It all started in a sea town in Britain for Gavin Braithwaite, where he grew up, nurtured a firm belief in helping others, and earned his veterinary degree. After college, this excitable, gregarious man came to America in the 1970s to pursue a professional career in Wilmington, where he developed chemicals to prevent fleas, ticks and other troublesome pests for pets.
But after a full career, he was tired of the rat race, he said, and ready for something new.
Braithwaite continues to love animals, but concentrates on helping other causes that he believes in.
He left Wilmington and now his sails are full force in Lewes, speeding him towards a more carefree, more meaningful life. Braithwaite is thin with brown hair and looks entirely too young for retirement, but embraces his lifestyle change.
“I ceremoniously threw away my watch,” he said, as he causally asked for the time. “And by the way, I don’t have a cell phone either,” he taunted, daring the world to hold him to a level of timeliness he rejects, although he is always dashing from work to meetings. He asks someone else the time, or it doesn’t matter, he said.
Tonight he doesn’t want to miss out on judging a pet photo contest. In an aside he also mentions a favorite photo of one of his two Jack Russell terriers, in which the attention-loving dog wears his new Christmas bowtie. But back to the lack of a watch.
“It was part of the rebellion to get rid of the clock around my wrist and the ball and chain around my ankle,” Braithwaite said. After bailing from the corporate world in 1992 by moving to Lewes from Wilmington, where for 17 years he clocked in at a chemical company, Braithwaite focused instead on helping others and being active in the community.
“I have to live with one foot in the water because I was born with one foot in the water,” Braithwaite said. His toes started in Cornwall, England, which is also on a peninsula.
“Every month the high tide came up to my mother’s dining room floor,” he said laughing, “We had to roll up the carpet.”
Lewes was a natural destination, he said, when he decided it was time to do something different.
“My wife, Lou, came to the same decision at the same time I did,” he said. So the couple looked up and down the East Coast to find the perfect place.
They landed in Lewes and opened their stores, Puzzles, The Stepping Stone and the Union Jack, the latter of which is now Lewes Gourmet.
But his stores aren’t all there is to life. Braithwaite and his wife are involved in many local organizations because they “like to try to make the world a bit better place,” he said.
“The real measure of a person is not what they do for themselves, but for others. And it’s fun,” Braithwaite said, at the same time assuring he is no saint.
He and his wife are founders of Coastal Concerts, an organization that brings classical musicians to town for concerts. “It’s very near and dear to my heart,” he said.
The program also has a scholarship program, one of the highlights in Braithwaite’s opinion. The program awards students money to further music studies at the university level, and sponsors education outreach in schools.
“I remember when I was high school age being given the opportunity to listen to spectacular classic musicians and its an experience that has stayed with me,” Braithwaite said. Those memories motivated him to waive admission fees for everyone under the age of 18 to go to concerts, he said.
His family and British ties are still clearly an influence. His brother, a physician, and mother, a nurse, believed in the British National Health Service that is responsible for 100 percent insurance coverage of British citizens.
Carrying on the tradition, he is a member of the Delaware Small Business Health Care Coalition and believes strongly in health insurance reform in America.
“We’re plugging away at trying to fix the system to get more reliable insurance,” he said, in an animated discussion on what he considers problems.
“Forty-seven million people have no health insurance in this country,” he said, “we need cradle-to-grave coverage where everybody is paying according to means and there is a continuity of care.”
While he tries to change things in the community, Braithwaite also embraces the past, evident in his recollections from boyhood, which crop up like mushrooms after a rain in his conversations—suddenly they are there, and just as quickly, he moves on to a new topic, another one of his causes.
He is the chair of the Lewes Historical Society Endowment Committee for the second year, and plans to continue. “When we started out people weren’t aware there was an endowment. We want to heighten people’s awareness that they can leave a remembrance in their estate planning,” he said.
Braithwaite is a storyteller, full of colorful anecdotes than enliven the visits of customers as they stop in his Second Street store on a cold, gray January afternoon. He helps people figure out the puzzles on display and describes when and how he figured out how to complete them.
He adores owning businesses that people shop at for enjoyment. “Everybody has fun,” he said,” I have a postcard from when I was 5 or 6 years old that I wrote my parents from pony camp. It says ‘Thanks for the puzel mom and dad.’ I’ve always loved puzzles.”
He also enjoys being a fixture in downtown Lewes. “It’s the same people this time of year. You walk down the street and know most of the people,” he said of his adoration for the community.
Braithwaite did not move here temporarily; he intends to stay here and make a few ripples in the coastal town.
“I am going to die here,” he said.
But before Braithwaite puts his ship out to sea, he hopes to make some positive changes in the world, and especially in his hometown of choice, Lewes.
