As families gathered to celebrate Christmas in the 1970s, Cecil County Police Officers continued their never-ending job, patrolling the roads and answering calls while others shared gifts, good company, and delicious meals. Although the demands placed on law enforcement can be high on holidays with the officers juggling calls, a glance at the police blotter reveals that sometimes there is a lighter side.
Santa Speeding Across Cecil County
In the early 1970s, one patrol sergeant, Steve Landbeck, orchestrated a little holiday tradition for several years. As people settled in with their families on Christmas Eve, things generally quieted down for first responders. But an urgent flash would break the silence of the night on the police radio. A Maryland State Trooper out of the North East Barrack was in a high-speed chase.
As the drama unfolded, the pursuit continuing up Route 40, a description was put out for other units rushing into position to back up the North East car. It went something like this. It was a shiny red vehicle moving fast. Moments later came the driver’s description: a heavy-set man with a white beard in a red suit. Soon, something would follow about hearing sleigh bells and ho-ho, ho. The radio broadcast played out over several minutes as additional details eked out.
In time, Sargeant Landbeck advised to 10-22 (disregard). The fleeing vehicle was only the jolly old fella and his sleigh coming into Cecil for his annual visit on a busy night with lots to do. The reindeer were there, and the sleigh was loaded with gifts for boys and girls around the county, the state trooper reported reassuringly.
That became a Christmas Eve tradition for many years as Steve orchestrated his little radio play, and once the broadcast kicked off, parents had their children listen to the scanner. After the 10-22 went out on the airwaves, children across the county knew Santa was on his way. He was in the county, and they had better hurry off to bed so they could wake up early on Christmas morning for gifts from Santa.
St. Nick Makes Quick Escape in Dark Parking Lot
In the county seat, another case unfolded on a Christmas Eve watch decades ago. Elkton Police Officer Marshall Purner prowled the streets on the holiday shift when dispatch radioed early on that quiet evening that someone had broken into a vehicle at Cecil Lanes. The bowling alley was having a party for children, and while all the merriment distracted everyone, a perpetrator forced entry into a car, taking holiday gifts.
Marshall Purner retired from the Elkton Police Department in June 1989. Photo Credit: Wilmington News Journal, July 27, 1989
Upon arrival at the scene, Officer Purner started the investigation. A witness observed a suspicious person — a man in a Santa Claus outfit dashing through the dark parking lot. He was carrying stuff in some sort of hurry when he jumped into a vehicle and sped from the scene. Those details were dutifully recorded, and with that information pointing to a primary suspect, Marshall was on the trail as he put out a “be on the lookout” broadcast for the getaway car and this red-suited suspect.
With all Cecil County patrol cars on the road Christmas Eve now keeping an eye out for the fleeing vehicle occupied by old St. Nick, they soon executed a stop, pulling it and the driver over. It was a fellow officer, Patrolman Joseph Zurolo, playing Santa for a group of kids at the Bowling Alley. Having finished bringing joy to a group of Cecil County youngsters, the merriment and gift-giving taken care of, Santa dashed off to make his holiday rounds. So, he made a hasty departure from the party, rushing through the parking lot.
Of course, he had nothing to do with the incident, but it made for a unique discussion back at the police station and several laughs on a Christmas Eve long ago, the calls documented for all time in the old Cecil County Police Blotter.
Elkton Police Officer Joe Zurolo (in uniform) greets old Saint Nick. Officer Jim Long is dressed as Santa in the mid 1970s. Source: Cecil Whig photo from the Jim Cheeseman collection at the Historical Society of Cecil County
President Kennedy Assassinated — On November 22, 1963, people living in Cecil County were stunned as they heard the seemingly implausible news bulletin that an assassin’s bullet had struck down President John F. Kennedy. Just eight days earlier, many residents watched as the energetic leader came to the county to dedicate the Northeastern Expressway. After landing in a helicopter, they witnessed “the vibrant, young, energetic executive” cut the ribbon opening the Interstate and unveiling a Mason-Dixon Line Marker.
