Jack Gillespie RIP

JOHN PATRICK "JACK" GILLESPIE - September 26, 1921 - April 17, 2008

Son of Donegal, Jack Gillespie lived a remarkable life and had an honorable death. That's all you really need to know or say about a person.

But the Jack Gillespie I knew was special enough to elaborate on those two remarkable and honorable facts of his life and death.

Born in Ireland, young Jack immigrated to America while still a child, at the age of nine, but he left with the imprint of his origin remaining with him until the day he died.

I met him at the bar at J.C.'s, now called Belly Busters, a Browns Mills tavern that he once owned. Jack was the "J" and his wife Conny was the "C" in JC's Market and at JC's bar and grill down the street, just across from the dam by Mirror Lake.

From the moment I met him Jack hit a soft spot in my heart when he said he was from Donegal, the one town in Irleand that I too have fond memories of, including the lake and waterfall and the red head Alish, and ah.....yes, it reminds him a lot of Browns Mills, where the road around the lake is almost indistinguishable from parts of the road along the lake at Donegal.

And Gillespie said he knew my uncle Babe Kelly, who had Kelly's Cafe in North Camden and a summer house in Browns Mills. All those Irish barkeeps knew one another.

We talked about Ireland, and I told him how I traveled there and visited Donegal, and took a hike up a little mountain to a lake and a waterfall, and met Alish McFadden walking down the street. With a napsack on my back, it was obvious I was from out of town, and she offered to let me sleep on the floor of an office where she worked that was closed for the weekend.

From Donegal I went to nearby Letterkenny, where I visited the little old lady who had previously owned Kelly's Cafe, sold it to my uncles, and retired home to Letterkenny. I then returned to Donegal for a quick spin in 1991, on my way back from Berlin. Donegal had retained much of the same characterI had remembered from 1970.

Gillespie said he didn't remember much about Donegal because he came over as a youngster, but he'd since been back, on a golf excursion with his sons.

Jack was also a vet, and he usually hung out, in his retirement, at the American Legion hall in nearby Pemberton, but invariably came by Belly Busters for a late afternoon drink once or twice a week. The sign outside says Belly Busters, but everybody still calls it "JC's," as it was once and will always be known.

When Jack owned it, the bar was back in the corner and surrounded the kitchen. It only had a dozen or so seats, and one small table by the window facing the lake, so everybody got to know everybody pretty well. Frank built the big formica bar after he bought the place from Jack and expanded the kitchen and package goods store. Frank then sold the place to Rahn, from India, who has kept the place pretty much the same.

Everybody knew Jack Gillespie, and treated him with respect, not only as the former owner of the popular bar, but because of the life he lived.

From Donegal to Philadelphia, Gillespie came to America at the age of nine. He grew up in Philadelphia, served in the Army during World War II, worked as a salesman and relocated to Browns Mills to take over his wife's family market. JC's Market was a fixture in Browns Mills, and the primary marketplace in town until the Acme finally opened.

His son John Gillespie noted, "The grocery store gave him such an opportunity to know people. There must have been 2,000 people a day that used to come into that store, and at least half of them came because they wanted to see Jack."

Jack was a fixer. Whenever there was a problem, Jack was the first person someone would turn to for a solution, especially if it could be solved with money. Jack and Connie also let local families run a tab, so they could shop for groceries all week and settle up on payday.

Then when he opened "JC's" tavern, it was, as his son Ed would put it, "live every Irishman's dream of owning a bar."

When they sold the market, one son showed his father the outstanding debts, with lists of names and amounts, only some with lines through them, and asked about collecting it. "Why?" Jack said. They still have the tabs for some locals at the bar, but the tabs are dutifully paid since nobody wants to be the one who ends Jack's tradition, which has passed on, like Micky the Matre' d, with the deed, through three owners.

The last time we sat together at JC's, and talked about Donegal, Jack told me about a jockey at Pennsylvania Park who was from Donegal. An Irish lass and a true Mick, who I later looked up and found she had won quite a few races.

When I asked Jack about the war, he said he was in the Army and served in Europe, but didn't mention that he was a highly decorated hero who was wounded in action, and recipient of the Silver Star, Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster and the Purple Heart.

Jack Gillespie wasn't just a veteran, he was a certifiable hero, with the medals to prove it. But he seldom talked about the war, even among his veteran friends. He did say, when asked what the difference was between earning a bronze star and silver star, that the difference was "getting shot in the legs and getting shot in the ass."

Jack was part of a proud Army division, 28th infantry, that traced its regiment back to the Revolution.

I later learned that he was with the 28th Infantry division, and the same unit and enganged in the same battles as Francis Clark, who earned the Medal of Honor.


