Wes Barbour calls out hurricane names like he’s listing relatives: Bertha. Fran. Bonnie. Floyd. Florence. Ian.

Stormy weather is a fact of life on the coast, but the Barbour family makes it standard practice not to evacuate. Instead, they keep their store, Island True Value Tackle & Hardware, open as long as possible, even as the winds kick up and the rains arrive, giving Carolina Beach locals a last chance for generator plugs, nails, batteries, sandbags — anything they’ll need to shelter in place.

When the store does shut down, Wes and his wife, Griffin, make the one-mile drive to their house, built of brick and concrete blocks and topped with a metal roof. They wait. Once the weather clears, they head back to the store, crank up a generator, and reopen. Soon, the beach residents who have ridden out the hurricane show up for tarps, brooms, buckets, and cleaning supplies.

Island True Value Tackle & Hardware sells clothing, fishing gear, and most anything a beach vacationer could need — as well as the tools to help locals withstand storms and rebuild after hurricanes. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

“We just try to be there for the community as long as we can be,” Griffin says. “We’re usually the last people to close before a storm and the first people to open after a storm.”

Following Hurricane Florence’s devastating winds and floods in September 2018, the store stayed closed for most of a week before reopening on limited power.

“The store runs on a backup generator that can only power half the lights,” Griffin says. “But we were there for anything that anybody needed.”

Wes calls the Florence experience “a blur — it lasted way longer than we really anticipated.” He’s proud that the store soon got back to business to help with the recovery.

“We really hunkered down, and we were here,” he says. “Those times bring the community together. Every year, we’ll get the threat of a tropical storm, and I tell my guys, ‘Now’s our time. This is a fire drill. We’re going to prep for a major hurricane coming.’”

The Barbours — (from left) Wanda and Dennis, along with their son, Wes, and daughter-in-law, Griffin — make all major decisions about the business together, as a family. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

Island Tackle & Hardware has been a true family business since the Barbours bought it 25 years ago. In 2000, Wes’s parents, Dennis and Wanda, sat him down for a series of family talks. They were thinking ahead, considering what to do after Dennis’s eventual retirement from his management career. They showed Wes a business plan and pictures of a local hardware store that also sold fishing gear. A friend had opened the place in 1985, and now they had a chance to buy it.

“We haven’t committed to it yet,” Dennis said. “We want to know what you think.”

Wes was 14 years old. He loved fishing.

“Awesome,” he said. “Fishing stuff — that would be cool.”

So the vote was unanimous, and the Barbours went for it. Wanda left her job as an elementary school teacher’s assistant to work at the store, and for five years until retirement, Dennis put in hours outside of his full-time job and his duties as mayor of Carolina Beach.

Mementos around the stairwell tell stories of boat captains, fishermen, and hurricanes that have shaped Carolina Beach. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

Today, the Barbours are still selling fishing stuff — and plenty of other stuff — at Island Tackle & Hardware. Their store has become an institution in Carolina Beach, a decades-old, family-run business on the main drag, Lake Park Boulevard. As his parents’ first hire, Wes spent his spare time working there through high school and during summers in college. Now 39, he and Griffin, 35, have taken over the operation and management as the next generation to run the business.

“The idea,” Wes says, “was to have a place where people really didn’t have to leave the island — a general store to encompass anything you could need.”

• • •

Wes emerges from the store’s warehouse, where, among his countless duties at work, he repairs trolling motors. He wears a black cap carrying the Island Tackle & Hardware logo: the company’s initials surrounding a hammer crossed over a rod and reel. He moves through the store with the familiar ease of a young man who’s covered these aisles for more than half his life.

The short walk from the retail floor to the business office takes him past shelves of mosquito repellent and paint cans, chisels and tape measures, drink coolers, swimming goggles, and a board game called Carolina Beach-opoly. A display features books on North Carolina shipwrecks and legends of the Cape Fear coast. Outside, customers pull into the parking lot to load up on propane, ice, mulch, and rock salt.

Much of it — the thousands of products, from birdseed to potting mix to screwdrivers to wiffle balls — is here because customers asked for it.

“We had a clipboard,” Dennis says of the early days. “If somebody asked for an item we didn’t have, we wrote it down. If you had two or three requests for the same item, then that kind of sparked us — maybe we need to put it in the inventory as a full-time stock item.”

The original store had just two aisles of fishing gear, but Dennis and Wes, both certified charter-boat captains, decided they needed much more. In 2008, the Barbours doubled the size of the store to 12,000 square feet and dedicated nearly half the space to fishing. Customers even have a choice of two front doors: one for the hardware side, the other for fishing.

A chalkboard lists the day’s high and low temperatures, wind speed and direction, tide times, and sea swells. The store’s employees regularly answer long-distance calls from people asking the same question: “What’s the weather doing down there?” Even though the callers, wherever they are, have weather apps and constant forecast updates, they’d rather hear about the conditions on Pleasure Island from someone who’s actually on the island.

Upstairs, a record-setting blue marlin arcs over the dressing rooms. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

“They want to get the sub-climate of what’s going on here and what fish are biting,” Wes says. “We’ve always tried to be the 411 of Carolina Beach, whether it be weather, tide, or events going on in the community. They call about anything and everything.”

The store sells rods and reels, nets, live bait, lures, fishing charts, rope ladders, and anything else someone might need to angle for the catch of the day. The walls pay tribute to the deep fishing tradition in Carolina Beach: photos of proud crews with their catch, award plaques from fishing contests, and giant billfish caught during marlin tournaments. Upstairs, clothing manager Teresa Ivey proudly shows off the store’s (very) big attraction — a 15-foot, 8-inch, 1,228-pound blue marlin that arcs over the dressing rooms.

• • •

Wanda and Dennis have fully retired now, though Dennis still charters his boat for fishing trips. They’ve turned over Island Tackle & Hardware to Wes and Griffin, who sometimes work 60-hour weeks as they manage 17 employees during the store’s 15 hours of daily operations.

“They truly seem to love it,” Wanda says. “They work together on everything, and that’s what it takes. It’s just like building a strong marriage, a strong family. They put that into the business. They found a way, just like Dennis and I did.”

Dennis says Wes and Griffin understand the next wave of customers, a younger generation. And he says Griffin, who has a degree in psychology and didn’t grow up in the hardware business, has been a quick study. “She’s never rebuilt a toilet,” he says, “but she could probably tell you how.”

Wes sees the store as an opportunity, and a commitment, to serve the place where he grew up. “That’s really our drive,” he explains. “I feel an obligation to be here when the people need us. That’s the ultimate goal: to leave your lasting legacy on the community. I don’t see our store going anywhere anytime. So hopefully we’ll be a lasting legacy for generations to come.”

Island True Value Tackle & Hardware
801 North Lake Park Boulevard
Carolina Beach, NC 28428
(910) 458-3049
islandtruevalue.com