When the United States was in its infancy, the democracy had Betsy Ross. Barely 3 years old, the Maritime Republic of Eastport has its own flag designer— Cindy Fletcher-Holden. She is the woman
who designed the now famous “We Like It This Way” yellow and black MRE banner. She is also the artist who painted the maritime mural on Fourth Street in Eastport.

When Cindy was born in 1961, a nurse at Anne Arundel Hospital noted her gleaming red hair. She exclaimed, “It reminds me of burning cinders in a fireplace.” Her parents, enamored by the
observation, named her Cindy.

Early family artistic influences guided Cindy to become a painter of fine art. Her grandfather, an immigrant from Gernany, was hired as the decorator by the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.
She recalls, “At that time, he was employed not only to choose the fabrics and colors for the interior of the hotel but he also primed and painted the walls. He was a gifted artist. The faux finish work and gold-leaf adornment he painted are still there.”

Even as a child Cindy wanted to be an artist—perhaps like her grandfather. Her love of art is surpassed only by her desire to be near the water. While in school at Severna Park High, she purchased a “not so new” wooden sailboat. The boat became her space away from home, and she sailed it along the waterways of the Severn River. After graduation from high school she enrolled at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

“I sailed my boat to the Baltimore Inner Harbor and lived aboard while attending classes at the Institute. It was my home for the next four years.
After college Cindy decided to explore the Intercoastal Waterway on her boat and travel to the southern waters of Florida. She sailed as far as Beaufort, N. C., and ran out of money. It did not take long for her to find work with a local sign painter. Under his direction, she learned the skill of freehand sign painting. Her training in art school also gave her the tools to master
the technique of lettering names on the transoms of boats. She stayed in Beaufort for two years before deciding to sail back to Annapolis.

On her return, she secured a job with NiermannWeeks, a local design and furniture fabricating business. Her two-year tenure there gave Cindy the confidence and working art skills to start a
business of her own—Fletcher Art Studio. In 1987, a local magazine published an article about Cindy and her business took off.

I started getting calls from people who read about my work. My business became a seven- day-a-week enterprise.” This fledgling sign painter soon became known as the artist from Eastport who could letter upside down. She literally hangs over the rail while she paints a boat transom rather than the conventional way of standing in a dinghy in the water.

During the 1987 U. S. Sailboat Show, she started dating Robert Holden, a local sail maker. Cindy vividly remembers their first date: “We knew each other casually, and one day we passed each other on the Eastport bridge. He invited me to join him for a drink and some music at the Wharf, a then-popular Eastport bar. Six months later we were married.”

They lived on Cindy’s boat for a while, but decided more room was needed so they bought a bigger sailboat—a 36-foot Northstar.

“We could live in a house, but only if it’s a shack on the beach because we are so water
oriented.” Eastport has neither so their home is now berthed at Muller’s Marine at the foot of Third Street at Back Creek in Eastport. Cindy’s studio is located a few steps away in one of the buildings at Muller’s.

When Cindy is not painting “to pay the bills,” she spends her time painting large canvases. Her style is modern, using traditional images of people, animals or just plain objects that have a lot of color and good visual appearance.

The dream of most fine artists is to have their work featured in a New York City gallery. Cindy is no exception. She explained, however, that artists who “paint for art’s sake” either have to be independently wealthy or be sponsored by a patron. Many of the great masters were poor but had patrons who supported them in their artwork.

This past year one of Cindy’s works—a painting of a boat engine—caught the eye of Robert Cone, an
art collector who lives in New York. The oil painting hangs on a wall at Bay Shore Marine, a maritime business in Eastport. Cone contacted Cindy and invited her to bring some of her artwork to his home in Piermont, N. Y.

“I didn’t know what to expect so I asked some friends to come along. We decided to make a weekend trip out of it.”

When they arrived at the Cone residence on the Hudson River with a van full of artwork, she was met with a surprise. The Cones had organized a party, and Cindy was the guest of honor. They invited many of their friends who had connections with art galleries in New York City. Several letters of introduction later, Cindy received an invitation to display her paintings at the Lindenburg Gallery in the Chelsea section of Manhattan—the hip, trendy district of the Lower West Side art world. Several of her paintings will be part of a group show that opens in the spring.

For exercise, Cindy likes to run. She is usually seen every morning running the streets of Eastport or on the Naval Academy yard. She has run several marathons including the New York City and Marine Corps races. Her windsurfing skills are at an expert level, but that’s for fun. As a birthday gift a few years ago, she received an ice skating lesson from a friend. She enjoyed it so much she took another and then another. Balance comes easy to Cindy, but ice skating presents different obstacles.

“It took me a long time to learn how to skate backwards—on one leg,” she said. Her husband joined her in this new sport of choice. For the past several months, they frequently get away to hone their skills at the Naval Academy ice skating rink. They are preparing to enter the U.S. Adult National Skating Competition at Lake Placid, N.Y., in April.

Three years ago while Cindy was ice-skating at Quiet Waters Park, Jeff Holland approached her. He asked, “Have you heard Eastport is going to secede?” She replied, “No, but I like the idea.”

Holland explained that the Eastport bridge was going to be closed for repairs for six weeks by the State Highway Administration. A group of “revolutionaries” was being formed in East- port to promote the businesses that would be affected by the closure. That brief conversation was the beginning of Cindy’s involvement with the Maritime Republic of Eastport. Since then, she has not only designed the graphics for the MRE “national flag" but also sketched the graphics for every T-shirt, hat, coffee mug, etc. that the republic has produced. The paraphernalia has been sold to raise money for charity.


Her artistic skills and creativity came full circle recently with the completion of the Fourth
Street maritime mural in Eastport. “The Great Wall of Eastport”—90 feet long and 17 feet high—is part of the Hopkins Furniture warehouse building at Fourth Street and Chesapeake Avenue. Donations for the mural project came from private individuals as well as the MRE, the Eastport Civic Association and the Eastport Business Association. Cindy single-handedly painted the mural over a two-month period. The mural depicts the more than two- century-old maritime history of Eastport with a panoramic view depicting boats that were designed or built in Eastport. Other vessels portrayed in the mural characterize Eastport’s maritime heritage through work and
recreation. A limited edition, signed print of the mural is also available.

Cindy’s father, Darryl Fletcher, passed away last year after a long illness. He is portrayed in the mural standing on the stem of one of the boats, fishing. Said Cindy, “I wanted to include him in the mural and what better way than being on the water, a place he dearly loved.”

Has she achieved all of her goals? “With my artwork, I think so,” she said. But added, “My husband and I want to take a long cruise on our boat—perhaps for a year or more. We want to experience some other parts of the world and bring those experiences back to our home in Eastport.”

In part, the neighborhood spirit that is unique to Eastport would not have happened without Cindy Fletcher-Holden. Cindy’s volunteer efforts expressed through her artwork has everyone in Eastport saying: “We Like It This Way.”