According to one internet source, "Clark joined the Army from Salem, New York, and by September 12, 1944 was serving as a technical sergeant in Company K, 109th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division. On that day, near Kalborn, Luxembourg, he crawled through open terrain to reach a platoon which had been pinned down by heavy fire, led them to safety, and then returned to rescue a wounded man. Five days later, near Sevenig, Germany, he single-handedly attacked a German machine gun position and then assumed command of two leaderless platoons. Although wounded, he refused medical evacuation, attacked two more German machine gun positions alone, and carried supplies through hostile fire to an isolated platoon. For these actions, he was awarded the Medal of Honor a year later, on September 10, 1945. Clark left the Army while still a technical sergeant. He died at age 68 or 69 and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Salem, New York."

Technical Sergeant Clark's official Medal of Honor citation reads:

He fought gallantly in Luxembourg and Germany. On 12 September 1944, Company K began fording the Our River near Kalborn, Luxembourg, to take high ground on the opposite bank. Covered by early morning fog, the 3d Platoon, in which T/Sgt. Clark was squad leader, successfully negotiated the crossing; but when the 2d Platoon reached the shore, withering automatic and small-arms fire ripped into it, eliminating the platoon leader and platoon sergeant and pinning down the troops in the open. From his comparatively safe position, T/Sgt. Clark crawled alone across a field through a hail of bullets to the stricken troops. He led the platoon to safety and then unhesitatingly returned into the fire-swept area to rescue a wounded soldier, carrying him to the American line while hostile gunners tried to cut him down. Later, he led his squad and men of the 2d Platoon in dangerous sorties against strong enemy positions to weaken them by lightning-like jabs. He assaulted an enemy machinegun with hand grenades, killing 2 Germans. He roamed the front and flanks, dashing toward hostile weapons, killing and wounding an undetermined number of the enemy, scattering German patrols and, eventually, forcing the withdrawal of a full company of Germans heavily armed with automatic weapons. On 17 September, near Sevenig, Germany, he advanced alone against an enemy machinegun, killed the gunner and forced the assistant to flee. The Germans counterattacked, and heavy casualties were suffered by Company K. Seeing that 2 platoons lacked leadership, T/Sgt. Clark took over their command and moved among the men to give encouragement. Although wounded on the morning of 18 September, he refused to be evacuated and took up a position in a pillbox when night came. Emerging at daybreak, he killed a German soldier setting up a machinegun not more than 5 yards away. When he located another enemy gun, he moved up unobserved and killed 2 Germans with rifle fire. Later that day he voluntarily braved small-arms fire to take food and water to members of an isolated platoon. T/Sgt. Clark's actions in assuming command when leadership was desperately needed, in launching attacks and beating off counterattacks, in aiding his stranded comrades, and in fearlessly facing powerful enemy fire, were strikingly heroic examples and put fighting heart into the hard-pressed men of Company K.

I gave Jack a copy of my book 300 Years at the Point, and he invited me to the Legion for a book signing by one of his sons, Ed Gillespie, author of Winning Right - Campaign Politics and Conservative Policies (Threhold, 2006).

Although I already knew his daughters Joanne and Tracy, it was at the Legion where I met his sons Ed and John.

John is a big lawyer in the county, and Ed is a big lobyist in Washington, the former chairman of the Republican Party, a protege of Carl Rove, and special advisor to the President of the United States.

In his book Ed writes, "In Ireland, there's a Gaelic word for people who are great storytellers and have an ability to sense what's coming in the future - Seanchai (pronounced 'Shan-a-key'). My father is a Seanchai. Before the Iraq War, he shared with me his reservations. 'I hope to God he (Bush) doesn't do it, son. If we go there, we'll be in there a long, long time.' Before the nineties sock bubble burst, he told me that stocks were selling for more than they were worth, despite what Wall Steet was saying at the time."

"Family lore has it that he correctly predicted the sex of all twelve of his grandchildren by dangling a pencil from a needle and thread over his expectant daughters' and daughters-in-laws midsections. If the pencil swung back and forth like a pendulum, it would be a boy. If it went around in a circle, it would be a girl."

"Jack Gillespie has an uncanny ability to size people up in an instant. His reservations about one of my girlfriends was enoguh to cause me to look in a different direction for a wife, and his hearty endorsement of Cathy was all it took for me to ask her to marry me (a piece of sage advise he would gloat over forever)."

"When I was a cocky young political operative, I often dismissed his insights. After all, he didn't have the benefit of a college education as I did (thanks to him, of course)."

"Then one day,...it dawned on me that far more often than not he was dead on the money. So I was disconcerted when after the Roberts nomination [for Supreme Court] had concluded in a successful confirmation, Dad said to me, 'I hope you're done with that stuff now, Eddie.'"

"'Well, Dad, the President has asked me to stay on and to help with the next one.'"

"'Well I hope like hell you told him no.'"

"'Dad, I don't know how to tell the president of the United States no!'"

"'Easy. You just say, 'Sorry, Mr. President, I can't do it.'"

"'I can't do that, Dad.'"

"'I'm worried, Son.' When my fther calls one of us 'Son,' it always carries a sense of gravity. 'This next one's going to be bad.'"

"'Why do you say that?' I asked, incredulously."

"'I don't know, but it's going to be bad.'"

"Given his track record, this gve me a very unsettled feeling."