President Kennedy Dedicates the Northeastern Expressway, I-95, Source: New York Times, Nov. 15, 1963
During this brief 62-minute stay, some recalled that he moved close to the crowd to shake hands. Then before lifting off, he paused at the door of the craft and, with that familiar smile and a wave of the hand, said goodbye to the friendly crowd of over 5,000 before disappearing inside. While the copter faded into the eastern horizon, the area was “bathed in a dramatic sunset as people headed back to their cars on that chilly afternoon as he headed to public events in New York.
As traffic started zipping along the superhighway, without one traffic light halting the fast trip, the Cecil Democrat proudly noted that this was not his first visit to Cecil. But it had been the first since he was elected to the nation’s highest office. “When we consider the thousands of counties in the United States, we realize what an honor it” was for the “President to come to the county where we live,” the newspaper proudly wrote.
There was such optimism in the county as the late November morning of the 22nd dawned on the Chesapeake Bay. At 8:00 a.m. that Friday, Patrolman Jerry Secor signed on duty, noting in the police blotter that a fog blanketed the town. On his watch, things were subdued, the officer responding to two unremarkable calls, which he duly chronicled in the official record book, a source that provides a cops-eye view of activities. The policeman also escorted a DuBose Funeral Home detail, arrested a man for shoplifting, and recovered a stolen car.
The Elkton Police Blotter. At the start of the day watch as Officer Secor reports for duty on Nov. 22. 1963 – Source: Historical Society of Cecil County
President Kennedy Assassinated
But abruptly that afternoon, everything changed in the town and the nation. Officer Secor, in a careful hand, dutifully penned an entry in the official Police Blotter: “1:30 p.m. “President Kennedy shot and killed in Dallas Texas.”
For the remainder of that heartbreaking day, there is something about the unsettling quiet reflected in the complaint log as a deep dark sadness penetrates the community, and no calls come in for the remainder of the afternoon and the overnight hours. Law-breaking had come to a standstill as everyone — late-night regulars at noisy bars, teen troublemakers, and other wayward types — stayed glued to television sets, trying to comprehend the terrible event in Texas.
“President Kennedy shot and killed in Dallas,” Elkton Police Blotter, Nov. 22, 1963; source – Historical Society of Cecil County.
Two operators worked the Armstrong Phone Company Switchboard in Rising Sun. Periodically lights on the board flickered on, indicating someone had picked up one of the old hand crank telephones to make a call so the operators would answer “number please.”
The call volume was routine as they juggled cords and plugs on the last day of the work week as the lunch hour rolled around. But in a flash, the entire board lit up, alarming the operators. Something similar happened when one of the women activated the fire siren for people would call to see where the fire was.
But this time it was different for everyone on the network, it seemed, picked up receivers at exactly the same time. Answering as many calls as they could, they heard upset people saying did you hear the news, the president has been shot or connect me with so and so as callers reached out to talk to someone about the unfolding tragedy. Sometime after the newscasters announced the president had died, an eerie silence settled over the telephone network as people headed home to be with family at this sad time and to monitor the newscasts.
WSER’S News Flash – President Kennedy Assassinated
Since it was the middle of the workday, many people first received news from the radio. At Elkton’s top 40 AM Station, WSER, the mid-day disc jockey worked the turntable playing the hits of ’63 when a network flash interrupted his entertaining mid-day routine. Once the first flash got everyone’s attention, listeners huddled near receivers at home, work, and in cars to hear the latest. As the hours unfolded, the network kept up a steady stream of bulletins and flashes.
Les Coleman helped open Cecil’s first station but worked as a sales representative at WDOV in Dover that day. When he checked with the Dover station, they told him that they were going to pull all commercial programming. His job that afternoon was to call advertisers and let them know that the station was holding all commercials until after the funeral, Les recalled in a conversation a few years ago.
At Stanley’s Newsstand, the morning papers had all been sold so it was time to get ready for the afternoon arrivals from Wilmington, Baltimore and Philadelphia. However, the daily routine was disrupted too, as people sought whatever news they could get. Phil Stanley worked for his father in the family business, and he recalled that the Baltimore News American issued a special. As darkness closed in on Cecil County, the teenager stood outside the A & P and movie theater on North Street, hawking newspapers.
