By Gail M. Martin
Roger Francis Winiarski learned to love sailing at an early age. His parents relocated to Tiverton, RI from Fall River, MA in 1953, a couple years before the Tiverton Yacht Club moved into its new building a few steps from his parents’ house. He could probably see the colorful Candy Class sailboats sailing around the Tiverton Basin from his yard! He learned to sail by going with other kids after his first initial sail with the Lent brothers, whose family-owned Wintergreen. By his early teens, he had earned enough to pay the $50 to buy Lollypop from a family who had not used it in years. It sat in a side yard waiting for someone to bring it back to its full glory.
It just so happens, it was the first Candy boat made by designer T. Elton Wood in 1921, so it was about 40 years old. Roger had it rebuilt and raced it when he could, that time being interrupted by service in the U.S. Navy and a few active duty deployments. By the time he was able to spend summers racing he was probably older than the average Candy class skipper, but there have been several adults who have raced alongside people years younger.
Retirement from active duty required a full-time job so he worked as a sales engineer for several of the larger copper and brass companies. His love of sailing continued, and he decided to move up from the Candy Class to the famed Herreshoff ‘S’ class, buying the seventeenth boat (completed in 1930), but never giving up the Candy as it was still fun to sail, and he had hopes his young son would one day ‘grow into it.’
Around 1985, Roger had trouble finding fittings for his Herreshoff – a lot of trouble. When offered a plastic fitting, he declined and decided to do something about it. He figured with his knowledge of metallurgy and engineering, he could make his own. When other skippers noticed his new fittings, they wanted to know where he got them. And then when they found out, ‘could he make them for them?’ Thus was born his new business, Bristol Bronze, not actually located in Bristol but Tiverton. He started making the fittings part-time in his basement before moving to a full-time undertaking at a business location and growing into a worldwide mail-order business before the internet even existed. He had found a niche that needed to be filled, and he filled it very successfully.
Roger passed away last February but not before allowing a private buyer to purchase Lollypop in the hopes of getting it into the Mystic Seaport Museum. Now that purchaser, Mr. Charles Flanagan, has passed ownership over to Mystic and it has been chosen as one of the Seaport’s holdings to be displayed in the new Wells Exhibition Hall, possibly by by this fall. By storing it upside down in his garage after its sailing years were over, Roger managed to preserve Lollypop for posterity. Now his beloved ‘S’ boat needs a new family/owner who will love it as much as Roger did and hopefully restore it and bring its sailing days to life again. And his successful business also needs a new owner to breathe life into it. His son Seth has all of the stock consisting of molds and finished product in a rented storage location. If there is an interested buyer for either of those you can reach Seth Winiarski at (401) 297-9625. Assure the world that Roger’s legacy as sailor, entrepreneur and historic preservationist lives on! ■