Then Jack stopped coming by JC's or going out much at all. I'd ride by his house on the other side of the lake, and his white sedan would be there, and the big Irish and American flags hanging by the door. If he was out there sitting in the shade I'd beep my horn and he'd wave, not knowing who he was waving to. Everybody in Browns Mills knew Jack Gillespie.

The mass at St. Ann's in the Pines was said by the local parish priest, Father Edwin, and Jack's nephew, who was priest (Jack's sister is a nun).

It was in the eulogies that I learned more about Jack, and followed the entourage to the Veterans Cemetery, where Pat Looney, a JC's regular, led the military ritual, folding the flag and presenting it to the family.

The flag was given to the son, Dennis, who had served in the Coast Guard.

A week or so after he died I took a ride around the lake and passed Jack's house. The Irish and American flags were still flying by the door, and his white sedan was parked in the driveway, just like he was home. I beeped my horn, and waved, and looked across the street to the sign that reads: Never let it be said and said with shame, that all was beautiful until you came.

That's one thing that can be said about Jack Gillespie. He left this earth a better place than he found it.

God Bless Jack Gillespie.

28th Infantry Division:

http://www.battleofthebulge.org/fact/fact_sheet_of_the_28th_infantry.html


CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR WINNERS: T/Sgt Francis J Clark, Co K, 109th Infantry Regiment, for 12 Sep 1944 action at the Our River near Kalborn, Luxembourg.

SLOGAN: Fire and Movement:

FOREIGN AWARDS: 109th Infantry regiment awarded the French Croix de Guerre for 28 Jan to 2 Feb 1945 action in Colmar, France per French decree #565, dated 27 March 1945.

COMBAT HIGHLIGHTS: From Normandy, through France, Belgium, Luxembourg and eventually into Germany itself, the 28th Infantry Division blasted its way to success against the enemy which referred to the Keystone unit as the "Bloody Bucket" division. That phrase described the fury of the assaults which it launched shortly after landing on the Normandy beaches 22 Jul 1944. By 31st Jul, the 28th was in the thick of the hedgerow fighting. Advances were at a crawling pace while towns like Percy, Montbray, Montguoray, Gatheme and St Sever de Calvados and Hill 210 fell. By 20th August, the Division was rolling eastward along the highways of France. An advance north to the Seine to trap the remnants of the German 7th Army saw the capture of Vernauil, Breteuil, Damville, Conchos, Le Neubourg and Elbouf as the bag of prisoners mounted. On 29th August, the Division entered Paris and paraded under battle conditions before a populace delirious with joy. There was no time for rest, however, and the advance continued on through the Forest of Compeigne, La Fere, St Quentin, Laen, Rethel, Sedan, Mezieros, Bouilion and on the 6th of September the crossing of the Mouse was accomplished. The Division swept into Belgium averaging advances of 17 miles a day against the resistance of of German roadblocks and "battle groups." The city of Arlon, Belgium fell to a task force as the Division fanned out into Luxembourg. Combat Team 112, attached to the 5th Armored Division, liberated the southern portion of Luxembourg and smashed its way into Germany at Wallendorf in an attack aimed at Bitburg. Combat Teams 109 and 110 liberated the northern part of Luxembourg and on 11th September entered Germany in strength. After hammering away in assaults which destroyed or captured 153 pill boxes and bunkers the Division moved north and cleared the Monschau Forest of German forces in the area east of Elsenborn, Rocherath, and Krinkelt, Belgium, moving up to the Siegfried Line again. Further attacks were postponed and the Division made another move northward to the Hurtgen Forest. There the attack began 2nd November 1944 and the Keystoners stormed into Vossenack, Kommerscheidt and Schmidt amid savage fighting. Losses were heavy and ground once wrested from the enemy was lost and regained to be lost again to the ever increasing fury of his counter-attacks. By 12th November, the 28th had completes its Hurtgen Forest mission and moved south to the scene of its initial entry into Germany where it held a 25 sector of the front line along the Our River, from the northeastern tip of Luxembourg to the vicinity of Wallendorf. In this sector the Germans unleashed the full force of their winter offensive against the thinly-held and over-extended division line. Five crack (German) divisions were hurled across the Our River the first day to be followed by four more in the next few days. the Keystone rocked under the overwhelming weight of enemy armor and personnel but refused to become panic stricken. The defense by the Division against Von Rundstedt's assault was termed by one correspondent as "one of the greatest feats in the history of the American Army." By the time that the 28th was relieved it had thrown the German timetable completely off schedule and had inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. During early January 1945, the Division was charged with defense of the Meuse River from Givet, Belgium to Verdun, France. Later that month a move to the south, to Alsace, was made. There the 28th had the experience of serving in the French First Army in the reduction of the "Colmar Pocket" and to it went the honor of capturing Colmar, the last major French City in German hands. Further advances to the east across the L'Ill River and Rhino-Rhono Canal to the west bank of the Rhine followed. By 23rd February, the Division had returned north to the American First Army and was in the line along the Olef River. March 6th was the jump-off date in an attack which carried the Keystone to the Ahr River. Schleiden, Gomund, Kall, Sotenich, Sistig and Blankonheim all fell in a rapid advance. Many prisoners and large stores of enemy weapons, equipment and ammunition were taken. The Rhine was crossed and an area south of the "Ruhr Pocket" occupied by the 28th awaiting an southward drive by the German forces trapped in the pocket. Early in April the Division moved west of the Rhine and took up occupation duties in the area north of Aachen along the Holland-German border. Two weeks later came a move to the permanent occupation area; the Saarland and Rhonish Palatinate. Early in July the Division started redeployment to the United States, arriving home in August 1945. After V-J Day, the 28th Division reassembled at Camp Shelby, Mississippi and was inactivated on 12 December 1945.

