Ronnie Thomas, a long-distance trucker who has hauled Guinea seafood to every corner of the nation, has been honored by selection as the Guinea Jubilee Grand Marshal for 2018.

Guinea Heritage Association board member Hamilton Williams introduced Thomas to an overflow crowd on Sunday at Guinea Heritage Day. This annual celebration of Guinea’s history, a popular pre-festival event, was held at the Abingdon Ruritan Centre, Bena.

The Guinea Jubilee will be held Sept. 28 and 29 on the Ruritan club’s grounds.

Williams described Thomas as a Guinea native who, after finishing at Gloucester High School and working briefly at the Naval Weapons Station in Yorktown, began in 1969 working as a loader on a Guinea seafood company dock. A year later he became a truck driver, who for 10 years drove clams from Gloucester to Miami and back, with many points in between, in his big rig. He moved on in 1981 to a Hampton seafood company, hauling seafood to Denver and points west. Eleven years ...