincetown Public Pier Corp., and the town’s select board in 2013. At least one approval had a condition: that any “significant changes” made to the design be subject to another round of voting, according to records of the 2013 art commission meeting.

According to a budget provided by King, $500,000 will cover roughly $90,000 in sculpting costs, more than $255,000 to cast the model in bronze, and roughly $71,000 in engineering and installation costs.

Del Deo said that, at present, he is not being compensated for his time spent working on the memorial and that he knows he may never be. The current committee’s $500,000 budget does not include an artist’s fee. He is not a member of the new committee.

“They’re going to need everything they can get,” Del Deo said. If the committee can raise more than $500,000, Del Deo said, he hopes to be paid an amount roughly equal to the casting costs for the sculpture — which he estimated at $185,000.

“It would be nice if they could raise enough to pay me, but that’s not a condition of me doing this,” Del Deo said.

Despite the steep cost of Del Deo’s design, King opted to stick with it because commissioning a new, cheaper design and going before the town for approval again would take time, money, and resources that King thinks would be better spent elsewhere.

“Building a local monument is a very hard thing to do,” said Del Deo, who said he has been involved in the construction of at least 50 large-scale memorials. “It’s always fraught with the intersections of creative demands, financial demands, and political demands,” he said.

‘A Classic Provincetown Story’

The story of the memorial begins in 1977. Rachel White, who was born in Provincetown in 1933 and still lives here, was among the first group to propose the idea to the select board. The proposal was accepted in 1977, according to town records, but that didn’t come with funding.

“There just wasn’t any money,” White said. In subsequent years, some small donations came in from family members of fishermen who had been lost, but it was never enough to advance the project.

In 1986, White and that first committee hoped to energize the effort by holding a contest to select an artist for the memorial. The committee invited residents to vote on the designs at town hall. Del Deo — recently out of college — entered the contest. His first design, which depicts a fisherman holding a fishing box, is now in the permanent collection at PAAM.

But the vote went awry when Malcolm Paul Newman, one of the nominated artists, stuffed the ballot box for his own entry, according to White.

“Once we found out about that scandal, we couldn’t move forward with any design because it was an unfair thing,” White said. “And so that fell through the cracks, and on and on it went.”

“It’s a classic Provincetown story,” Del Deo said.

The project was picked up again in 2010, this time by Carol Peters, the daughter of a local fisherman. Peters’s committee — composed of, among others, Peter Cook, Kerry Adams, Silvia Newman, Kevin McLaughlin, and Luis Ribas — got tentative approval from the select board and the visitor services board to move forward with planning, town records show.

After having lived away for nearly 25 years, Del Deo moved back to Provincetown in January 2011. In February of that year, he saw an ad calling for designs for Peters’s revived fishermen’s memorial project.

By the end of the year, he had produced a rough model for the memorial — the same dory model he is in the process of enlarging now. He said he was offered the design role in 2012.

The committee kicked off fundraising and formal planning in 2013, obtaining design approval from the necessary town boards that May.

A Big Budget

Despite making more headway than any previous effort, the 2013 committee disbanded in 2016 because of irreconcilable differences of opinion about expenses.

A document obtained by the Independent shows a breakdown of the budget for Del Deo’s 2013 proposal. The numbers are close to the present-day ones: the gross cost was put at $468,000, with $325,000 going to the net costs of the sculpture. One difference, though, is that back then the total included an artist’s fee of $65,000 and an agent’s fee of $78,000.

According to Del Deo, Peters’s committee was “fully aware” of the cost of his memorial design when they approved his proposal in 2013.

Provincetown attorney Chris Snow said he did not recall any contract binding the committee to Del Deo’s half-million-dollar design.

“I don’t know if the figure was insurmountable, but it was definitely large enough that it should have required a consensus,” Snow said. While he respects Del Deo’s artistic talent, he said, he imagines the committee, which he said consisted of volunteers of “modest means,” was “aghast” at the $500,000 price.

Kerry Adams, the treasurer of the 2013 committee who is now in jail on child pornography charges, told the Provincetown Banner in 2016 that the committee was “never anticipating” a half-million-dollar budget for the project.

Del Deo said that, after joining the previous committee, he began to worry about its members’ lack of fundraising experience.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Del Deo said.

With fundraising off to a slow start, Del Deo said he recruited Chris King — Lisa King’s brother, who ran several local businesses and had already made a large donation to the project — to chair the committee in late 2013.