Grace Kelly Family Beach House Ocean City, N.J.

THE KELLY FAMILY BEACH HOUSE – Ocean City, New Jersey

When John B. Kelly brought his young and growing family to Ocean City in the summer of 1927, he did what many visitors do and leased an apartment near 8^th street. While Atlantic City and Margate were more popular with other Philadelphians, Kelly liked Ocean City, “America’s Greatest Family Resort,” and decided to make it their second home at the shore.

Kelly’s “For Brickwork” construction company was responsible for many of the skyscrapers that make up the Philadelphia skyline, and he wanted a beach house at the shore where his family could escape from the city in the summer. After renting for a few seasons he decided to make permanent arrangements and surveyed the area for a place to build a beach house. At the time Ocean City was underdeveloped, and he could have purchased land practically anywhere on the island, but chose some choice beachfront lots towards the south end at 26^th and Wesley Avenues.

There were few other homes in the area when they began construction of the two- story, brick house in 1929, the year Grace was born. “We said we were down in the boondocks,” recalled Grace’s sister Lizanne, who didn’t like the idea of having to walk or hitchhike to the then popular 2^nd street beach.

Her mother, Margaret-Majer, a former physical education instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, chose the architectural style, Spanish Mission Revival, which she had seen in Florida and was similar to other buildings in Ocean City, including the Flanders, the Music Pier and the Chatterbox, where Grace worked as a waitress when she was a teenager.

Besides Grace and Lizanne, there was older sister Peggy and brother John, also known as “Kell,” who became an Ocean City lifeguard, and like his father, an Olympic rowing champion. While John B. Kelly won the Olympic gold medal in rowing, he was not allowed to participate in the elite Henley championships on the Thames in London, because he was considered a laborer who worked with his hands, and therefore not a gentleman. John B. took it personally and his son Kell avenged the slight by wining the Henley sculls and returning home a hero. Kell always credited his working summers as an Ocean City lifeguard for preparing him for his Olympic and Henley victories.

Grace became an Academy Award winning actress and while in Monaco to make a movie with Cary Grant, Grace was introduced to Prince Rainier and given a tour of the castle and casino. Within a year they were married in the ceremony of the season, an extremely lavish affair in Monte Carlo that made worldwide headlines. John B. Kelly leased an ocean liner to take the Philadelphia Kellys to Monaco for the wedding.

Grace, Peggy, Lizanne and Kell all had growing families of their own and the additional grandchildren prompted Mrs. Kelly to have the beach house built across the street. As their property had riparian rights to the sea, and the neighborhood had grown up around them, the new house would be right on the beach rather than across the street. Construction of the brick and mortar beach house began in 1960. The up and down duplex included a patio for barbeques and large bell that was rung for the children to return from the beach for lunch and dinner.

For the most part, the Kelly family resided in the downstairs apartment, except during hurricanes, while visiting relatives, cousins and guests lived upstairs. Among the guests were many celebrities, friends and business associates from the Atlantic City Race Track, which John B. Kelly had built with partners Hap Farley and Sonny Fraser of the Atlantic City Country Club. Among the frequent guests were entertainers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Of course Prince Rainier of Monaco was also a guest, as were his children, Caroline, Stephanie and Albert, all of whom spent their formative years on the 26^th street beach. While the press and paparazzi often disturbed them, the neighbors were friends and protectors of the Kelly family and their legacy.

Every Labor Day the family would get together at the beach house and have a beach party, barbeque and sporting competitions, parties that included Grace and her children every year except the year she died in a tragic accident.

Lizanne, who had married Don Levine, a Race Track Steward, was the only Kelly who didn’t attend the wedding in Monaco because she was pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Grace. Lizanne lived in the beach house until both her husband and daughter died, and sold it in 2001.

.

The old brick beach house was simple and Spartan, with the cinderblock and brick walls giving it a cold and harsh feeling, so a new duplex was built, with similar up and down stairs units that has all the modern amenities.

The new building is fit for a Prince and Princess, with sweeping views of the ocean and easy access to the beach.

Xxxyyy

Last of the Kelly's Checks Out - Liz Levine

LAST OF THE KELLYS CHECKS OUT OF OC – By William Kelly

Ocean City’s image as a family resort was shaped in large measure by the family of a Philadelphia bricklayer John B. Kelly, who began to visit Ocean City in the 1920s and established a living local legacy with a family that included two Olympic rowing champions, a President and Steward of the Atlantic City Race Course, and Academy Award winning actress and princess and a Secretary of the Navy.

