When Walter I. Bostwick, founder and president of First Resort Painting, realized in order to keep his dozens of workers employed as COVID-19 began to ravage the local economy – halting some major construction projects – the first thing he did was to apply for the federal Payroll Protection Plan. The second thing he did was to look for community service opportunities.
“I wanted to keep my men and women working while we looked for enough paying work to keep everyone employed,” he said. “That was most important.”
“I have worked with some of these people for 20 years,” Bostwick said. “This company is built by the people in the field doing the work.”
The first big community job to be completed was for the Enid Baa Library building in downtown Charlotte Amalie. Bostwick said, “If it wasn’t for libraries, I would never have gotten to where I am today.”
It was not the first time First Resort Painting had painted the historic structure, which was built in the late 1700s and reconstructed in 1937 after it fell into dangerous disrepair. First Resort won the bid and painted the building with Custom Builders under contract for the U.S. Virgin Islands government in 2008.
The Enid Baa project was in partnership with the Department of Planning and Natural Resources, which oversees the territory’s library system. “Arlene L. Pinney-Benjamin of the Division of Libraries and Jean Pierre Oriol, Commissioner of DPNR, were excited about the upgrade to the Enid M. Baa,” Bostwick said, “But the guy who really chipped in was Vincent Smith, the head of maintenance.
“Mr. Smith was there for us on-site almost every day, even before 7 a.m. if we needed to start early. It would have been twice as hard without his help.”
Bostwick, who came to St. Thomas when he was 17 years old, founded First Resort Painting in 2006.
Bostwick is confident that the local economy will pick up soon enough. “There is much rebuilding to be done and the recovery money is in place from the 2017 hurricane devastation to do it.
The community has responded to the bright, newly-painted building re-constructed in the mid-to-late 1930s with a total of 785 “thumbs up” and counting on a St. Thomas-centric Facebook page.
It is a testament to the power of community service.
Couple dozen thumbs up, Wally.