The annual Pirates and Mermaids breakfast fundraiser for the Paul Drum Life Experience Project is set for this Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Front Street Station in Greenport.
The popular event is held each year during the East End Seaport Museum & Marine Foundation, Maritime Festival in Greenport. The goal for this year is $5,000 — which would cover most of the costs for next summer’s educational program for kids.
The Project founders — Sharon Sailor and several other local women — don’t charge for the summer sessions and they don’t take salaries. In the past, they’ve managed to rely to some extent on the generosity of experts donating their time, but the costs of other classes are increasing and Sunday’s event is the group’s biggest fundraiser of the year.
“When we first started, the classes were a couple hundred dollars apiece, but they are increasing,” said Ms. Sailor, the mother of Mr. Drum, a Greenport native with Down Syndrome. “Now, the storytelling through face painting class is $550.”
For eight weeks each summer, the educational PDLEP introduces a couple hundred local children, aged 7 to 12, to a spectrum of different kid-friendly activities in Greenport.
“We don’t want it to be school-oriented,” Ms. Sailor said this week. “We want to do things that pique kids’ interest.”
The wide-ranging summer classes have included Japanese fish printing, a traditional art form in which one side of a fish is dipped in sumi ink and pressed against rice paper to make an impression of the fish. Culinary arts students from the Cornell Cooperative Extension have been brought in to teach the tots ice-cream making.
The program works with the Quogue Wildlife Refuge each summer to bring live animals including owls, tortoises and snakes to class. The kids have also explored beekeeping, honey-spinning, candle making, and magic. There have also been classes in puppet-making, storytelling through face painting, and baby goat yoga at Catapano Dairy Farm in Peconic.
At the heart of the Paul Drum Life Experience Project is Paul himself, a familiar face around Greenport for years, who will be named Southold Town Clerk for the Day this weekend, the latest in a string of local honors stretching back years.
Years ago, Ms. Sailor was talking to friend about her son — and commenting on how he seems to know everybody in town.
“We should make him mayor for the day,” the friend said.
So they did. Paul served as the Greenport mayor for the day in 2014, and in the intervening years has served as the Suffolk County Executive, a state Assemblyman, a state Legislator, a state Senator, and one year — owner for the day of Sag Harbor radio station WNLG, 92.1 FM.
Earlier this year, the young man served as grand marshal for the North Fork Chamber of Commerce St. Patrick’s Day parade. His mother said Paul is looking forward to Sunday’s fundraiser.
“Oh he’s a ham,” Ms. Sailor said with a laugh. “He’s a master of self-promotion, so this is right up his alley!”