It all centered around the Kelly family home at 26^th Street and Wesley Avenue beach, where the Kelly family maintained a residence from 1929 until the 2001, a 72 year run.

For Lizanne Kelly Levine, the last surviving daughter of John B. Kelly, the past few years were exceptionally hard, with the death of her daughter, Grace and husband, Donald Levine.

Her father built the original Kelly house on the North West side of 26^th Street and Wesley Avenue in 1929, the year daughter Grace was born. It was the only house around. As the neighborhood grew up around them, with riparian rights to the sea, a brick duplex beach house was built across the street on the North East corner in 1960, the year John B. Kelly died.

While her mother, also an athlete, lived to be 90 after a debilitating stroke, her older sister Peggy passed away before her sister Grace died in a spectacular auto accident in Monaco in 1982, which captured the world’s attention.

Then in 1985 brother John “Kell” died of a heart attack while jogging along East River Drive (now Kelly Drive) near Boathouse Row along the Schuykill River in Philadelphia, within an hour of her brother-in-law’s equally sudden death in an office building a few blocks away.

Now, with the passing of her husband, Donald Levine, Lizanne sat back in the living room of her Ocean City home and reflected on her past and her future. She recently sold the house.

“We’ve had it tough, but we’ve always got thorugh it,” she said. “We got through almost everything. We’ve had a lot of good times too. But now my whole family is gone. It’s the end of an era and I’m the last of the Mohicans.”

And now she feels it’s time for her to move on, especially since the big brick beach house is too large for her to live there alone, and so she will leave at the end of the summer of 2001.

The Kelly family legend has been told and retold, passed on to all Ocean City lifeguards, surfers, crew rowers and little girls who dream of becoming a princess. Lizanne Levine remembers it all too well.

She remembers the early years in Ocean City when, although she was only a few years old, the family began to spend summers leasing an apartment near 8^th street. After two years, in 1929, her father bought the beachfront lot at 26^th street and Wesley Avenue and built the two story house that’s still there today.

“My brother and sister used to say my mother and father built it up in the ‘boonies’ – the boondocks, because 2^nd street was the street and most popular bathing beach at the time, and they had to get a ride or hitch hike to get down there.”

“This was Old Ocean City,” she explained. “There weren’t any other houses around. The only other house was at 25^th street on the beach, and I didn’t even know who lived there.”

“My mother selected that style,” Levine recalled, “because she saw similar buildings in Florida and told my father what she wanted.”

The Spanish Mission Revival design is similar to a number of other significant Ocean City buildings from the same period – the Music Pier, Chatterbox, Flanders Hotel and other private residences.

In the winter they lived in East Falls, a small, blue-collar, working class neighborhood on the river near center city Philadelphia, but every spring they would return to Ocean City at the Jersey Shore.

“We came down as soon as we got out of school,” Lizanne recalled, “I always had my birthday, the 25^th of June, in Ocean City, so we were always there before then.”

“We always had beach parties and cookouts on the beach because my dad built a brick fireplace, but the Storm of ’44 washed that away. That was the worst storm.”

Although she was still a child, she remembers it distinctly. “The waves were breaking over the all there, and they said on the radio that Ocean City was being evacuated, and my father jumped in his car and drove down here and found us all save and sound. But it was really strong winds, I could hardly stand up. My mother wanted to take some candles over to the neighbors across the street but I couldn’t stand up against the wind. I was 11 years old at the time but it truly was an experience.

“Mother would send us down to the beach and never think anything of it because the lifeguards babysat for us, and there weren’t that many kids on the beach. So mother reciprocated with a few sandwiches for the lifeguards. The late John Carey was a lifeguard on this beach for several years, and I always had a crush on the lifeguards. I loved John Carey.”

The Kellys struck up a personal rapport with all of the lifeguards, which would eventually include her brother Kell, one of the most proficient rowers on the OCBP.

It was her father, however, who made the stamp that was imprinted on the Kelly family.

Of course both houses Kelly built in Ocean City were made of brick. John B. Kelly started out as a brick layer and laborer, but eventually owned his owned company, whose slogan “KELLY FOR BRICKWORK” on signs and t-shirts were seen at the construction of many of the skyscrapers that make up Philadelphia’s skyline.

An Olympic gold medal rower, John B. Kelly went on to the Henley Regatta on the Thames in London, but because he was a laborer who worked with his hands, was not considered gentleman enough to qualify. It was a slight that he would remember and vow to revenge at the baptism of his son “Kell,” who also became an Olympic champion, and who returned to the river Thames and avenged his father’s slight by winning the Henley.

When Kell returned home, all of Philadelphia met him at the train station and gave him a parade to the Henry Avenue home in East Falls. Even when successful, John B., as he was called, refrained from moving to the more fashionable blueblood Main Line, and stayed in East Falls. For the same reason he shunned the prestigious Margate and Ventnor beach front neighborhoods for Ocean City.

