One of Dorchester County’s most iconic landmarks, the Spocott Windmill, rises alongside Route 343, which starts as Washington Street in Cambridge, becoming Hudson Street heading West into the Neck District.

The grandson of the man who, at age 95, undertook rebuilding the historic structure, disclosed that and many more stories in a newly published book detailing the incredible, indelible life of one of Dorchester County’s most dedicated office holders and civic contributors. 

Call Me Cousin George, A Personal Look at the Life of Senator George L. Radcliffe, by George M. Radcliffe Jr.–the senator’s only living grandson–was at first intended as a keepsake for the great grandchildren who had never gotten a chance to hear his stories around the family dining room table at the Spocott Farm as he had.

But the project soon took on a life of its own, befitting the larger than life accomplishments of its subject. 

Going through his grandfather’s treasure trove of voluminous correspondence, journals, and photographs turned into a ten year labor of love, providing a springboard to an outsized journey of learning about the man, the world he emerged from, and the historic times he became actively engaged in helping transform.

When the manuscript was finally presented to Salt Water Media in Berlin, MD, the impressed editors advised George M., Jr. that what he’d prepared contained a story holding great interest for a much wider audience than the family memoir he’d initially set out to create.

Prefaced with a well informed overview of a life spanning nearly a century (1877-1974), the chapters marking his expansive experiences and contributions are told in a series of highly readable essays detailing the nooks and crannies comprising the landscape of his life, clearly delineating a modest man of character, good will, and determination that saw him overcome the odds, from frail health as a youngster to surviving a violent robbery at age 90. 

Throughout, the story is sprinkled with famous names–Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson, just to name a few. 

But, in keeping with the grounded, down-to-earth values of Radcliffe’s persona, these are not necessarily the most memorable figures, not by a long shot. 

Instead, the reader relishes learning about picturesque personalities populating his inner circle. Among these was lifelong chauffeur and companion, Dorchester waterman John Swain Foxwell (Radcliffe never took up driving, yet commuted between Baltimore, Washington, and Dorchester County regularly, sometimes almost daily.)

Also, free African American woman Adaline Morris Wheatley, known as “Aunt Adaline” was the homestead’s cook, manager, and guiding light, whose picture held a singular place of honor in the Spocott homestead’s dining room.

Radcliffe’s Senate terms, 1935 to 1947, are noteworthy in overlapped with the Great Depression and World War II. But his overall contributions extend even beyond the consequence of his times. 

For instance, his friendship with FDR, long before he became president, inspired Radcliffe to become an early and ongoing leader dedicated to fundraising and fighting the scourge of infantile paralysis, also known as polio, culminating in the March of Dimes.

Visitors to Long Wharf Park can view a plaque commemorating FDR’s trip up the Choptank River via the Presidential Yacht Sequoia, to help dedicate the new bridge connecting Dorchester and Talbot counties, whose construction came about through Radcliffe’s efforts.

A voracious reader and student of history from his earliest days, raised within a strong boat building community, Radcliffe realized long before many others how vital it was for the U.S. to build up and maintain an ongoing seafaring force. His insight and efforts have been credited with what turned out to be the crucial beefing up of the Merchant Marine during the late 1930s, prior to U.S. official entry into World War II. 

Though a Democrat, Radcliffe, true to his rural roots, resisted being pulled into ultra progressive stances that clashed with his firm centrist and fiscally conservative views. Yet, in 1945, Radcliffe remarkably rose on the Senate floor to offer A Proposed Constitutional Amendment Providing Equal Rights for Women and Men.

Studying at Johns Hopkins, where then Professor Woodrow Wilson was an advisor, Radcliffe’s Ph.D. dissertation explored the pivotal role played by Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks, who also lived in Dorchester County, in keeping Maryland from seceding during the Civil War. 

The dueling loyalties which served as a backdrop to the War were reflected within his own family history. His Baltimore born mother, Mary McKim Marriott “Daisy” Radcliffe, had strong family ties to the Confederacy, while his father, John Anthony LeCompte Radcliffe, rooted at Dorchester’s ancestral Spocott Farm, left behind indications, including the tantalizing clue relating to his son’s middle name, that he had abolitionist leanings, according to his great grandson.

