Sewall Cox joins St. Michaels Community Center 

Sewall Cox of St. Michaels, Maryland has joined the St. Michaels Community Center as a part-time bookkeeper. 

In this new role, Cox is responsible for the day-to-day financial transactions of SMCC and the nonprofit’s Treasure Cove Thrift Shop. Her duties include documenting financial transaction details and monitoring the transactions, preparing and filing financial documents, processing accounts payable and accounts receivable, processing payroll and tracking payroll data, and assisting with tax payments and returns.

Cox is a Talbot County native, who spent her childhood sailing on the Tred Avon River and later as crew on the Chesapeake Bay sailing log canoe Island Blossom. She moved away to Annapolis, and then Colorado to be in the mountains for 10 years before returning to the Eastern Shore in 2019. 

“I am very excited to work with good people doing amazing things for the community that I call home,” says Cox, who recalls visiting her late mother Julie Cox, when her office with the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum was at SMCC’s building on Railroad Avenue, now under renovation. 

“It’s a serendipitous move,” she says, “I can’t wait until we get into the renovated building this winter.” 

Cox had served in the restaurant industry for nearly 25 years. After the COVID-19 pandemic, she decided to change gears and started working as a contractor in the financial department of a New England-based company, handling accounts receivable and collections. Now, she works with other local businesses in St. Michaels along with SMCC. 

“Sewall is a great addition to the St. Michaels Community Center’s team,” said SMCC Executive Director Patrick Rofe. “Her bookkeeping and local knowledge will help us further our mission of helping our neighbors in need while preparing our organization for growth in the number of people we will serve in our renovated building.”

Rofe says the addition of Cox on the team also enables SMCC Operations Manager Stephanie Pritchard to focus more on operations, which will be especially important as SMCC relocates its Community Café and Pantry and children and adult programs to its renovated spaces in early 2024. 

SMCC’s current renovations will provide state-of-the-art spaces for more children and adult programs including a new culinary and hospitality workforce training program. The renovated Community Center will provide several classrooms and a large common area for community gatherings, complete with audio-visual technology for presentations and screenings. 

The renovations also will house a modern, well-equipped commercial kitchen, where SMCC will train people for jobs in restaurants and hotels, and from which the Center can continue to serve and deliver prepared meals as well as tens of thousands of bags of groceries to those in need.

“Our work serves people in need from the Oak Creek Bridge down to Tilghman Island, with more than 2,200 meals provided each week,” said Rofe. “Sewall’s help in bookkeeping will help strengthen our organization and ability to meet the needs of our neighbors.”Rofe says the Community Center serves the community at large with programs and activities for all ages, and that its food distribution services help provide for the area’s working poor, homebound and other senior citizens, those facing disabilities, and families in emergencies.

Donations to the St. Michaels Community Center’s annual fund and proceeds from its Treasure Cove Thrift Shop, located on Railroad Ave. in St. Michaels, help provide essential human services, programs, and community events for people in St. Michaels and from throughout Maryland’s Bay Hundred area, with more at www.stmichaelscc.org. More about SMCC’s building renovations and new programming is at www.stmichaelscc.org/future.