The Kingfisher Elective

Glenn Joyner, after 43 years as an educator, decided to retire and delivered his notice of retirement to the administrators of John Paul II Catholic High School (known as JPII) in Greenville, North Carolina. Glenn had served as the school’s first principal when it opened in 2010, and a few years later he took on a position as an English teacher. The school community was reluctant to let him go, and at the annual spring banquet one of the school’s benefactors asked Glenn what it would take to get him to stay. Glenn said, half joking, “Build me a boatshop on campus and let me teach boatbuilding instead of English.” The school took the deal, built a campus boatshop, and Glenn stayed on.

Photographs by or courtesy of Glenn Joyner

Rolling the hull upright was an occasion that merited a class photo.

His idea wasn’t completely out of the blue. For the previous four years, he had conducted boatbuilding night classes for JPII students in his backyard boatshop. Each year, between January and May, the students who gathered in Glenn’s barn built and launched a new outboard skiff, starting with a the 15′ Diablo designed by Phil Bolger and Harold “Dynamite” Payson, the 14′6″ Little Moby by Charles Wittholz, the 16′ Shoestring by Karl Stambaugh, and finally the 16′ San Juan Dory by David Roberts. The students were enthusiastic and undaunted when they finished a boat only to discover it was too wide to get it out of the shop. They just took the door off its hinges and cut out a bit of the wall.