An inherent interest in and ability to pull on the state’s many historical threads without becoming entangled in messy controversies laid the foundation for Radcliffe’s successful revitalization of the Maryland Historical Society in the 1950s, bringing branches to every county, expanding its staff and Baltimore headquarters, and initiating outreach to schools.

At an age when retirement usually entailed a slowing down from an active life, an ongoing drive to preserve the cherished historical legacy inherited from his parents here in Dorchester county inspired him to embark on a project long promised to his mother, another, to himself. 

The first was the creation of the Grace Church Foundation, which involved the restoring and relocating the derelict original church building, a Taylor’s Island outpost of Trinity Episcopal Church in Woolford. 

The next involved hiring Mister Jim Richardson, legendary Dorchester boatbuilder, whose shipyard was across the street from the property, to tackle the prospect of authentically reconstructing, with no blueprints, the English windmill constructed by Radcliffe’s father in the 1860’s and destroyed by a heavy winter storm when he was 11. Believing from the outset that he’d find a way to somehow rebuild it, Radcliffe had managed to salvage original stone from its foundation. Despite the passage of 80 years, he kept the dream alive and saw it through. Over his objections, the structure was named in his honor, with a wooden sign bearing the title George L.

Radcliffe’s son, George M., and his only surviving son, George M., Jr, continued their patriarch’s legacy of service to community with a view to make life better for generations to come; George M. was a long time trustee of Washington College in Chesterton, George M., Jr. taught public school science for over 30 years. After retiring he essentially continued that pursuit, guiding the Maryland Ornithology Society’s junior birding program, the Audubon Society’s Dorchester County vital citizen science bird atlas count, and presiding over the Spocott Windmill and Village Foundation, which holds an open house twice a year.

Echoing his grandfather’s characteristic modesty and penchant for quietly doing good ( with no wish for reward other than that), George M., Jr. maintained that the story rightly should have been told by his late brother Bill, a local newspaper reporter, had survived an untimely death in an auto crash (along with his sister). Another sister also died at a young age.

Though unsure of his ability, he took up what he felt was a sacred duty to share his grandfather’s story with the next generation and followed it through to completion.  In so doing, he also kept his spirit alive.

Call Me Cousin George: A Personal Look at the Life of Sen. George L. Radcliffe, by George M. Radcliffe, Jr, Salt Water Media, Berlin MD, 2021 (www.saltwatermedia.com)

The littlest among us will become the stars of the show tonight. Have you seen them?

Parents bump babies in strollers over brick sidewalks, tow toddlers like dinghies by the hand. Teens pause to check out the action. Tourists perch on pier pilings drawn by the electric anticipation in the air. 

For years, the United States Naval Academy Band has performed free summer concerts at the Annapolis City Dock. Pristine yachts bob on their moorings while a saltwater breeze diminishes the flame of the setting sun.  The bricks in the courtyard of Susan Campbell Park still hold the sizzle of summer but that’s just mid-Atlantic Maryland in July. This gathering begins as a desire for entertainment, but it becomes a desire for something else– something bigger and difficult to identify.

The band is made up of Musicians First Class wearing their immaculate dress whites for the occasion. A cap only partially conceals the lead singer’s shiny blond hair, her crisp shirt tucked neatly into the A-line skirt which ends professionally at her knees. 

A ripple of applause greets her as she takes the stage. The crowd is on alert now, water bottles stowed, panting dogs drop belly down.

Strangers flash smiles at each other as the drummer turns on the magic, tapping the opening beat on the edge of his snare. The guitarist takes a run, and our formally attired lead singer opens the set by belting out Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance. There is such a disparity between her uniform and the music selection that it’s disarming. 

Charming. A boundary breaker. 

Like seeing your British Airways pilot rapping to Kanye on the flight deck. Like seeing your cardiologist singing karaoke in his scrubs.

But the real performance is in front of the stage, where about a dozen children have gathered—most under the age of 5. They swing and sway. They hop and up down like tiny lunatics. They are completely off the beat. Strangely expressionless, too. 

They spin like little helicopters that have lost their tail rotors, collapse into each other both unselfconsciously and without acknowledgement, then pop to their feet to spin some more. 

They are too small to have ever made a mistake, too young to bear the weight of regret, too innocent to need forgiveness. It is as if each is dancing in his own separate world, maybe the world from which they so recently arrived, and yet the proximity of the other children is required. 

