By Gretchen Wehmhoff

Kerry Jackson and his date strolled along the shores of Long Beach Island, New Jersey in May of 1993. This was their third outing after a chance meeting where both were waiting for someone at a local hangout – dates who never showed up. Now on a spring day and a third date, the two men enjoyed walking barefoot in the shallows when something red on a piece of floating driftwood caught Jackson’s eye.

Driftwood comes ashore on East Coast beaches all of the time, but this small, foot-long piece of preserved wood was different from other sandy, gnarled remains of logs and trees adrift  in salt water for years. This piece of weathered wood was literally art.

Jackson waded over to pick it up. On one side was a picture of a young person splashing in a barrel bath, a red towel crumpled on the wet, wooden floor. Hanging on the wall behind the bather was a brown parka with a rim of white fur and a matching mukluk below.  

On the other side was an old lift top lid from a soda can secured with staples as a device to hang the art on the wall. In neat, handwritten block letters was an inscription: “Bea Hillery Lingle, 7/78 – driftwood found in Long Bay near Skagway, Alaska.”

Photo by Kerry Jackson

Jackson and his future partner for 13 years took a liking to the find, taking it home and hanging it above their bathroom door. The couple moved a few times, and when the relationship ended, Jackson took the driftwood painting with him to a new home in The Bronx, New York where the art found its place above the new bathroom door.

Jackson said he often wondered how a piece of driftwood from an ocean separated by a continent made it to a shore in New Jersey.  He romanticized that it was tossed into the water like a bottle with a note, destination unknown.

A few weeks ago, in 2024, the pull tab, likely worn and broken down from years in the water and defying gravity, gave way and the wood fell off the wall. 

The artwork had Jackson’s attention again. Picking it up he studied the name of the artist painted on the wood – Bea Hillery Lingle. Who is she?  Where is she?  

Jackson started searching online and came across Lingle’s obituary published in the Dec. 9, 2022 Skagway News. She passed away at the age of 95.

“I don’t know why I didn’t look her up earlier. I would have loved to hear about her and maybe how this piece of driftwood made it here,” he said.

“I could tell from the obituary that she was very special to her community and thought that maybe her children would like to have it,” Jackson said.

Lingle was indeed dear to her community. Considered a matriarch of Skagway for decades, she was known for her community involvement, her love of adventure, her family, and as Jackson found out, her talent as an artist.

Jackson left a message on the voicemail of The Skagway News on a Friday. Sunday evening he got a call back.  

His friend answered the phone, saw the number was from Alaska and rushed the phone upstairs to him.

“You have a phone call. It’s important,” he told Jackson then followed up with another, “Turn off the TV. It’s an important phone call.”

Jackson seemed surprised and happy for the returned call.

He forwarded a photo of the driftwood. After some discussion Jackson learned that the whimsical painting was an Alaska Native child and that the white squiggly lines were part of a parka and mukluks. Suddenly his eyes saw the full shape of the parka beyond the “white lines” that had seemed illusive over the 31 years it had hung on the wall. He quickly shared the revelation with his friend.

Bob Deitrick, Lingle’s son-in-law who had married her daughter, Kathy,  recalls her years of artwork, mostly fun depictions of young Alaska Native children.

She was always painting on driftwood and selling it at the hardware store she and her husband Benny owned, as well as several other stores in town. 

“She painted everything with acrylic paint, took the pull tab from cans and stapled them to the back. Then she’d string wire through them for hanging,” Deitrick said.

Deitrick said Benny didn’t share much spending money with her, so Lingle needed to create a way to earn extra money. She started selling the art to pay for her camping trips and other adventures.

Lingle’s work can be found in her children and grandchildren’s houses, homes in Skagway and other places. Deitrick says she’s painted murals in town and the Klondike Gold Rush National Park has one of her paintings on the second floor of the park office. 

“A lot of tourists bought her paintings,” Deitrick said, “You can see them once and while on eBay. I’ve gone into people’s homes in Juneau who have them.”

“They pop up everywhere. I once saw one on a garage door on a little island in BC,” Jeff Brady, the son-in-law who married her daughter, Dorothy, wrote after seeing the photo.

“She was still painting for family members up until about four years ago when it became too difficult for her hands,” Deitrick said.

Lingle had a unique signature on the actual artwork – a Bee like “B” with a trail of five x’s (or z’s), each representing one of her children.

The Skagway News shared contact information with Jackson and Lingle’s children.  Maybe the art will come back to the waters where it was born, or maybe it will stay with Jackson who has become fond of it over the years. That’s up to them.

Editors note: Long Bay is also know as Nakhu Bay.