Happy birthday, Elliott Carr
A full-throated shoutout to the man who engaged, accomplished, and gave so much to Cape Cod.
We were sitting in a “memory care” facility in Centerville when I asked Elliott if he remembered his birthday.
“That’s easy,” he said. “September 24.”
“What year?” I asked.
His blue eyes flashed uncertainty. Then, because even now he can be nimble sometimes, he shot back:
“Every year.”
Three of us, including Cape Air founder and former State Senator Dan Wolf, laughed.
Then a pause, a mental flex, a squint.
“1938,” he added.
Given the tragic way dementia hollows out even the best of us, I assume Elliott no longer remembers this conversation. But for those of us who still remember things, Elliott Carr stands tallest among recent generations who have loved Cape Cod and contributed to its economy, society, spirit, and environment.
“Do you know,” asked Dan as we huddled in a little triangle, “that as far as most of the good things that have happened on Cape Cod over the last 50 years, you were either directly or tangentially involved?”
“If you say so,” Elliott grudgingly allowed, ever the curmudgeon.
He came here in 1982 to become president of The Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, leaving the Massachusetts Savings Bank Association, a Dartmouth College guy with some Princeton and an MBA from Harvard. People soon realized that his contrarian, prickly persona, rumpled facade (a monogrammed dress-shirt revealed elbows worn through when he took off his sports coat, Chet Lay remembers), spoke to something important:
Disdain for superficiality.
He presided over an era of explosive economic growth (much to the bank’s benefit), as close as we’d get to Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” When a Wellfleet fisherman was lost at sea, boat gone too, Elliott let his board know they’d be forgiving a $30,000 note. When the economy skidded into recession early in his tenure, he quietly stalled foreclosures on families and businesses, holding off regulatory pressure, giving people a chance to claw back. Many did.
Cape banks were selling out, merging into bigger off-Cape institutions, but not the Five. The bank did hold profitable stock in those transformed entities; Elliott divested and used the profits to seed The Cape Cod Five Foundation, a charitable arm that now has $15 million in assets and hands out a million dollars a year.
He served on something like 18 non-profit boards; he also created a full-time bank position with the sole purpose of supporting non-profits. Dave Willard had been a commercial lender who hit hard times, lost his personal holdings, in personal and professional danger. At Elliott’s insistence, he became the second public face of the Five, serving on even more boards than his boss, guiding and rescuing many of them.
A wonderful writer, the Cape often was his subject. “Walking the Shores of Cape Cod” was one of his best books, appropriate seeing as he did that whenever he could, especially after storms. He became obsessed with bird photography; one of several remarkable photo books, “In the Beginning: An Osprey Family Story,” emerged from hundreds of hours observing a nest in Brewster, lens poised.
He also played a seminal role in the creation of the original Cape Cod Voice in 2001, helping guide me through a newspaper start-up and becoming one of the publication’s popular writers. His column, “Vox Clamantis,” Latin for “the voice of one crying out,” played off the publication’s moniker and suited his independent spirit (in later years he adopted “Against the Flow,” less erudite but also well-suited). For seven years he never missed a deadline, subjects including economics, history, social phenomena, family history, philosophical musings, hurricanes.
His politics surprised people, far from what’s expected of a successful banker. One example is a sentiment often expressed: “The money in politics is destroying our democracy.”
None of this fully captures his impact, engagement, influence. It wasn’t just that at various times he was chair of Cape Cod Hospital, Cape Cod Community College, the Center for Coastal Studies, the influential (ad hoc) Business Roundtable, and more. He helped drive public opinion on major issues like the creation of a Cape Cod Land Bank, the Cape Cod Commission, open space acquisitions, stronger zoning.
No one could say he championed these initiatives because he disdained profitable business; hell, he was president of the most successful bank in Cape history. He used that commercial bully pulpit to embody and express the idea that the economy is the environment, the environment is the economy — a concept now accepted.
When Elliott stepped down in 2005, even that transition was unconventional: He played a key role in championing and elevating Dorothy Savarese.
A woman bank president in 2005 was not common, still isn’t (though Cape Cod has two and had three before Savarese’s retirement). Dorothy became one of the nation’s most successful women bankers, chair of the American Bankers Association as the Five continued to prosper.
After all this and then some (did I mention his great marriage to Sue, two amazing daughters?), there we were in a secure memory care facility in Centerville, huddled in a sparse room as people who no longer remember their lives padded down the hall, staring straight ahead.
By all rights we should have been tromping a beach somewhere, strategizing public policy or journalistic tactics, Elliott for the fun of it positing an opposing view regardless of topic.
By all rights this man should be sitting on a throne, Cape Cod royalty, not perched on a walker.
But life doesn’t adhere to “all rights.”
So what’s left?
Those of us who remain (for awhile anyway) must do the remembering, and celebrating.
Happy birthday, Elliott.
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Beautiful piece, Seth, that leaves those of us who never knew him wishing we had and grateful for the glimpses you’ve given us. Thank you!
Bravo, Seth! Beautiful words about a great leader.