When I’m feeling isolated it’s as if I too need to step into the same stream in which others stand though I’m fishing on my own. I take my computer to Barnes and Noble or a coffee shop to be in community but not engaged. Alone but a lesser lonely. 

It’s some kind of invisible energy that connects us—something that we need as much as the food that sustains us, or the air that we breathe, but can you name it?

If we could see magnetism or radiation, we might see goodwill sparking off every surface in the park on Tuesday nights. If affection was a vibration, if inclusion rose like heat off these bricks, or could be heard like the bells of St. Anne’s—if love were a color, or wellbeing a wavelength—we might see a reality we can feel but not prove. 

There is no distance between us, and no one dances alone.  

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

For Adrian Holmes, the founder and program director of the Alpha Genesis Community Development Corporation, she had reason to feel some significant satisfaction on the day that the organization’s public art project of Harriet Tubman had its official opening a few years ago.

The result of more than a year of community input as well as the stunning design work by muralist Michael Rosato, the project not only won the hearts of the community but unexpectedly also gained national fame with both print and television media profiling this powerful image of the legendary Tubman saving her niece from slavery.

And that publicity set into motion a remarkable journey for Adrian and her board members.

Just a day after the mural opening, Alpha Genesis received a call from someone asking if her group might host a new Harriet Tubman sculpture by Wesley Wofford at the Dorchester County Courthouse for a month while it was touring the country.

That fateful call led to a remarkable chain of events that led to a permanent new Tubman statue by the same artist being installed next September on the courthouse lawn.

The Spy sat down with Adrian on Sunday afternoon from ArtBar 2.0, the organization’s very popular event space in downtown Cambridge to talk about this extraordinary moment on the Mid-Shore for both art and history.

This video is approximately five minutes in length. To make a donation to help raise the remaining $10,000 left in the campaign and donate a brick please go here. For more information about Alpha Genesis Community Development Corporation please go here.

 

Twenty minutes northwest of Chestertown, and down a hilly, narrow road that ends up as a gravel driveway, a stately brick manor house rises over sweeping lawns and Adirondack chairs overlooking the Chesapeake Bay.

At first glance, it is easy to imagine Jack Kennedy or Ernest Hemingway toasting a Bay sunset with raised brandy snifters.

According to manor house history, they were guests, along with Arthur Godfrey, Guy Lombardo, and Robert Mitchum, who might have taken advantage of the property’s private airfield, one of the few on the Eastern Shore in its day.

You have just discovered Great Oak Manor.

Originally built from ships’ ballast bricks in 1938, the 12,000 sq. ft. The Georgian-style house was designed as a private residence for Russell D’Oench, heir to the W. R. Grace shipping line. 

After several ownerships throughout the decades, Great Oak Manor was recently purchased by husband and wife, Werten F.W. Bellamy and Jr. Kellye L. Walker, who saw in the Manor a unique opportunity in line with their desire to offer a boutique hotel and elegant retreat for corporate professionals to hold learning seminars in a restorative environment, while also continuing as a hotel for travelers looking for an idyllic and plush Chesapeake Bay retreat.

The couple, both with extensive  backgrounds in corporate law, look to Great Oak Manor as a commitment to focusing on “the vital role strong relationships play in both people’s personal and professional lives,” and for those “who need smaller scale, restorative environments to support and further develop their relationship needs.”

“Our goal is to build loyal guests, not scale. We want the Manor to be a place where our guests can focus on the things that matter,” they write in the Manor prospectus.

Here, the Spy sat down with General Manager Brooks Bradbury, who brings decades of experience in the hospitality business to the new venture.  

We welcome Kellye Walker and Werten Bellamy to the Eastern Shore and congratulate them for breathing new life into an architectural treasure. 

This video is approximately six minutes in length. For more about Great Oak Manor, go here.

 

 

 

The history of enslavement—and dramatic escapes—is part of the Eastern Shore’s DNA. Go no farther than Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass to recognize their celebrated quests for freedom and to understand subjugation on the 19th Shore, an inequality still a burning thread in the fabric of our lives.

Chestertown has its own chapters to add to the growing canon of great escapes. One of them is the story of Issac Mason, an enslaved man who fled his bondage in 1846, now told in a new musical as a reading.

