From a Picnic to a Banquet

For 63 Years, Man Has Watched Rotary Crab Feast Grow

It is practically a rite of passage for Annapolitans -- the cracking of the crabs, the dribbling of juices and mountains of emptied shells. For 63 years now, residents have gathered in the name of philanthropy for the annual Annapolis Rotary Club Crab Feast.

And Philip Richebourg hasn't missed a single year. At 88, he now moves a little slower and takes a slightly more cautious approach to cracking his plate of crustaceans, but he still relishes the sweet meat and rolling conversation as much as ever.

The feast, held every year at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, has grown over six decades into a behemoth affair. As many as 3,000 people attend the event, and this year they devoured 443 bushels of crabs, 3,996 ears of corn, 90 gallons of crab soup, 1,800 hot dogs, 150 pounds of barbecue beef and hundreds of gallons of soft drinks and beer, Rotary officials said.

But it wasn't always so.

Sitting down at one of the picnic tables at last week's crab feast, Richebourg recalled Rotary's first feast in Annapolis. Richebourg, a World War II pilot newly discharged from the Navy, had just moved to Annapolis to work for his father-in-law's business. He joined the local Rotary, hoping to make friends and become part of the community. One of the group's first events was a get-together over plates of crabs.

It was a small picnic on Bay Ridge Beach, a stretch of sand with a tip resting on the Chesapeake Bay. It was also the first time Richebourg had tasted a crab.

"I came from California. We had other seafood there, sure, but I'd never tried crab before," he said, describing the surprisingly sweet flavor of the meat.

As he got more involved in Rotary, the club's feast kept growing. Within its first few years, it became the club's biggest fundraising event for a variety of philanthropic causes. After a while, the feast was moved to a golf course to accommodate more people. Then, when the Navy-Marine Corps stadium was built, the club quickly negotiated to use the space. Prices went up. Vendors began donating food and sponsoring the event. And the piles of crabs got bigger each year.

As the event grew, about 20 committees of Rotarians and volunteers were formed to handle each part of it. The ticket-selling committee. The all-important beer committee. The garbage committee. The grueling crab-cooking committee. And the soda committee.

Richebourg spent most of his years in the last group, planning and overseeing the distribution of soft drinks.

"It's no easy thing," he said Friday. After decades at the helm of the feast's soda committee, he still carries the title of chairman emeritus. But in reality, others do the bulk of the work, he said.

"Even the way we do sodas has changed a lot since I started," he said. When he first began distributing drinks for patrons to wash down their crabs, the committee set up three soda-pumping wagons, staffed by four volunteers each. For three hours straight, they pumped soft drinks into cups on both sides of the wagons.

But as the event got bigger, the system was deemed too inefficient, and Richebourg and others decided to go to canned sodas lodged in tubs of ice.

Along with the scope of the event, ticket prices have grown: Advance tickets for Friday's feast cost $55. All net proceeds go to charities, Rotary officials said. At last year's event, organizers raised $62,000 for causes including the local Boys & Girls Club, food banks, medical nonprofit groups and teen outreach programs.

About 200 volunteers helped put on this year's event.

"You don't get tired of it," Richebourg said of the volunteering. Even after so many years on the front lines of the often-frenzied crab feast, he said, "it feels good because you know it's for a good cause."