Death of Capt. John leaves gap in Mago Point
If you knew him, you’d just called him Capt. John. And if you needed to know something about Mago Point in Waterford, you asked him.
John Wadsworth, an almost lifelong resident of Mago Point and the patriarch of a family that seems to own almost every business in the Niantic Bay waterfront neighborhood, died Jan. 25 at the age of 79.
His death, family members said, will leave a gap in Mago Point, the place that the Wadsworth family have essentially built from scratch since the 1940s.
“He was down on the water there doing something every day,” said his son, Bob Wadsworth.
John’s father, Earl, moved the family from Willimantic to the nearly deserted waterfront on the Niantic Bay in the 1940s. He opened a restaurant and bought the building that now houses the Sunset Rib Restaurant.
There Earl and his wife, Doris, opened a new joint, Wadsworth’s Restaurant. John and his four siblings grew up in a basement apartment in that building, only moving in 1960 above the family’s new business, Mago Point Marina.
In a 1993 interview with the New York Times about environmental changes in Connecticut’s waterways, John recalled getting an early start in the boating business.
“I grew up in it ... I learned everything right here,” he told the Times. “I started when I was still in knee pants working around the dock here, renting boats, bailing them out for my father and selling lobsters and fish, working on the charter boats.”
Wadsworth managed the Mago Point marina until just before he died, working through a heart attack and asthma even as his children and grandchildren took over the reins. He retired from Captain John’s Sport Fishing Center in 2006.
“He’s been in and out of here pretty much his whole life,” Bob Wadsworth said.
If John wasn’t on the water, he could usually be found sitting in his office, looking out on Niantic Bay. He never missed a thing that happened outside his window, Bob Wadsworth’s wife Elizabeth Berner said.
Bob remembers a time he was looking out on the water when a boat pulled in right by the marina’s dock and exploded because of an engine problem.
“It literally blew the guy out of the boat,” he said. “My father was sitting here at his desk and saw the whole thing happen.”
Wadsworth ran to his own boat, grabbed a hold of the burning vessel and towed it away from his dock until the fire department could get there. He later received a commendation from the governor for saving the captain of the exploded boat, Bob Wadsworth said, but John didn’t consider himself a hero.
“He said, ‘the thing was drifting toward my dock, I didn’t’ want to lose my dock,’” Bob said, laughing.
John’s picture hangs on the wall in the former site of La Casa restaurant, steps away from Captain John’s Sport Fishing Center.
Ron Grillo, whose mother ran the restaurant until it closed about a decade ago, remembered that John would come in for breakfast “pretty much every day,” he said.
“The coffee was never hot enough for him,” Grillo said. But, he added, the complaint was always made with a smile.
Bob Wadsworth said his father was one of the first fishing outfits to recognize the potential in tourists who wanted charter boats for fishing or wildlife spotting.
John, an Air Force veteran, began taking boats of bird and seal enthusiasts to Gull Island and other spots along the Connecticut River long in 972, long before it was popular, he said.
His family thinks he was the first boater to offer cruises on the river for birders looking for bald eagles.
“There were a lot of firsts in his career,” Bob Wadsworth said.
Later in his life, John fought to repopulate the Niantic Bay with scallops, which he had once fished but had disappeared over the decades.
He led an effort to fill the bay with scallop seed, bringing the shellfish population back just enough to make recreational shellfishing a regular part of Mago Point life.
While he was one of the original inhabitants of Mago Point, his father wasn’t afraid to see the area change, Wadsworth said.
The Mago Point Businesses Association, of which he was an active member, has struggled to keep restaurants and stores afloat by the water, especially since the 1991 construction of the Route 156 bridge, which brings drivers over Mago Point instead of through it.
A few restaurants and businesses have remained, but for-sale signs dot the streets surrounding Captain John’s Sport Fishing Center and it’s hard to even find a cup of coffee during the off season.
“I think he was for development,” Bob Wadsworth said. “He wanted to keep the area vital.”
Most of all, Bob Wadsworth said, John just liked to be on the water.
“He was born and raised on the water,” he said. “He was always a good steward of he river...and when you’re out there every day, you don’t think twice about it.”
The family plans to scatter John Wadsworth’s ashes at sea, giving him a proper burial for a lifelong fisherman.
“He’s got quite a few buddies out there,” Berner said.
m.shanahan@theday.com
Twitter: @martha_shan
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