Clams are serious business in East Hampton. Whether you like digging clams or eating them, there is an event for you. Over the years these have included a largest clam contest (which continues to this day), clam chowder cook-offs, and clam shucking contests. While there hasn’t been a clam shucking contest in this area for a few years, the battle to be the fastest shucker was once a hotly contested one.
This still, from an LTV archive video, shows 1989’s competitors locked in a tight race for the title. The favorites that year were Larry (The Clam) McLane and Stuart Heath, a relative newcomer to the scene. Heath, an employee of Gosman’s Dock restaurant in Montauk and a noted fisherman, managed to unseat McLane in the summer of 1988, and in 1989 McLane hoped to reclaim his crown.
Despite his many supporters in the crowd, it was not to be. Heath overtook McLane and even managed to shave nine seconds off his previous record, opening 100 quahog clams in 7 minutes and 4 seconds.
One could say that this was in keeping with Heath’s father’s legacy as a well-known sportfisherman and general lover of seafood — Percy Leroy Heath (1923-2005), who was also a jazz legend. So great was Percy Heath’s love of fishing that a memorial to his surfcasting accomplishments was erected at Turtle Cove in Montauk.
Stuart didn’t take up the stand-up bass as his father had, but he certainly followed in his footsteps as a fisherman, going on to place in several fishing competitions and becoming a commercial fisherman and a member of the East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association. He was known to be frequently quoted in local newspapers about the ever-changing scallop harvest.
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Julia Tyson is a librarian and archivist in the Long Island Collection.