As daylight faded, those papers were soon all gone. A late edition with racing results. the last one, printed each day, came in on the Pennsylvania Railroad. So Phil rushed over to the station to grab those bundles. Arriving in Elkton that dark, sad Friday night, readers quickly snapped up the broadsheets.
In the schools, the children were generally informed about the tragedy shortly before dismissal. Of course, the kids were all talking about it, trying to comprehend the meaning of the tragedy. Throughout the county, it was particularly quiet as that unusually dark, unsettling night got underway, perhaps not unlike the evening of 9/11, as people rushed home to learn more details of the tragedy in Dallas from broadcasters and be with family.
Activities in Cecil County Come to a Halt
Activities throughout the county quickly ground to a near halt as bewilderment and disbelief paralyzed Cecil and the nation. As people dealt with the deep sadness they felt, the Bainbridge Naval Training Center sounded a single gun salute every half hour from sunup to sunset until the final tribute of a 23-gun salute rang out at the time of the funeral.
In Chesapeake City, a couple living along the canal said they’d never forget the day. Just before the news broke from Dallas, two federal men in dark suits knocked on their door. Representing the Army Corps of Engineers, they were there to discuss the purchase of their property in Bethel as the canal was being expanded.
Back in the county seat, H. Wirt Bouchelle, the county’s weatherman, dutifully recorded Friday’s meteorological conditions, confirming the observations of the police as they started the 8:00 a.m. shift. The temperature climbed to an unseasonably high of 63 degrees F. while sinking back to 40 overnight. There was no precipitation that gloomy day in Cecil County.
For three consecutive weeks, pictures of President John F. Kennedy had headlined the front page of the Cecil Whig in November 1963. “Never before in the 123-year history” of the newspaper had such a sequence occurred, the editor wrote. In the first editions, the weekly announced the forthcoming appearance of the chief executive at ceremonies for the new road, an announcement that was “greeted by many with a feeling of great anticipation.” The second article gave an account of the Presidential visit and told of the crowd’s reaction and feelings about being there to “greet him so warmly.” The third and final article expressed, as best the editors knew how, the “shock and deep feeling of grief at the untimely death of our President,” an editorial stated.
Cecil County Mourns
Cecil County joined the rest of the nation in expressing shock and sadness as people quickly returned home and gathered their families close while watching the television for more news. Many who had been so excited about seeing him eight days earlier called the unsettling loss “incredible” and “unbelievable,” the Cecil Whig remarked.
On that day a half-century ago, the deep gloom that settled over the county is still recalled by so many.
Cecil County Mourns — President Kennedy Assassinated, Source: Cecil Whig, Nov. 27, 1963
The Big Elk Creek east of the Bridge Street Bridge and the industrial area of the creek. A postcard from about 1914
The Big Elk Creek in Elkton, winding its way along what was once the town’s southern border, is commonly associated with perennial flooding these days. But once upon a time this waterway nurtured and strengthened the development of the county seat as the place bustled as a center for water transportation.
During the 19th century, industrial development changed the makeup of Elkton, and water traffic became central to the area’s commerce. Scott Fertilizer Plant and the Radnor Pulp & Paper works were two major enterprises tenanting the creek bank at the southwest corner of Bridge & Main streets. The Big Elk was clogged with steamers, schooners, tugs, barges, and sailing vessels conveying goods to and from the town wharf, during this era. Pleasure craft also crowded the waterway.
As the 20th century dawned, Elkton’s Harbor was still active. But shoaling was starting to restrict the narrow creek, and a representative of the Scott Fertilizer Company, wrote the federal government the summer of 1899 about the problem. Fannie, a steamer which had been coming to Elkton every year since she was built, might not be returning because of the difficulty in getting up to the dock. “The truth is the river is practically unnavigable for vessels drawing over 7 feet of water except on very favorable tides, and unless steps are taken promptly to dredge the river another year’s navigation will have to be abandoned except for the smallest craft.”
