“He knows now, Mom will have told him,” said David Blankenship.
Tuesday was filled with phone calls and meetings for David as he prepared to bury a father he shared with the world.
A father who spent more than half his 95 years searching for a legendary treasure that may or may not be be buried on a small Nova Scotia island.
Without having found it, Daniel Blankenship will join his partner in life and the search, Jane Blankenship, at the Western Shore Cemetery where he buried her in 2011. Daniel died on Sunday.
“I don’t think it haunted him not having found it,” said David.
“When mom died, that took the heart out of dad.”
Though made famous in recent years by the History Channel’s reality show The Curse of Oak Island, Daniel Blankenship’s life was about more than hunting treasure.
Born in Ohio, Blankenship joined the United States army and fought through Europe in the Second World War. He would spend the rest of his life not talking much about what he saw there, other than that in Belgium two friends, one on either side of him, were killed.
“He’d had what they call PTSD, though they didn’t know about it then,” said David.
But he came home, met Jane at a dance in New York state, had three children and got into the construction industry.
An enduring effect, potentially from whatever he saw over in Europe, was that he wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone.
And that came in handy when he moved the family to Miami during the 1950s. It was a city under racial and economic stress where the mafia sought control of the construction industry.
Family legend has it that one night Daniel took Jane out dancing to a country and western nightclub, where Daniel kept asking staff to be allowed on stage to sing.
“The barmaid pulled a gun on him and said, ‘You’re not getting up there,’” said David.
“Miami was a rough place then.”
“There were three ways of doing things. There was the right way, the wrong way and dad’s way. Dad’s way was always the hardest.”
- David Blankenship
He never made it as a musician, but he sang and danced with Jane throughout their long lives together.
Daniel did well as a general contractor and had just finished building an 80-bed hospital in 1965 when he handed Jane a Reader’s Digest article detailing two centuries of efforts by various obsessed men to find treasure on a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia.
“One legend makes the pit the hiding place for the plunder of Captain Kidd, who was hanged for piracy in 1701,” reads the article penned by David MacDonald.
“Other theories favor the booty of Blackbeard and Henry Morgan, both notorious buccaneers; or Inca treasure stolen by Spaniards; or the French crown jewels that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were said to be carrying when they attempted to flee during the French Revolution; or Shakespeare’s missing manuscripts.”
While no treasure has ever been found, multiple treasures had been lost — the article estimated $1.5 million had already been spent on the search.
Jane read the article and said, “So.”
So Daniel and David then drove to Nova Scotia for summer vacation while she and their daughter went to the 1965 World’s Fair in New York.
Daniel, the contractor, figured he could solve the problem of keeping out water that had spoiled previous treasure hunter’s attempts to dig down and find the legendary treasure.
They visited Oak Island, spoke with Robert Restall — who was the latest person leading the search — and met up with Jane in New York.
It was a tragedy that would give Daniel his shot at joining the long list of men enthralled by the treasure.
Robert Restall, his son and two others died from gas poisoning in an eight-metre-deep hole they had dug. The two survivors, who managed to reach the surface before being overcome, would later theorize it could have been fumes from the gasoline powered pump they were running immediately above the hole.
That’s how Daniel Blankenship ended up singing Englebert Humperdink’s Release Me in Raymond Eisnor’s living room.
“Dan was country-western all the way,” said Eisnor on Tuesday.
Dan was renting one of the five rooms in the motel that Eisnor’s mother ran.
Raymond was 26 then and he met the man who would become a lifelong friend.
Together he and Dan, their wives Betty and Jane, would grow up and grow old, raise families together and plot efforts to improve the lot of their community.
On fair Sundays, they’d picnic on Oak Island.
On Saturday nights they went to local dances where Jane and Dan would waltz around the hall.
Dan and 14 locals founded the Western Shore and Area Improvement Association, seeking to develop their community. Jane helped run a fundraising bingo.
All the while, Dan and David dug for treasure.
Jane was quoted in a 1976 article about Oak Island saying she didn’t know whether she preferred worrying about her son and husband while watching them dig, or worrying about them while they were out of sight.
A year earlier, while hanging in a cage 43 metres down a half-a-metre diameter hole, Daniel started hollering to David above ground to haul him up.
The steel casing was collapsing above him.
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David turned on the winch and Daniel was yanked to the surface in 17 seconds, just quick enough to look down and watch the entire shaft cave in below him.
They then began digging with a jack hammer, picks and shovels a 2.4-metre diameter hole that was 54 metres deep.
“We found dirt and rocks and mud,” said David.
“There were three ways of doing things. There was the right way, the wrong way and dad’s way. Dad’s way was always the hardest.”
After Jane’s death in 2011, Daniel slowed down.
He’d find a spot of shade at the campground Eisnor runs with his son, David Eisnor, and talk to campers.
“He loved people,” said Eisnor.
“He was like a celebrity and people loved him.”
Now brothers Marty and Rick Lagina have become the face of the search.
And the legends of what the treasure may consist of have been added to the History Channel show.
For his part, David doesn’t share the obsession.
“I’ll break the chain,” said David.
“I can walk away from it. I was just part of it for my dad.”
To which his wife, Garnette, added, “You’d better, because if you don’t break it, I’ll get the hammer out.”
But they’ll both stay on the island.
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