As the Mid-Shore community begins a weekend of celebration of Juneteenth, the national commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States, it seemed like the appropriate time to focus on the controversial “Talbot Boys” Confederate memorial that sits on the Talbot County Courthouse lawn. While the arguments for maintaining or moving the statue are now increasingly well-known to Spy readers, for the first time, we have reached out to the two organizations who have either taken the lead in preserving it where it stands now (Preserve Talbot History) or moving it (Move the Monument Coalition) to a less controversial location to provide short summaries of each group’s position.

We began today with Move the Monument Coalition leadership team members Ridgely Ochs and Jess Taylor. In their interview with the Spy, Ridgely and Jess talk about their motivation in getting involved, the group’s plans to hold a rally to move the statue in Easton this Saturday, and their support of the recent NAACP/ACLU lawsuit against the Talbot County Council as part of their organization’s strategy to relocate the Talbot Boys from the Courthouse lawn.

On Thursday, the Spy will publish our interview with David Montgomery, president of Preserve Talbot History, to discuss his organization’s opposition to removing the Talbot Boys from its current position.

This video is approximately three minutes in length. For more information about the Move the Monument Coalition and its Juneteenth Rally please go here.

For many in the Kent County arts community over the last five decades, one name has resonated across stages, schools, street parades, and coffee houses: Tom McHugh.

From his early life as a professor at Washington College in the late 60s and early 1970s, through his commuting years to the Eastern Shore from his tenured position at Vassar College, and finally, in his permanent return in retirement, Tom’s commitment to arts and education in Kent County has been transformational for many and inspiring for all. His remarkable legacy is important to acknowledge as our community grieves his recent passing.

From his difficult childhood years in Philadelphia, Tom found that music, and the creation of it, provided an indispensable escape from daily challenges. Thanks to a scholarship from Philly’s Girard College, created in the late 19th Century as a school for the city’s neglected but promising boys, Tom went on to pursue a distinguished academic career, garnering many awards, and traveling to Hungary as a Fulbright Scholar before starting his “new career” as an arts entrepreneur and troubadour.

When looking back, it seems like Tom could only have come from this remarkable background. The performer, the lover of all sorts of music and genres, the Irish storyteller, the critical thinker, the savvy bureaucrat, the gifted fundraiser, the (barely)-closeted comedian, and the believer in great, small causes, all led to the creation of Tom McHugh.

No doubt Tom’s lasting legacy for us in Kent County will be the Mainstay. Given the opportunity to program as only he could, Tom merged his passion for jazz, blues, folk, gospel, Celtic, and spoken word into a small, remote, rural Main Street performance space that became one of hottest venues in the Mid-Atlantic.

At the heart of this work was Tom’s passion for education. For all the fantastic range of musical talent that Tom brought to Rock Hall, including his own, it’s fair to say that his primary goal was to expand his audience’s range of appreciation. From one weekend to the next at the Mainstay, he would delight in mixing genres, including classical, to give his audience the broadest exposure to music.  

Part of that educational mission was to showcase Kent County’s uniquely lopsided number of talented musicians and singers. During his lifetime, he brought to the stage, sometimes for the first time, the brilliance of Karen Somerville, Sue Matthews, Joe Holt, Dick Durham, Meredith Davies Hadaway, Nevin Dawson, and dozens of others, including promising young people from Kent County High School. In his off-hours, he could be found in the local elementary schools, playing his banjo for sing-alongs, or leading a kazoo orchestra.

This legacy comes to mind frequently as the Chestertown Spy maintains its mission of celebrating the arts. From its earliest days, Tom was our directional guide as we began to profile the region’s pool of phenomenal performers. And during these consultations, it was impossible to ignore his unabashed cheerleading.

Possessing an Irish instinct to turn his praise for these artists into a form of poetry, Tom literally set the stage for his performers to find their personal best at Mainstay concerts. Indeed, for some, the McHugh introduction alone was worth the drive to Rock Hall.

There is no doubt others in the arts community will find ways to honor and continue Tom’s legacy. But it was my luck to videotape his last introduction at the Mainstay some six years ago. And Tom, being Tom, left the stage with a poem. The title: “We Share 60 Percent of our DNA with a Banana.”

Only Tom could get away with that.

Dave Wheelan is the founder and executive editor of the Chestertown Spy. 

After over a year of weekly commentary, the Spy’s friends Al From and Craig Fuller have been granted their first break from their popular From and Fuller podcast in honor of Memorial Day Weekend. They will return to their seats next week to share their unique points of view of American politics and inside Beltway perspectives.

Their absence gives me a long-overdue opportunity to thank Al and Craig for contributing their time and talent to the Spy. Given their extraordinary backgrounds, it remains astonishing to me as the Spy’s publisher and executive editor that they have been willing to participate every week with this modest nonprofit media outlet.

Nonetheless, over the last 13 months, these two Washington pros have developed a substantial following, not only on the Shore, but accordingly to our Google Analytics reports, nationally as well, including having the show be re-broadcasted several times by the highly regarded Real Clear Politics network. This is also true with our partner WHCP Community Radio in Cambridge.

While both confess their motivation is based on a lifelong passion for politics and a friendship that has existed for decades, the Spy remains humbled by this extraordinary gift to the communities we serve and the thousands of followers they have attracted in the last year.

Speaking of a large fan base, many readers have reached out to us recently inquiring about the absence of the Spy’s Sunday columnist, George Merrill. While we noted in George’s last column a few weeks ago that George had requested a mini-sabbatical, it was exciting news to hear from him yesterday that he plans to return to his column starting in early July.

As we highlighted in our editor’s note to readers in his last column in May, George has graced the pages of the Spy with now some 330 commentaries with his beautifully nuanced, playful, but ultimately powerful moral observations since 2015. And like our friends, From and Fuller, he too has developed a loyal following of thousands over the year, who has made his Sunday morning essays part of their weekend ritual. As one of those fans, I eagerly await his return.

Finally, the Spy has recently decided that we will be ending our daily COVID reports at the end of June. While we reserve the right to change our minds if circumstances dictate it, the Mid-Shore will soon reach such a reduced level of risk and such a high rate of vaccinations for us to conclude that this devastating health crisis has reached the end of its horrific existence.

I want to once again make note of the Spy’s public affairs editor, John Griep, for his exceptional work on collecting and reporting data on this evil pandemic. For the last fourteen months, John has not missed a day in sharing critical important information to the region, as well as providing thoughtful analysis of what those numbers have meant for the communities we serve. I remain, as do countless Spy readers, profoundly grateful to John for this true public service.

Dave Wheelan
Publisher and Executive Editor