Ulysses S. Grant was president when Congress first appropriated funds to remove sediment from beneath the waters. The last time federally funded workmen scooped mud out of the estuary Woodrow Wilson was president. The problem was that the stream was filling with sediment, much of it silt carried downstream during freshets. This left Elkton with a narrow, meandering waterway that was navigable only with great difficulty.
In 1874, when congress first financed the removal of a century’s worth of silt, workers dredged a channel six feet deep. Next year, the “mud machine” was back, scooping out more clay, sand, and stone. Soon after the nation entered World War I, federal improvements last took place. Shortly afterward, government engineer’s advocated discontinuation of the undertaking as the channel couldn’t be maintained at a reasonable cost, they argued.
Commercial interests started vacating the stream in the early 1900s. The “boat-building yard on the Little Elk has been abandoned, as has also the steamboat line to the wharf at the Bridge Street bridge,” a report noted in 1918. By 1911, the boatyard was in Chesapeake City. In 1918, a fire destroyed the fertilizer company. A steamboat last came to Elkton in 1917.
Then came the final blow. Route 40, the new dual highway south of town, was planned, and the “Roads Commission” wanted to construct a fixed span bridge over the Creek. A state survey showed water traffic for the past 20 years had so decreased that it would “not warrant the expense of a draw bridge,” the Cecil Democrat reported in 1938. General opposition to a fixed span developed and the Democrat editorialized, that “without a draw bridge, the prospect of using the creek for industrial purposes would be killed forever.” Despite the local resistance, they built the fixed span bridge.
That “mud machine” came back up the Big Elk Creek one last time between 1971 and 1973 for a state-funded operation. Elkton had secured a grant from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to build a “municipal marina” on the old waterfront. Complete with the dredging of the channel, a boat launch, 72 docking slips, and bulkhead. But shortly after the work was completed Hurricane Agnes hit the area and the twisting stream again filled with topsoil.
Today the waters of the Big Elk meander past Marina Park undisturbed. No longer do powerboats, three-masted schooners, tugs, or pleasure craft churn to and fro on Elkton’s once crowded waterway. An occasional flood disturbs the serenity, but not the whistle of the steamer or the shouts of dock hands.
The industrial area of the Big Elk Creek west of the Bridge St. Bridge.
The old commercial district in Elkton has several architecturally interesting cultural resources, one of which is the Gilpin building, a centuries-old surviving structure. This substantial three-story brick vernacular building was the subject of a recent inquiry, as we were asked to investigate the past at the southwest corner of North and High Streets.
During the 1880s, the town experienced a substantial building boom as industries opened up along the creek and the railroad, creating a larger demand for commercial outlets and dwellings. As part of that boom, the central business district started expanding beyond the original boundaries along Main Street as commercial enterprises stretched up North Street toward the railroad tracks.
“Gilpin Hall,” the building that now stands on this corner was one of the many that enhanced the town during that decade of growth. John Gilpin, the postmaster and prominent businessman, started constructing this commodious building in the fall of 1887 and it was ready for occupants in March 1888. The Masonic Lodge met in their new room on March 20th of that year and on the grand occasion, they “partook of an excellent oyster supper at the restaurant of William Giles in honor of the occasion,” according to the Cecil Whig. That same month postal operations moved one block north from a temporary location to “spacious quarters in the Gilpin Building.”
When it opened, it housed the post office, lawyers’ offices, and the Masonic Hall. Soon, the building also had a barber shop, and that service continued throughout most of the 20th century. By 1889, there was a need for more space so Gilpin got a building permit from the town, authorizing a 14′ X 17′ addition at a cost of $600. In 1918, the county extension agent moved there. As the decades zipped along some minor additions were made, each adding to the architectural value of the structure. Today, the Masonic Lodge still maintains its headquarters at this corner.
It continued to serve as the post office until about 1925 when mail distribution moved across the Street to the new McCool building. But the Union Lodge NO. 48 A.F. & A.M. continued to occupy the upper floors. Today, it remains an important contributing structure in Elkton’s historic district.
