Albert was born and raised on Nantucket. He is retired now, after working for the Town of Nantucket. Albert has never waivered from the painstaking hard work and the constant search of a challenge in his life that keeps him active today. At 76, Albert wears the same work clothes he worked in for the town, either a green or blue uniform matching work pants and shirts.

Albert, a diabetic, prefers to grow his own food and freezes his vegetables to eat over the course of the long Nantucket winter. I literally set up my easel, beside his garden and painted him from life as he shucked his ripe peas, under his straw hat. His Nantucket yard is full of equipment for gardening, ship building and anything else that makes his life self sufficient.

There is something else. Albert is a multimillionaire today. He prefers a humble life and refers himself to a “mollusk”. A combination of his natural born character and lessons learned from having to make do on an Island separated from “ The Real World” brightens his pearl like personality. He was.taught the value of re-use and salvage through the life style of his dad. Whether he hauled trees that blew down in storms for a later use, built his houses out of ship wrecks, or fashioned an old car to power the saw mill, the life lessons learned from his father have endured.