Lizanne, like her mother Margaret Major, was an athlete, played most college sports, basketball, hockey and tennis. Margaret Major Kelly was the first women physical education teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, so sports and competition ran in the family.

“When I was a teenager,” Lizanne recalls, “14^th street was the most popular beach, but everybody went swimming and diving at the Flander’s pool. That’s where I met Don, who became my husband. Grace and Peggy liked to dive, and Don was a great diver, and he taught swimming and diving at the Flanders. I was taking my nieces down and was waiting for them to finish their swimming lessons, sitting poolside, and Don was across the way teaching a lesson. He looked over to me and I looked at him, and he started to imitate me. If I crossed my legs, he crossed his legs, and well, after that, a mutual friend introduced me to him. And that was all, she wrote.”

After the sun went down, they strolled the boardwalk, or hit the Point – Somers Point, where the nightclub scene was in full swing.

“I can remember going over there a lot of times,” she said. “I’ll never forget one time, at Bay Shores, or was it Tony Marts? Grace and I were the youngest, and while we weren’t, we looked over 21, and didn’t have to lie, we just walked in. No one carded us. We didn’t have fake cards because mother wouldn’t have it. She said, ‘You can go in there if they let you in, but I don’t want you drinking with fake ID.’ Well anyway, we went over to see the band Mike Pedicin, Sr.. And while we were there my older sister Peggy came with her husband. She was 23, but they wouldn’t let her in without an ID. She looked in and sees Grace an I sitting there, and we waved and laughed at her, and she got so mad.”

“She said to the man at the door, ‘Look, you let my two younger sisters in, and you won’t let me in?’ And they wouldn’t let her in. We got the biggest kick out of that. The next morning she said, ‘Mother, can you believe they wouldn’t let me in and they let those to brats in!’”

The father, John B. Kelly was one of the founders and builder of the Atlantic City Race Course, which was also built out of brick in 1944. Horses and the race track was always a big part of their family life at the shore. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, before casino gambling came to Atlantic City, the race track would attract 30,000 people for the nightly races. Lizanne’s husband Don Levine worked at the track as a race steward.

In 1960, shortly after returning from his annual Kentucky Derby party, John B. Kelly died, and Lizanne’s mother decided to build the beach house across Wesley Avenue from the original house. “We needed more room for the grandchildren,” Lizanne explained. “Of course it’s a very sold building, I don’t know what they’re going to do, but they’ll have trouble tearing it down. We had a couple of hurricane parties and went upstairs to watch it, and it was fun.”

The most fun, Leveine recalls, were the Labor Day beach barbeques, a seasonal tradition that’s still maintained by the family. “We still do it,” she notes. “ We still have the King of the Surf competition up at the 47^th street beach because we now have too many people on this beach. We have body surf competitions and a chicken bake off. I’m a judge, Grace was a judge, and one year Kell had Frank Purdue down here to judge the bake off.”

Things changed a little bit after Grace married Prince of Monaco and became Princess Grace.

“Those several years were really unbelievable,” she recalled, “because as soon as she came back here people were hanging over the wall and looking in the windows, but we got through it. We got through almost anything.”

The neighbors however, were always very supportive of their privacy. Levine’s cousin John Lehman, who became Secretary of the Navy under President Regan, helped keep the Labor Day beach barbeques going.

“We have surf contests, bake offs, and other competitions,” he said in an interview a few years ago. “Grace used to come back to officiate the competition…She never lost sight of or forgot the values of the ‘family first.’ And that is so rare, since you often find people who succeed…totally sacrifice their families, and she didn’t.”

Grace’s daughter Caroline was visiting Ocean City when her husband died in a sports race accident, and on September 14, 1982 – John Lehman’s birthday, Princess Grace Kelly Grimaldi died in an auto accident in Monaco. It was the first September season she didn’t make it home for the annual family reunion and beach party.

Lizanne Levine and John Lehman continued the family tradition however. “One year we’d have the Labor Day bash here and the next year we’d have it at 47^th street,” said Lizanne. But this year, 2001 will be the last summer for the Kellys at 26^th street.

Some nuns from her old school visited for a week last month, and a new generation of grandchildren are now spending summers in Ocean City, looking for work at Bob’s Grill and the Chatterbox, where Grace once worked as a waitress one summer.

Without any big plans, Lizanne Levine is looking over some of the old photos of the good times in Ocean City.

“I just look around and one thing about this family is that they had not been camera shy. I have pictures that you wouldn’t believe,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of them.”

As for what she’s going to do, “Well, I have friends on the east coast and the west coast of Florida. We always went to the east coast, because of the race track, but I’m going to go up the east coast and back the west coast, visiting all my former friends. They all come to see and visit me in the summer, so I’m going to visit them in the winter, tit for tat.”

“It’s the end of an era,” Levine said, “and we’ve had our share of tragedy, but we’ve had some really good times, too. “

And while she may be checking out, there’s always a new generation of the Philadelphia Kellys coming to Ocean City, where the Kelly family legacy will always be remembered.

