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family-friendly beach,” says Cooke Jr.,
who now serves as the MBA’s executive
director and sits on Westerly’s town council.
The MBA’s efforts include spring and
fall festivals, the drive-in, classic car
shows and — unglamorous but crucial
— a summer road crew charged with
picking up trash, sweeping the sidewalks
and maintaining signage.
Many business owners are grateful for
the course-correction. Debbie Stebenne,
who owns the bubblegum pink Sea Shell
Motel near the intersection of Winnapaug
Road and Atlantic Avenue, doesn’t use
booking agents for that reason.
“I want to hear the person on other
side of the phone,” she says. “All these
motels are so small, you can’t have grandmom
and her grandkids in one room and
the party crowd in the other room. Neither
will be happy. So we try to attract
people who want to come for the beauty
of Misquamicut.”
Stebenne, who also owns two other
motels in Misquamicut with her husband,
Tom, lauds the MBA and the Ocean Community
Chamber of Commerce for its
support, particularly in times of need.
Superstorm Sandy caused roughly
$380,000 in damage at the Sea Shell Motel;
two of three of her insurers wouldn’t
cover a dime of it, so she relied on her
own savings and credit cards, plus donations,
to rebuild.
Her post-Sandy cleanup involved the
excavation of items washed onto her land
from other properties, including a couple
of refrigerators from Maria’s restaurant
and an outdoor bathroom from Paddy’s
Beach Bar. Amid the refuse, she unearthed
a sign for restoration — literally: There,
on the lawn of the Sea Shell Motel, was a
three-foot-by-four-foot scallop shell in a
faded shade of pink.
“I looked up at the sky and said, ‘Really,
God?’ ” she says. “It was so cool.”
She asked around about the shell’s
ownership but came up empty, so she
repainted it and hung it on the front of
her building. A year later, Stebenne
learned it belonged to a neighbor a few
blocks away who had used it as a planter.
The neighbor told Stebenne to keep
it — that it was meant to be.
This spring, Stebenne continued to
book reservations for longtime guests,
some of whom visit four or five times a
season with their pets — dogs, cats, even
birds — in tow. Many of her guests are
92 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l JULY 2020