The Urbanna Oyster Festival Foundation has named Sarah Hammond Stokes, 86, of Urbanna as captain of the 2025 festival.
A Middlesex County native, Stokes surprised a field of women oyster shuckers in 1983 at the Virginia oyster shucking contest in Urbanna, winning the female championship and earning a trip to St. Mary’s County, Md. to compete in the national oyster shucking contest.
She surprised everyone at the national championship at St. Mary’s by winning the women’s championship and then captured the overall (men/women) competition, both times with the slowest times, but with the cleanest shucks.
During the contest, each shucker is allowed to select 24 oysters for each heat. The object is to shuck them as fast as possible and arrange them on the half-shell as attractively and with as little damage to each individual oyster as possible. Stokes had the magic touch with her arrangements and had the most clean/undamaged shucked oysters of all.
With her win at the national contest, she won an all expense paid trip to Galway, Ireland to compete in the 1984 international oyster shucking contest. Entrants from nine countries competed in the international event and Stokes finished third in the competition.
“It was one of the greatest experiences of by life,” said Stokes, who lives in Urbanna, but is currently in the Riverside Saluda Lifelong Health and Rehabilitation Center recovering from an illness.
“I was so proud when the three finishers in Galway got to stand on the stage with the flag of their country. They gave me an American flag to hold. It was one of my proudest moments.”
Stokes was the trailblazer for other Virginia women shuckers such as Deborah Pratt, a three-time national champion and a second place finisher in 1997 and third place in 1994 at the International Oyster Shucking contest in Galway.
Stokes history
Stokes grew up in the Revis area of Middlesex and her first job was as a field hand picking tomatoes and vegetables for Crittenden’s and other farms in the county. She picked vegetables in the spring and worked in a Remlik crab picking house during warmer weather months.
Along about 1960, her friend Georgia Foster asked her if she would fill in for her at Ferguson’s Seafood oyster shucking house. She needed a day off. Stokes went to work that day and before the day was over, Foreman Jasper Bray told her he had a “box” shucking stall for her anytime she wanted it.
“I think working in the shucking house was some of the happiest days of my life,” she said. “There were about 40 women and men shuckers at Ferguson’s then and we all got along good.”
The Remlik shucking house was one of the largest in Virginia. “I was never the fastest shucker, but I always shucked a real clean oyster. I had very few cuts on the meat,” she said.
The fastest oyster shucker Stokes said she ever saw was George “Pee-Wee” Hodges. “The first day I went to the shucking house Pee-Wee came over and gave me some tips. I’ve never seen anyone shuck an oyster faster than Pee-Wee, but I think mine were cleaner.
“I worked in shucking houses as long as I was able,” she said. When Stokes competed in the 1983 Virginia Oyster Shucking contest she was sponsored by Elmo Marshall, who owned C.E. Marshall Seafood Inc. in Church View.