[Editor’s note: William Kelly is not related to the Philadelphia family. He’s from the Camden Kelly’s ]

The Waitress at Sunshine Park

THE WAITRESS AT SUNSHINE PARK – By William Kelly

In the summer of 1963 she was a teenager working as a waitress at Sunshine Park, the nudist camp on Somers Point – Mays Landing Road along the Great Egg Harbor river, a summer job at the Jersey Shore resort where she lived in a trailer with her family.

Lorna Anton was working with just an apron on when women who she didn’t know and wouldn’t see again asked her if she would pose for a photograph. She obliged, creating a moment in time that Diane Arbus captured on film, a picture that would become one of the now famous photographer’s best known works, and recently featured in an Arbus retrospective show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

When one of the photos was recently auctioned at Sothby’s, it fetched a cool $138,000, and once again called attention to the photo, the waitress Lora Anton, Arbus, her work and Sunshine Park, the nudist camp, said to be the first of its kind in the country, which operated from 1938 until March 1982.

Arbus, born Diane Nemerov in New York City on March 14, 1923, was herself a fourteen year old teenager when she met Allan Arbus, a U.S. Army Signal Corps photographer, who she married and began a New York fashion photographer business. In 1957, tired of fashion, she began to take photographs independently, and started to focus on people who were different instead of beautiful.

Diane Arbus photographed circus freaks, transvestites and patients in insane asylums, creating a unique genre of work, later explaining “Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don’t quite mean they’re my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. There’s a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.”

In 1963 Arbus made her way to Somers Point and up Mays Landing Road to Sunshine Park campground, which was founded in 1934 by Ilsley Boone, publisher of Sunshine & Health, the official journal of the National Nudist Council.

While it is not yet clear if any other Arbus photos from Sunshine Park exist, she took a few photographs of Lorna Anton in her apron in front of the grill, one of which fetched $16,000 in the 1960s and in April was sold for $138,000, while another one was included in the Arbus retrospective at the Met in May, all of which led Lauren Collins, author of the New York Talk of the Town column to write “Where They Are Now.”

While Arbus received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work in 1963, the year she visited Sunshine Park, and taught photography at Cooper Union School in New York for many years, she committed suicide in July 1971.

At the New Yorker Collins tracked down some of Arbus’ subjects, including “The Child with a Tony Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962, “The Identical Twins from Roselle, New Jersey, 1967” and Lorna Anton, the “Young Waitress at a Nudist Camp, N.J. 1963.”

Now living in Pensacola, Florida with her husband Chris, son Erik, two dogs and two cats, Anton said she lived in a trailer at Sunshine Park with her parents and younger brother from 1961 to 1965, when she attended Oakcrest High school.

In the summer she worked in the dining room of the family nudist resort and recalled that day in July 1963 when, “Arbus came into the dining hall and had a soda. She asked if I had a break coming up, and I said, ‘O.K.’ not thinking anything really, not that I was destined to be a hallmarked as an icon. I was almost thirteen, just at that moment of change, when I was becoming a women, and here was somebody who was actually very interesting and took an interest in me and wanted to have a photograph, and I though well, O.K., that’s cool.”

“I said, ‘Well, how do you want me?’ And she said, ‘Jut put your weight on your right leg and put your other leg forward a bit’ And then she said, ‘Just kind of look over my shoulder,’ which I did. She took maybe one or two shots, and then said thank you and we smiled and she went off.”

Then a waitress, Anton recalled her feeling like, “There were so many things that interested me in life, and so many things that I wanted to do, I really was feeling, I think that I was about to enter on a quest.”

According to Collins, “The ensuing years of Anton’s life have been, like anyone’s, mundane and extraordinary: war protests, marriage, parenthood; pottery, medieval reenactments, health problems…but the Met show has got her thinking about the golden days of Mays Landing.”

“I miss the wonderful environs of the park,” she told Collins. “It ran along the Great Egg Harbor River, a tidal river. The water was the color of root beer, from the cedar trees, and we were always finding arrowheads and axe heads and chips of flint, because the Lenni-Lenape Indians lived along those banks. There was black clay along the banks. We used to goof around and rub our legs in it and say, ‘Oh, I’m having a mud bath!’”

For Arbus, after she died she became the first American photographer honored at the prestigious Venice Biennale. Before she died she said, “Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It’s what I’ve never seen before that I recognize. It’s important to take bad pictures. It’s the bad ones that have to do with what you’ve never done before. They can make you recognize something you hadn’t seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again.”

xxxyyyzz

SIMON LAKE AND THE WRIGHT BROTHERS

SIMON LAKE AND THE WRIGHT BROTHERS – Local Links to Flight

By William Kelly

To fly with the birds, the run like horses, to sink and swim with fishes, to move and go where no man has gone before, to do things man has never done and be the first to do it, were all hallmarks of man’s great technological leaps of the last century.

