How the Bone Ami retreat came to have 28 windows 

My father, Jack Pittard Senior was a consummate, professional, big mouth, bass fisherman. His skills in that game were exceeded by no one.

The first fishing trip I went on with my dad I was four years old. I have been passionate about Fishing ever since.

I began my angling career with a cane pole, a hook, a worm, and a cork: but now, after all these years, I have progressed to angling highest calling: walking the flats of the Bahamas with a fly rod in pursuit of of Bone Fish!

Now, about the retreat I designed and built at Casuarina point in the Bahamas. 

I was well into my career in a technology business when in 1989 I purchased my first airplane. It was assess the 210, a wonderful workhorse of an aircraft.

By 1990 I had learned all of the details for the journey from Atlanta, Georgia

To Marsh Harbour Abaco.

I found Casuarina  Point and in 1993 I bought two adjoining lots on the beach.

I've been fishing in the island for years, and I developed my own fantasy idea of what a retreat should look like in the Bahamas. it needed to be close to the water with a lot of light, great visibility, and with a great panoramic view.

My final design was for a Delta shape construction, with a "hip" roof and exposed beams.

But I was having trouble trying to decide what kind of windows should go in this new retreat.

I researched everything from aluminum windows to Pella wood windows, and nothing seem to be perfect for this task, and most of them were extremely expensive!

I had an old friend named Earl McMillan, who was a builder. He was an old school builder who had followed in his father’s footsteps and built great houses. He invited me down to his pre-Civil War home in Madison Georgia on 275 acres with a road named McMillan. It was one of the few houses that wasn't burned by General Sherman during the Civil War in his March to the sea.

Earl had a warehouse with a woodworking shop. He was a real curmudgeon, and he collected everything from hubcaps old, broken glass, string rope. You name it Earl collected it. As we went through the shop, I spied this piece of wood under his workbench, and I asked Earl to pull it out! It turned out to be a wooden sash about 55 inches wide and about 72 inches long. It was made of pine and was very old. It had no glass mounted in it. It appeared almost new! When I ask Earl where he got it, he responded, Willingham Wrecking Company in Macon, Georgia. I got the phone number from Earl, and on Monday. I called Willingham. “ Mr. Willingham, my friend is Earl McMillan, and he told me he bought a window from you several weeks ago, and I wanna know if you've got any left?”

His response was, “I don't know, but I will get Leroy to check. Call me back.”

When I return the call, Mr. McMillan told me he had 38 windows left. I responded, “ Earl told me he paid $10 for his window”. Willingham said, “ I'll take $12 apiece for all of them! He also told me that these windows were made of Heart Pine and  had mortise joints. They were creosote and were 100 years old, but had never been used.

I was ecstatic! For less than $500. I got 38 windows and by the end of the week they were sitting in my warehouse in Atlanta, Georgia.

Shortly there after, I called my old architect friend Guy Schneider, and I said to guy, I have found the perfect windows for the retreat. I sent him all of the sizes of the windows and instructed Mr. Schneider to put as many windows into the construction of our retreat that he could possibly do.

And so Bone Ami has 28 windows, and virtually no walls! I designed a special stainless steel hinge and latch for these windows, package them up and ship them off to Abaco to the construction site at Casuarina Point.

So in 1994 the most unusual building ever constructed in the Bahamas was completed. We called it, Bone Ami retreat and it features those 28 ancient pine windows. I think it is a masterpiece!