When the john won’t flush and the AC don’t work and the grass needs cutting, who ya’ gonna’ call?
Wayne Mathews.
Mathews is the facility manager at Museum of the Albemarle, a four-floor, 75,000-square-foot landmark overlooking the Harbor of Hospitality.
“When the fire alarm goes off at 2 a.m., I’m the guy,” Mathews said from his corner office off the museum’s first floor lobby.
From 7 a.m., when he arrives, until 4 p.m. the 63-year-old Elizabeth City native is in charge of keeping every bathroom, water fountain, lightbulb, air handler and high-tech surveillance camera in operation without closing the facility to any of the thousands of visitors who arrive annually. When it all goes according to design, you won’t notice his handiwork.
“I have to be proactive in what I do. The state doesn’t like to fix something unless it’s broke,” Mathews said.
It is a job Mathews has done for 30 years, 10 of them at the former museum on U.S. Highway 17 South. He has been at the current location ever since it opened in 2004.
“I’d describe Wayne’s compassion for others. He’s steadily working to improve the museum and the world at large,” said Director of Regional Museums Don Pendergraft.
For 15 years before he came to work at the museum, Mathews built houses on the Outer Banks, supervising construction crews of up to 40 people. He learned to drive a John Deere tractor at age 6 and pickup trucks at 8 or 9 from his father and their farmer neighbors in northern Pasquotank County.
If everything is shipshape at MOA after 4 p.m., you can find Mathews driving a tractor helping a high school friend on his farm. That same friend also allows Mathews to hunt his property.
MOA staff gobble his deer sausage and smoked venison tenderloin during the season. A noted wildlife chef, Mathews fed 14 guests fish and venison at his home recently for 49 cents.
“All I had to buy was one onion,” he said, chuckling.
Mathews is something of a Renaissance Man, a multi-talented guy who can cook, fix anything, hunt and fish, build a house or sail a boat. He was commodore of the Pasquotank River Yacht Club for years. Sailing trophies abound in his office. He turned a pair of eight-point deer antlers into a dining table centerpiece.
His wife of 40 years, Karen Farmer Mathews, once told me that if the world ended, Wayne could still take care of her.
Sometimes it seems like the world might end at 501 South Water Street. Electric power failures or surges occur almost weekly. Resetting all the gadgets can take up to 90 minutes.
A few years ago, a copper and galvanized plumbing fitting sprung a leak in an eight-inch pipe. There are four miles of pipes at MOA. Realizing that the hybrid fittings were vulnerable to rust, Mathews and assistants Paul Vincent and William Seymore replaced 31 additional couplings.
More recently, Mathews and staff spent 50-man hours searching for a pin hole leak in one of the bathrooms. They had to check 28 fittings, all of them wrapped in insulation behind tiled walls spread across four floors.
Mathews said that nowadays his job is 75 percent technical and 25 percent physical. He enjoys his 47-camera, cloud-based surveillance system installed earlier this year. He can monitor attempted burglaries, homeless squatters and young skateboarders from his office or home computer. With eyes on East Ehringhaus and South Water streets, he has even assisted the Elizabeth City Police Department a few times.
It will all end in February next year when Mathews retires. His post-retirement plans?
“All the hunting and fishing I can do and help my friend,” he said.
Traveling with Karen is on the list, too.
One of his favorite series of fishing holes is near Engelard, along U.S. Highway 264.
“What I’d really like to do is buy a piece of property in the middle of Hyde County for Karen and I to get away from it all from time to time,” Mathews said.
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