King joined and then suggested the committee reevaluate the design choice and pursue a cheaper plan, according to Del Deo, who said that the committee then capped its fundraising goal at $150,000 — “nowhere near enough” to build his design.

Chris King declined to comment for this story, as did five other members of the previous committee.

Del Deo refused to change course. By the time the push to change the design began, he said, at least $15,000 of the donated money had been spent on creating small bronze maquettes of the design.

Del Deo officially parted ways with the committee in 2016, keeping the rights to the memorial design, while the group kept the money that had been raised and the name “Fishermen’s Memorial.”

Following the schism, the committee stopped working on the project.

In June 2016, the Provincetown Portuguese Festival Committee unveiled an unrelated memorial plaque in Portuguese Square dedicated to local fishermen lost at sea.

According to Don Murphy, the former director of the festival, Chris King was involved in the creation of the plaque, but he said it was funded entirely by the festival committee and used none of the funds raised by the previous fishermen’s memorial committee.

Del Deo said he continued working on the project in his free time even after being ousted by the previous committee. “I don’t like to start something I don’t finish,” he said. “It drives me nuts.” He began enlarging the design in 2022.

Bigger Than Provincetown

The current fishermen’s memorial committee has not yet raised much, according to Michael Chute, the committee member overseeing fundraising. But Chute and Lisa King are both confident that this committee will be the one to finally raise the $500,000.

Unlike previous committees — which Chute said prioritized soliciting local donations — the current group believes that the project is “bigger than just Provincetown.”

The committee is in the process of applying for grants statewide, Chute said, but he declined to say where it hopes to get the money.

Chute is also contacting people — both in Provincetown and beyond —who have donated to similar campaigns in the past.

“This is a small town,” said Chute. “You can only tap it for so long.”

The current committee kicked off its fundraising endeavors at the Portuguese festival, where King raffled off an old photograph of Captain Jack’s Wharf; the event raised $2,000. King has dozens more old photographs — from both her family’s and Ross Moffett’s collections of glass plate negatives — that she plans on raffling in the future.

“There’s a lot of money in this town,” Lisa King said. “The billionaires are pushing out the millionaires right now. We’re not counting on that, but there is a general consensus here that we need to honor these people.”

White, who has tried to follow the development of the fishermen’s memorial project, was hopeful but less confident about the potential for success from the newest committee.

“I’m 90, and I’ve always said the two things I want to see before I kick the bucket were a new police station and for this fishermen’s memorial to finally get built,” she said. “One of two ain’t bad!”

 

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

50 Years of Fundraising

One enduring question from the 50-year history of the fishermen’s memorial project is how much money has been raised and where that money is now. The Independent tried to track all funds raised for the cause since its genesis in 1976.

1976-2010: A 2014 letter from former Provincetown Finance Director Dan Hoort says that a fishermen’s memorial trust fund was established at Seamen’s Bank in the 1980s. The fund had a balance of $676 in 2014. Seamen’s Bank declined to provide information about the account.

2013: According to a records obtained by the Independent, at least $26,000 had been raised for the fishermen’s memorial project from at least 31 donors as of July 2013. The money came from several different endeavors. Romolo Del Deo said that many members of the committee — including himself, Chris King, Kerry Adams, and Kevin McLaughlin — made large personal contributions. The committee also collected tax-deductible donations through a partnership with the Provincetown Community Compact, which served as fiscal sponsor for the project. In June 2013, the Berta Walker Gallery hosted a fundraiser and unveiling of Del Deo’s model for the memorial. At the event, several maquettes of the design were sold, and proceeds from the sales — at least $15,000, according to records — were donated.

2014: According to compact founder Jay Critchley, the collaboration between the previous fishermen’s memorial committee and his organization was terminated by a committee member in 2014. At the request of the committee, he transferred the balance in the group’s fund to a Provincetown fishermen’s memorial fund established at the Cape Cod Foundation. Critchley did not remember how much money was left in the fund at that time, but Lisa King said she was told by the foundation that the fund balance was about $7,000.

2014: Kristin O’Malley, the president of the Cape Cod Foundation, confirmed the existence of a Provincetown fishermen’s memorial fund and said that the fund “has not been active within the past few years.” She did not respond to questions about how much money is currently in the fund.

2016-2023: Del Deo said he continued fundraising for the project during these years on his own, through fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas. He said he has raised roughly $30,000.

2023-present: Lisa King says “zero dollars” have made their way to her current group from funds raised by the previous committees. The new committee has raised roughly $5,000 so far. —Molly Reinmann