Deep Creek  Lake Sailing Association

Member of the Month

August Members of the Month--Barbara and Ed Peters
Ed Peters graduated from General Motors Institute of Technology and served in the army during the Korean War. He worked for Allegheny Power Company and retired as a Building and Facilities Manager. Ed joined DCLSA in 1981 and is currently serving as Vice Commodore. In the past Ed has served on many committees including Buildings and Grounds, and Docks and Moorings. For the past seven years Ed has served as co-head instructor for the Deep Creek Sailing School. He and Barbara are active sailors in the Masters Fleet. Ed and Barbara live in Hagerstown, MD where Barbara has a full piano teaching schedule. She graduated from Shenandoah Conservatory and then earned a Master's degree from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ. She served on the faculty of Shenandoah and the New Hampton Prep School, NH, where she also served three years as Director of the Gordon Research Conferences. Barbara served as treasurer of the Club Board for 2 years. The Peters spend winter weekends in Garrett County, whenever the weather allows.

July 2004 Member of the Month – Barbara Meredith
Barbara Meredith with her husband John and children Coralyn, Jeannette and John joined the Club in 1983.  They immediately became very involved in the Club’s activities and in September 1986 (only three years after joining the Club), her husband John Robert Meredith became Commodore and presided over the Club’s 50^th Anniversary Celebration during the next twelve months.  On July 3, 1987 as one of the highlights of the celebration, Barbara and John got all of the 20 available past Commodores and their spouses together to honor the first Commodore John Mordock (1937).  The year was a wonderful celebration and John’s leadership was one of the major keys to its success.

Barbara has always been active in the sailing program.  For many years, she crewed for her son John and now serves as Patrol Coordinator of the Deep Creek Yacht Racing Association and Picture Historian for the Club.  Barbara’s family (daughter Coralyn Benhart, her husband Gary, and their children Robert, Bryan, and John; daughter Jeannette Dodd and her husband Chip and their children Meredith, Ashley, and Carrie; and son John Meredith, his wife Sally and her daughter Lily) have all participated in sailing.  All of Barbara’s grandchildren have in the past or are currently enrolled in the Club’s Sailing School program.  The most recent family sailing achievement was Meredith Dodd being a crew member of Captain Joni Palmer’s U.S. Sailing National Women’s Championship team which won the Adams Cup last fall and earlier last year being named Best Woman Skipper at the Flying Scot NAC 2003.  In total, the Meredith family has won more sailing awards on Deep Creek Lake than any other family in the Club’s history.  Death has taken John Robert Meredith and Chip Dodd from us, but the Meredith family continues to participate and excel in the sailing program on Deep Creek Lake.

June 2004 Members of the Month -- Carol & Dan Muss
Carol, born and raised in Huntington, WV, received a BA in Psychology from Carlow College and an MA in Child Development from the U. of Pittsburgh. She retired in 1988 from Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh as a Child Development Specialist. Dan grew up in New York City, received a BS in EE from MIT, an MS in Physics from Cal Tech and a PhD in Physics from the U. of Pittsburgh. Dan retired from Westinghouse in 1987 as Manager of the Applied Science Division of the Research and Development Center.

Carol and Dan met and started sailing together in 1981 at the Pymatuning Yacht Club. They joined DCLSA in 1983, bought a Scot and started to race while they stayed in a tent at a local campground. The next year they installed a camp trailer at that campground and joined a group of DCLSA members that lived at the same campground including the Nahemows, the Peters, the Riebels and the MacMillans. In 1987 they bought the cottage on the hill overlooking the Club now owned by the Peters and in 1993 moved to a new home on the lake in the Southwoods Development where they lived year-round until 1998. They now winter in Florida and summer here at Deep Creek.

In 1992, Commodore Frank Wolffe suggested to Dan that DCLSA would support him if he would organize a sailing school based at Turkey Neck. That winter Dan formed a MD non-stock corporation and, with tremendous support from Ted Rissell, Iris Nahemow and Carole Perez, achieved IRS 501-C3 tax-exempt status, raised money from club members, purchased Optimist Prams for the smaller kids and Lasers for the bigger kids, and got USSA sponsored liability insurance. The new Deep Creek Sailing School ran a four week junior sailing school in the summer of 1993 with Kevin Rissell as Head Instructor and Ted and Dan as his assistants. The DCSS, now under the direction of its President, Ted Rissell, survived a few crises along the way but is today a flourishing concern with support from both yacht clubs and the Racing Association. The long-range goal was to have the sailing school instructors come from our own students and today that goal is a reality.

Carol and Dan, in addition to being avid sailboat racers, are charter members of the "Chain-Gang" bicycle nuts. They also take cooking, baking bread and good food in general very seriously. But, while they are recognized crossword puzzle fiends, their main passion beyond sailing is the music of the 15^th, 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries. Carol and Dan play all the family of Recorders and Capped Reeds and Carol plays bass and tenor Viola da Gamba. They play regularly with early music consorts both here at the lake and in Florida. Theirs is one of the few houses in Garrett County that can boast a functional harpsichord in the living room.

Together they have run many brunches and social events including three Mystery Nights. Each week during the sailing season, Dan writes a column entitled "Sailboat Racing on Deep Creek Lake" in The Republican. Dan also edits "The Main Sheet, our DCLSA newsletter" which is published monthly during the season. Both Dan and Carol have served on the DCLSA Board, Carol as House Chair, and their lives at Deep Creek are inextricably bound up with the yacht club.

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Updated 09/28/05