Chief McIntire checks speeders in 1966 with the town’s new radar system.
The Elkton Police Department carefully and meticulously chronicled day-to-day happenings for the rural Maryland law enforcement agency in five-pound ledger books from 1955 to 1993. As patrolman went on and off duty, requests for police aid came in, suspects were arrested, weather conditions changed, or accidents happened, officers filled the pages of these heavy blotters with the details, completing a volume for each passing year.
These valuable records, a significant source of information about social conditions and changing times, municipal government, weather, crime patterns, and individual information, were added to the archives at the Historical Society of Cecil County by the Town of Elkton a few years ago. Spanning five decades, historians, social scientists, and family researchers have a long run of complete data, which can be used to understand the past.
Providing a cops-eye view, the handwritten logs began on August 6, 1955. On that Saturday Officer Harry Minker penned the initial entry in the otherwise blank book noting that it was clear and hot at 8:00 a.m. He scrawled nine additional notations during his watch, but only five involved police calls. A few days later, he penned one saying “call to get mayor coffee.”
The Mayor and Commissioners put a push on to increase the efficiency of its force about this time, and these records are evidence of the focus on better police practices. The “thin blue line,” four full-time and 2 part-time men, crisscrossed the town in a new Ford patrol car, responding to calls from the water plant operator who signaled them on the town’s two-year-old radio system. In a few months, the officers would have their own dedicated police station, replacing the desk and shared telephone they used in the town hall.
At first Elkton police work was by and large routine. Traffic problems, simple assaults, drunkenness, loitering, minor thefts, and a little disorderly conduct made up the bulk of the work, but serious crimes and alarming incidents sometimes jolted the routine. Take November 22, 1963. As a thick Chesapeake Bay fog blanketed the town, the day-man, Officer Jerry Secor, signed on watch at 8:00 a.m. On this Friday, as police work goes, things were quiet as he handled two unremarkable calls. Then, abruptly at 1:30 p.m., everything in this Eastern Shore town and the nation changed for someone, in a careful hand, wrote in the register: “President Kennedy shot and killed in Dallas Texas.” For the remainder of that heartbreaking day, there is something about the unsettling quiet reflected in the activity report as a deep dark, sadness penetrates the town and few calls come in for the remainder of the evening and night.
May 1965 train wreck in west Elkton.
There were others. On December 8, 1963, a commercial airliner crashed just outside town killing 81-people, the blotter notes. On a quiet Sunday in May 1965, as two cruisers prowled the sleeping town, a fire-ball suddenly loomed high up into the sky at the edge of Hollingsworth Manor. A chemical train jumped the tracks and exploded.
When storms threatened the county seat, the force was busy. As Patrolman Alton Crawford took to the streets on December 11, 1960, an early snowstorm was sweeping toward Cecil County. For the next two days, the men in blue noted that heavy snow was falling as they rescued stranded motorists, transported doctors and nurses to the hospital, and eventually began reporting that traffic was tied up and all activity had stopped. At the height of the powerful blast, the night watch noted that the power was off all over town.
In August 1955, hurricanes Connie and Diane charged through the mid-Atlantic unleashing devastating floods. Throughout those wind-swept days the men noted the water was rising, trees were blown down, and significant flooding was occurring. When Officer Edgar Startt signed off as midnight neared on August 12, 1955, he put pen to paper and simply scribbled, “bad night, off duty.”
On the evening of December 1, 1974, burglar alarms across town rang out as a severe thunderstorm blew through, taking out power lines and disrupting electrical service. Then at 11:35 p.m. as Officer Terry Lewis cruised East Main a large tree blew over on the patrol car, trapping the officer and his partner. The fire department extricated the men with the Jaws of Life rescue tools.
Just as the nation struggled to clean up air pollution, the night watch, officers, Hawley and Sharpless, reported that a thick smog from a chemical plant drifted over the town during the predawn hours of December 23, 1965. The visibility plummeted to zero as the two officers prowled the darkness looking for trouble.
