Meet Your Neighbor
LIONEL STARR
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT WRITER

PHOTO BY ROB BENCHLEY

Date of birth:

October 27, 1942

Likes most about Nantucket:

Its natural resources and beauty.

Likes least about Nantucket:

The rapid growth with people, cars and on the waterfront, and all the things we've lost.

Favorite TV show:

The Military Channel

Lionel Starr might be described as an ultimate Nantucketer. He was born here, went to local schools, only left the island long enough to serve his country, and is content to be here for the rest of his life.

After Starr graduated from high school, he signed on with the U.S. Marines. During his four-year stint he was stationed at Camp Lejune in North Carolina and the Newport, Va. Naval Base. He spent a year aboard ships working three months in the Caribbean, three months in South Africa and six months in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1962, his ship was among the first group that were intended to invade Cuba during the missile crisis, but the plan was cancelled.

"Thank God. We would have lost a lot of people," he recalled.

After returning home, Starr worked with a mason for four years and then joined the police department. He said he was the first to graduate from the Barnstable Police Academy. He was a patrol officer from 1968 to 1978, then moved on to drive for United Parcel Service, where he spent 21 years.

"I did the whole island in different segments of time," he said. "That was when there were just two full-time drivers and one part-timer."

In 1998, Starr became "semiretired" but stayed busy enough. He worked part-time at On Island Gas, where he still can be found half of the week. In 1999, he and his son Jay bought a boat suitable for charters and started taking people on fishing trips in the Starrfish. They search for all sorts of species including shark, bluefish, striped bass, sea bass and bait fish off Sankaty. That is work Starr enjoys, along with having the time to work on his other, smaller boats, making dredges and puttering around his house and yard.

"I can take my time doing it without burning myself out," he said, sitting in the shady breezeway of his home on a recent hot day.

In the fall and winter, Starr goes commercial scalloping.

"I don't know how many more years I'm going to do it," he said. "I think I'm about the oldest one out there. I enjoy going. I just love the water and then I shuck them all and still beat my wife home from work. You sleep good at night, I'll tell you, and then you get up in the morning and do it all over again."

Starr is married to Penny, who works in the hospital's Home Health Department. They have one son, Jay, a daughter Jana Duarte and four grandchildren. They all live on the island.

"I'm very fortunate to have them close by," said Starr, who has no dreams of doing anything special in the future.

"I've seen quite a bit of the world. I like Nantucket. I'm a real homebody. I'm one of those guys who goes away for two or three days and I want to come home." I