PROVINCETOWN — While the country geared up for the long July 4th weekend, the National Park Service formally evicted Sal Del Deo, 94, from the dune shack he has cared for and made art in since the 1940s.
The next day, the agency appeared to begin the process of un-evicting him.
As of Monday, July 3, at press time, the shack was still boarded up and locked — but National Park Service officials confirmed that the agency is now looking at ways to allow some use of the shack by the Del Deos and would be having “ongoing conversations” with the family.
From eviction to ongoing conversations took only five days.
A team of park rangers and facilities crew members — including law enforcement officers with guns and handcuffs — came to the dunes on the back shore of Provincetown on June 29 and enforced the agency’s notice to the Del Deo family to quit the shack.
Sal’s son, Romolo, and daughter-in-law, Tatiana, were there, and although Romolo Del Deo argued that the notice to quit was not a legally valid eviction — a maneuver that would have afforded the family an opportunity to contest the matter in court — he said he agreed to leave the shack rather than be arrested for obstructing the rangers’ work.
The rangers and crew members boarded up the shack’s windows and doors. The Del Deos took food, linens, and mattresses back to Sal’s year-round home in town but left everything else, including artwork.
The next day, Friday, June 30, Cape Cod National Seashore Supt. Brian Carlstrom called Romolo Del Deo around 8 p.m. According to Romolo, Carlstrom began the call by saying, “I am calling you at the direction of the Secretary of the Interior.”
Romolo said that Carlstrom “expressed his concern about the situation,” asked how Sal Del Deo was feeling, and said that Park Service authorities “were doing everything they could and would be getting back to you shortly.”
Tracy O’Toole, chief of external affairs for the agency’s Northeast Region, confirmed that call in an email, writing, “The National Park Service continues to explore all legal options for allowing some use of the shack by its longtime users and looks forward to our ongoing conversations with the Del Deos.”
Several events took place last Thursday and Friday that may have helped change the agency’s approach.
On Thursday morning, at a meeting brokered by the Secretary of the Interior’s office, state Sen. Julian Cyr and state Rep. Sarah Peake spoke with Park Service officials including Assistant Director Dana Trytten and Director of the North Atlantic Region Gay Vietzke. Staff from the offices of U.S. senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating also attended.
Cyr told the Independent the meeting was productive. “In a government-to-government meeting like this one, you essentially get to present your case,” Cyr said. “We explained that there’s a real history here related to these dune shacks, including a history of distrust of the Park Service.” About the shacks, Cyr said he and Peake explained, “They’re not like renting a cabin somewhere — they’re hard to maintain.”
Cyr said they told the Park Service that its arguments about preserving public access to the dune shacks were undercut by the fact that the new leasing program didn’t allow nonprofit or arts organizations to bid for leases.
Discontent with the dune shack leasing, they told Park officials, “isn’t going away and will only get louder,” Cyr said.
Romolo Del Deo told the Independent that when Carlstrom called him on Friday, he had been planning a picket-line style protest near the toll booth at the National Park Service’s Herring Cove Beach parking lot for July 4. He said the town manager and police chief knew the basic outline of his plans, but he called the protest off after the phone call from Carlstrom.
“The rangers who actually evicted us were as decent and as human as they could be,” Romolo added. “They didn’t want to be there. And they told us that if everything could be resolved, they would be happy to come back and help us open the shack back up.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on July 6, incorrectly identified Tatiana Del Deo as Sal Del Deo’s daughter. She is his daughter-in-law.