November 17, 1993, marked the last time someone wrote a note in the old police logs. The department converted to a computerized system and the journals were discontinued as the agency entered the digital recordkeeping age. The last entry occurred at 11:32 a.m. when officers responded to a domestic disturbance. It was the 8,577 call of the year. That year, the Maryland Uniform Crime Report reported the force of 23 officers investigated 555 serious crimes and made 799 arrests. In 1973, there were 461 serious crimes, 278 arrests, and 12-officers.
As one reads the blotters, books now preserved for researchers, you get a detailed cops-eye-view of what life was like on a particular day in Elkton as you fall swiftly back in time with each receding year. The growth and development of the Elkton Police and the community and changes in the nature of crime and social conditions, all unfold in these pages. Minor disturbances, drunkenness, petty larceny, and domestic trouble made up the bulk of the complaints in the early years, reflecting the nature of crime in a rural community in the 1950s. As that quiet decade gave way to the troubling ‘60s and ‘70s, the volumes start reflecting changes in society, the drug culture, social unrest, and the rapid increase in crime. While most of the time the men recorded routine complaints, there were a few spectacular crimes. During the 1990s, the notations sometimes overflowed the pages because of the number of calls.
1877 Atlas of Cecil County from Library of Congress showing area of Fort.
Since we’re hearing a lot about the War of 1812 this week during the Sailabration in Baltimore, I’ve been thinking about some of the really old, local narratives I’ve examined. The conflict that found the enemy sailing up the Elk River has fascinated generations born long after the enemy sailed away. Terrestrial and underwater archaeologists have arrived in the skirmish field to dig in the ground and jump into the river, searching for clues to that time so long ago. Treasurer hunters have scoured the soil looking for relics from that frightful April in 1813. And scribes penned recollections about visiting the Fort in an era when there were no longer any first hand memories and the stories were getting passed down through the ages. Whatever the case, those earthen redoubts garrisoned by local militia have intrigued curious types since the British sailed away from our waters.
Let’s look at one the accounts, that of a Boy Scout visiting the defensive position in 1912. In 1976 F. Rodney Frazer drew a sketch of the location of Fort Defiance as he recalled the visit from the top of the 20th century as a tenderfoot scout. The Owl Patrol, “a unit of the first troop of Boy Scouts in Elkton,” went on an expedition to the bend in the Elk River to scrutinize the Fort Defiance site “and the place where the chains were placed across Elk River to thwart the British.” It was May when these excited youngsters floated down the calm waters from Elkton in Scoutmaster Standley Evans’ boat, the Wabum. “Opposite Fowlers’ shore we waded in mud on the banks of the thoroughfare to where three decaying piles remained and I sawed off a section for evidence.”
According to Frazer, a deed from Eli Pierson to David Short in 1856 said in part: “A parcel of land on the northward side of the Elk River, a short distance . . . from an old fort known by the name of Fort Defiance, which is contained within the following courses and distances. The 30 foot bluff overlooking Elk River, as indicated on accompanying map and now owned by Robert L. Campbell was the site of Fort Defiance,” the local historian recalled in 1976.
Such were the recollections of youth from an old man who visited the Fort that saved Elkton from the fate of Frenchtown, Havre de Grace, and Georgetown. F. Rodney Frazer, a local historian, was born in 1897. He wrote an Elkton history, “Parts of Elkton In 1918 As I Remember It.”
The Fort Defiance Marker was erected in the 1960s. Based on his visit to the Elk River fort in 1912, Rodney Frazer questioned the placement of the modern marker.
1976 drawing by F. Rodney Frazer recalling a visit in his youth.
Google earth map showing the area sketched by Rodney Frazer
A team of archaeologists and university students has brought new life to Elk Landing over the past week as they have been excavating the property in the 41st annual field session.
Jim Gibb, head investigator of the war of 1812 project, Robert Wall, a professor of archaeology and physical anthropology and Dan Coates, president of Archeological Society of the Northern Chesapeake chapter have worked with the Historic Elk Landing Foundation President Josh Brown to excavate the Elk Landing Peninsula.
“This was very exciting to me,” Brown said Wednesday. “They wanted to do this big dig, they were opening it up to the public, for the students to come, it’s a learning program… they don’t do it every year, they probably won’t be here for another four decades.”
