Edward H. Nabb Sr., a colorful Cambridge lawyer, philanthropist and pilot who organized the annual Christmas Holly Run airlift that delivers loads of freshly cut boughs of holly to cheer residents of windswept Tangier Island, died in his sleep Sunday at his Cambridge home. He was 85.
Mr. Nabb, a well-known figure in Dorchester County, had been senior partner for more than 40 years in the state's oldest law firm -- Harrington, Harrington & Nabb, founded in 1894 by Gov. Emerson C. Harrington. He specialized in real estate and probate law and was of counsel to the law firm in recent years.
A Cambridge native, son of a salesman and nurse, Mr. Nabb worked for Phillips Packing Co. and the local Sears & Roebuck store after graduating from Cambridge High School.
During World War II, he served with the Army Corps of Engineers in Europe and the Pacific, attaining the rank of captain. He also served in Korea with the 116th Engineers Combat Battalion from 1951 to 1952.
In 1947, he married Winifred D. Harrington. Mr. Nabb, who never attended college, came to the study of law through her father, Emerson C. Harrington Jr., who then ran the law firm.
Mr. Nabb began "reading the law" with his father-in-law, and became one of the last people in Maryland to be admitted to the bar without graduating from an accredited law school.
He was known for his custom suits with red linings, overcoats with lamb's wool collars, snappy fedoras in winter, and broad Panama hats in summer, and was especially recognizable at the wheel of his fire engine-red Mazda Miata sports car.
He neither smoked nor drank, and was outspoken and direct. In a 1964 interview in the Sun Magazine, he stated his philosophy: "Maybe it's my background as an Eastern Shoreman. I operate on the principle of expecting something for something."
He took great pride in his Shore heritage, said a 1999 article in Salisbury's Daily Times. "Every part of his life smacks of old-time Eastern Shore ways -- he's a one-of-a-kind character even by Shore standards," it said. "And he loves being an individual in a cookie-cutter world."
He was enthralled with the lore and history of the Shore. "Let's face it," Mr. Nabb said when he endowed Salisbury University's Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture with a $500,000 gift in 1999. "This Chesapeake Bay Region is where the United States began."
"He prided himself on being a stubborn Eastern Shoreman and one of our region's most generous philanthropists. He cared deeply about education and Delmarva history and culture," said Salisbury's president, Janet Dudley-Eshbach.
Mr. Nabb was president of the Nathan Foundation for 25 years, directing the awarding of $600,000 in scholarships for Dorchester County students to attend Salisbury University. "For every person you educate, you've sown the seeds for five more to be educated," Mr. Nabb said in a 1999 university interview.
Mr. Nabb lived close to the water all of his life. He began sailing as a child and moved up to racing powerboats on the Choptank River during the late 1940s. He was elected to the Marine Racing Hall of Fame in 1947.
Whether he was "bullfrogging" in ponds and lakes in search of the bullfrogs whose tender legs he enjoyed fried or flying his Air Coup plane, an interest that began in 1939, life for Mr. Nabb was seldom without adventure.
In 1968, he began flying boughs of holly that he cut on a cousin's farm to residents of Tangier Island, Va., a small, treeless, marshy island in the Chesapeake Bay. He made his last flight in 1997.
Through the years, Mr. Nabb persuaded other pilots to join him, and now more than 30 planes take off each December from Dorchester County Airport for the 40-mile run to deliver the holly used by islanders to decorate their churches and homes.
Mr. Nabb's wife died in 1981. The next year he married Linda Kleinswatcher, who survives him.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Grace United Methodist Church in Cambridge, where Mr. Nabb was a member.
Other survivors include three sons, Edward H. Nabb Jr., Andrew W. Nabb and Ian N. Nabb, all of Cambridge; a daughter, Winifred N. Sewell of Annapolis; and a granddaughter.