43 Bradford Street. [2013, Dunlap]
[2012, Dunlap]
[2016, Dunlap]
[2011, Dunlap]
John Dowd’s Back Street, Provincetown depicts 43 Bradford Street at left and the Bradford Hotel, 41 Bradford Street, at right. [Salvador R. Vasques III / Facebook / My Provincetown Memorabilia Collection / 11 April 2020]
Irving Roderick was Mary Bono’s model for this life-size diorama in the Provincetown Heritage Museum. [Salvador R. Vasques III / Facebook / My Provincetown Memorabilia Collection / 2 December 2021]
The sculptor Mary Bono sat next to the Roderick effigy aboard Pico at the Provincetown Heritage Museum in 1983. [Ben Kettlewell / Facebook / Provincetown Diaspora / 15 November 2021]
Left: Irving Roderick as a high school senior in 1947. [Long Pointer 1947 / School Collection / Provincetown History Preservation Project / Page 5559] Center: The effigy of Irving Roderick aboard Pico, from an undated Provincetown Heritage Museum rack card in the author’s collection. Right: A close-up of the Roderick effigy when it was being assembled. [Ben Kettlewell / Facebook / Provincetown Diaspora / 15 November 2021]
“Gone fishin’,” it says, on the headstone of Irving Richard “Deeda” Roderick (1929-2000) at St. Peter’s Cemetery. No epitaph could be more fitting, since Roderick was one of the very last surviving trap fishermen of Provincetown. (In 1996, only nine were known to be living.1) His wife, Ethel May (Williams) Roderick (1928-2018), acquired this house in 1954 from Mary “Mamie” White Furtado (1884-1965), the widow of Manuel “Ti Manuel” Furtado, the father of the 20th-century boatbuilding business in Provincetown, whose boatyard was at 99 Commercial Street.
“Irving Roderick was a cousin of my wife’s mother,” Geoffrey Kane wrote. “He was a character. He loved to hunt and fish all around the Lower Cape. Many trips with his Provincetown buddies to Gull Pond in Wellfleet. He’d hoot and holler at the likes of Joe and Bruce Corea, Bob White, Moose Roda, Leo Gracie, J.B., and the rest of the Provincetown gang. His voice echoed across the water. He loved hunting as well and often times could be found having a cup of coffee somewhere along Collins Road during deer hunting season. He always had a hunting story to tell. Hell of a nice guy who often times stopped by my in-laws with fresh fish and lobster.”2
Two lines of doggerel from Roderick’s senior profile in the 1947 Long Pointer summed it up:
Rabbits fear him; deer go a-running,
Whenever Irving goes a-gunning.
Roderick was celebrated enough to have been the model for the artist Mary Bono when she was creating life-size wax figures for the Provincetown Heritage Museum, which opened in 1976 at 356 Commercial Street (now the Provincetown Public Library). Roderick’s effigy was posed in what the museum called a “shore whaler” or “whaling canoe,” on loan from the New Bedford Whaling Museum. It was named Pico. (Contemporary accounts generally refer to the vessel as a dory.) The carefully sculpted heads of Bono’s effigies could be detached from the bodies. Unhappily, when the museum was being disassembled for storage, Roderick’s head was lost.3
In a painting titled Back Street, Provincetown, John Dowd depicted the Roderick house and abutting Bradford Hotel.
Patrick J. Wilson, co-proprietor of the abutting Bradford Guesthouse, 41 Bradford Street, purchased the property from Ethel Roderick’s estate in 2018 for $1.18 million. Wilson purchased it under the name 43 Towne L.L.C.
¶ Last updated on 24 February 2023.
In memoriam
• Mary “Mamie” White Furtado (1884-1965)
Find a Grave Memorial No. 107199501.
• Ethel May (Williams) Roderick (1928-2018)
Find a Grave Memorial No. 138595094.
• Irving Richard Roderick (1929-2000)
Find a Grave Memorial No. 138594999.
1 They were: Victor Alexander, 288 Bradford Street; William E. Cabral, 24 Race Road; Louis Cordeiro, 8 Brewster Street; Reginald Enos, 31 Conant Street; Manuel “Cul” Gouveia, 31 Pleasant Street; Francis Packett, 11 Carnes Avenue; Jack Papetsas; Albert Rego, 18 Brewster Street; and Roderick.
2 Geoffrey Kane, Facebook, Provincetown Diaspora, 16 November 2021.
3 Ben Kettlewell, Facebook, Provincetown Diaspora, 15 November 2021.
43 Bradford Street on the Town Map, showing property lines.