The peninsula, where the Little and Big Elk creeks merge, was home to the site of Fort Hollingsworth, a 300-foot long semi-circular breastwork fort with a large ditch and parapet, said Gibb. It created a surface to place cannons and men to ward off attacks. The fort no longer stands, because the farmers plowed it down after the war, Gibb said.
Just in time for June, a busy month for weddings in Elkton, the colorful story of that era is being presented in a captivating talk by Mike Dixon. Hear about how the quick marriage business got started in Cecil County in 1913 and, for several decades, made the place hum as the marrying parsons worked overtime, cranking out some 12,000 marriages annually in the mid-1930s.
SPONSOR: The Historical Society of Cecil County
WHAT: Talk on Elkton’s Marriage History
WHERE: 135 E. Main St. Elkton
WHEN: May 25, 2012 at 7:00 p.m.
Free with light refreshments
Elkton Marriage office is always open (Historical Society of Cecil County)
Elkton, May 22, 2008 — Wednesday evening, as gusty spring winds swept Elkton, I attended Tony Trotta’s viewing at Hicks Funeral Home. Born four years before young men from Cecil County marched off to fight in World War I, the popular 95-year-old passed away Monday. Later that night as I drove past his place on Main Street, the shop was dark except for two light bulbs softly illuminating a mirror, the chair in the big window where he sat waving at passersby was empty, the red and white barber pole wasn’t revolving, and the closed sign informed everyone that the barber would not be in again.
As I gazed out my car window on this unseasonably cool late May evening a few sprinkles fell on the quiet street that had bustled with activity for much of Tony’s life, and my mind wandered over nearly a century’s worth of town history. Tony started cutting hair at this location during the dark days of the Great Depression, when he first came to work for his future father-in-law, Anthony Williams. In time, the 23-year old married the owner’s daughter, Jessie, and took over the business.
It was the place to get your hair cut in the county seat and the Elkton shop owner had a regular client group of judges, lawyers, courthouse regulars, businessmen and everyday people. As the decades passed quickly by in this old-fashioned shop, his customers grew old with him and retirees began spending hours hanging out, swapping stories, and playing the banjo. Often strangers walking down the street back in the 1970s and ’80s were surprised as they looked into the window of the shop to see a group of people playing guitars or plucking a banjo.
At age 90 he was still working six days a week, but as he grew older he gradually cut back, while the retirees started slowly disappearing as many of them passed away. But you would still see Tony sitting in his window waving to passers-by while people stopped in for a quick chat. Even in his ninth decade you would see him around town, out for a stroll with his dog, enjoying a meal at a restaurant, or sitting on one of the park benches. The last time we talked, probably a month or so ago, his mind was as sharp as ever, never forgetting a name or elements of events from a long time ago.
I always enjoyed my chance meetings with the 95-year-old and his daughter, Patty, for those visits were filled with decades of local history. His stories were about Elkton’s heyday, the marriage racket, World War II, big fires on Main Street, lively small town personalities, a bustling downtown, and much more. In time someone wanted information on Elkton’s 20th century history, I would send them down to see Tony. Afer all he was born when Howard Taft was in the White House. If they were early enough (he opened at 5:00 a.m.), they would find him in his window. They always came back pleased with the conversation and the hospitality. Through that very same window since 1935, in a quaint shop that didn’t change, Tony watched Main Street change and history march along, as young men went off to war, couples came here for quick marriages, and the era of shopping centers and Internet retailing fueled the decline of main streets across the nation.
They laid Tony to rest today and as I pass by those three empty old-time chairs and the shop with the sign saying closed, I know the barber will never be in again at 118 E. Main Street. Although I’ll miss the chance to pop in for a few minutes to talk with him or to simply wave as I rush by, my knowledge of the 20th century is much greater for having had the privilege to hear so many of Tony’s wonderful recollections.
The Mayor of Main Street has passed away. His friendly greetings, conversation and keen memories provided us with connections to the town’s past. He will be missed.