The original musical “ISAAC: A Musical Journey,” written by Kent County native Marlon Saunders will premiere at Washington College’s Gibson Arts Center on June 24, 25, and 26 and promises to be one of the season’s most heartfelt and entertaining theatrical events.

KCA states, “This production will feature Paris Nesbit (Broadway: Book of Mormon) as ISAAC, Sue Matthews as Enslaver Hannah Woodward, and Kelly Sloan as the Ancestral Goddess. The reading will be supported by musicians Marlon Saunders (Composer), David Inniss and Eric Brown. The premiere is being directed by Biti Strauchn and produced by John Schratwieser.”

Commissioned by the Kent Cultural Alliance (KCA) for the Chesapeake Heartland Project at Washington College, “ISAAC” is based on the autobiography “Isaac Mason as a Slave.”

New School Jazz writes,” Marlon Saunders, former professor and alumnus of Berklee College of Music, is the founder and CEO of The Seamless Voice, a vocal and artist-coaching studio in New York City. As a vocal coach, Marlon works with artists from all major recording labels and has Broadway artists currently in Hadestown, Ain’t Too Proud, Frozen, Kinky Boots, Beautiful, The Lion King, and Book of Mormon. Marlon has toured with Stevie Wonder on The Songs In The Key of Life Tour. He was also the vocal contractor for Sam Smith and Bastille, Logic and Mondo Cozmo.”

In a recent interview with the Spy, Marlon Saunders talked about his youth in Chestertown, his early musical influences, life beyond Kent County and entering the professional world of musicians, and, of course, the composing of “ISSAC: A Musical Journey.”

For more about Kent Cultural Alliance and tickets go here. For more about the Chesapeake Heartland Project, go here.

 

I found something cool the other day and my first thought was to share it with you. 

My mother died at the age of 95. She married at 22, gave birth to three daughters. Moved us from the Midwest of her youth to a river on the east coast. She remained married to my father for 20 years, and then?

She lived alone for the next 53 years of her life. That’s 19,345 days.

She was a psychotherapist and a poet. To combat the isolation, she wrote in journals to review the events of her day the way partners share anecdotes in the evening over grilled salmon and a glass of wine. To have a witness, a place to explore her fears, resolve anxieties, to express her opinions. A place to store memories, and often, to receive inspiration from a spirit greater than her own.  On North Carolina beaches, in blinding blizzards, waiting for the brake pads to be replaced, Mother recorded her thoughts. Often those observations were about my sisters and me—who was pregnant, not speaking, had bought a new car–and I admit this practice was met with an eye roll more often than not. 

I picked up a journal from 2002 the other day. If she hadn’t written it down, I’d have not remembered that was the year I blew out a disc in my lower back. I’d been hauling 15-foot Leyland cypress trees from a nursery and 40-pound bags of mulch around the yard for days, my theory at the time being that if you can lift it, you should lift it. I was in excruciating pain, unable to even walk. The ruptured disc had been confirmed by an MRI but mother-the-therapist penned, “I think Laura’s back pain is emotional.”

I blew out my back because I was …mad?

I hadn’t blown a disc; I’d blown a gasket?

Sigh.

But I am writing to share a different entry and you’ll see why. In a marbled black-and-white, wide-lined composition book Mother wrote: I want to put down something I thought was very interesting. A group of students was asked to list what they thought were the present Seven Wonders of the World. They ended up with:

1. Egypt’s Grand Pyramids
2. The Taj Mahal
3. The Grand Canyon
4. The Panama Canal
5. The Empire State Building
6. St. Peter’s Basilica
7. China’s Great Wall

One girl was having trouble completing her list. There were just so many, she said. The teacher asked her to read what she had so far, maybe the class could help. She hesitated and then read; The Seven Wonders of the World are:

1. To touch
2. To taste
3. To see
4. To hear

She paused again, then added:

5. To feel
6. To laugh
7. To love

My mother characterized the anecdote as interesting, but I suspect she found it beautiful and there was no one to give it to—and don’t we all have the impulse to share what moves us?  What is that instinct to press wonder into another’s hand? To say, “Wait till you hear what I saw, what I heard, what I found!”

If gratitude is joy, love is generosity. Pass it on. 

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.