It’s not a coincidence that Simon Lake went down under, Henry Ford and Harley-Davidson drove and the Wright brothers flew for the first time, all within a short span of time. It was the age of invention, sparked in part by the machine age, when engine power replaced horsepower and propel man into the new century.

That Simon Lake and the Wright brothers were contemporaries is apparent, but that they were also acquaintances, mutual admirers, business associates and possible collaborators is a fascinating footnote to history that has been overlooked and is worth exploring. He may have even designed and built a practical flying machine two years before the Wright brothers.

The Lake family, originally from Pleasantville, purchased Peck’s Beach from the Somers family of Somers Point, and converted the island into the Christian family resort of Ocean City, New Jersey.

When Ralph Lake returned to Ocean City from his Hawaiian coffee plantation to visit his mother and family, he said that his research into his family’s history showed a number of Lake men marrying Somers women, paving the way for the Lake family to convert what the Somers family used as a cattle pen for their plantation, into a full-fledged resort city, just as they had done to Absecon Island and Atlantic City.

What Ralph Lake thought peculiar however, was a short reference to the Wright brothers having a business relationship with Simon Lake, correspondence between them, and the probability that they shared addresses and administrative office space together in London.

Daniel Lake, who gave Pleasantville it’s name, had a son Jesse S. Lake, who married Phoebe Somers, daughter of John R. and Sarah Somers. Jesse was an practical inventor of such things as a whistling buoy, a steering wheel for yachts, rolling shades, a weighting scale and tractor, securing patents for 65 items. Then there was Simon Lake, who married Harriet Somers, the daughter of James and Martha Somers. He was the grandfather of the Simon Lake who invented one of the first practical submarines. Lucas lake, who built the first “turnpike” road to Atlantic City, married Rachel Somers, Phoebe’s sister.

It was John Christopher Lake, whose son Simon Lake, developed the “Argonaut, Jr.,” submarine and organized the Lake Submarine Company. According to the Genealogy of the Lake Family, “In 1901 and 1902 while living at Rutherford, N.J., he invented his flying machine and announced it in the New York Herald over his own signature as follows: “I have a practical everyday flying machine regardless of ordinary wind or weather for air, land and water.” Signed, J. Christopher Lake.”

“This announcement created a furore at that time; but owning to the then questionable practicability of the submarine boat and to the utter impossibility of the flying machine, he was induced to lay the flying machine aside and devote his energies and resources to the submarine interests. This he did for some years and removed to Bridgeport. As VP of the Company, he looked after its business in the United States for some years whenever the President (his son Simon) was in Europe. After the submarine became more popular and the first order was received from the Untied States for a Lake boat and its success was assured, he returned quietly to the promotion of his flying machine. He subsequently purchased the property of the Nutmeg Park Driving Association, with adjoining property of about fifty acres,...After experimenting, building and testing out flying machines within the grounds, he reopened and rechrisened it the “Bridgeport Aerodrome.” It was commonly known, however, as the “Lake Aerodrome”; here was held the first and most successful aviation meet in the State. Since this time he has organized the Lake Aero Company, Inc…having the exclusive rights of manufacture and sale of his flying machine inventions, of his air-borne motor boats, and his flying boats.”

As a student at the University of Dayton, Ohio, I was quite familiar with the Wright brothers. I had to walk past their graves every morning on my way to school, cutting across the cemetery to get to class, and having read most of the available biographies of the men. I had also been to Kill Devil Hill, at Kitty Hawk, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where the Wright brothers first flew a powered, controlled flight in December, 1903.

Having lived in Ocean City, I was also familiar with the Lake family and Simon Lake, the inventor of the first practical submarine, but a connection between the them was a link worth investigating.

While the Wright brothers had never graduated from high school, let alone college, and were humble bicycle mechanics, Simon Lake was the wealthy inventor who had patented ideas for vertical flight – the helicopter, and had developed a number of practical submarines. While the Wright brothers were experimenting with control devices on their gliders, Simon Lake had perfected workable submarines he called the Argonaut and the Protector.

Like the Wright brothers, who were competing with others in the race towards being the first man to fly, Simon Lake was up against Holland’s submarine, which had the endorsement of the US government. The Wright’s main competitor was Samuel P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute.

While Simon Lake took parties down in his submarine, opened a hatch and caught some fish, cleaned and grilled them and held dinner parties on the bottom of the Atlantic ocean, the Wright brothers were perfecting their control devices of their gliders. With the Wright brothers concentrating on control, pitch, roll using wing flaps, devices that are part of every successful flying machine from their first Wright Flyer to the Space Shuttle, Langley was convinced that flying was only a matter of getting enough power from an engine. In the fall of 1903 both of Langley’s well publicized and government financed ($30,000) flights fell right into the Potomac River. The Wrights suggested that Langley try to develop a submarine instead.

Lake had already succeeded in doing that, though the U.S. government declined to buy his Protector, built in 1901-1902. Both Japan and Russian, then at war, were keenly interested in Lake’s subs however, and Lake made a deal with the Ruskies. He shipped the first Protector to St. Petersburg, where it was sent to Vladivostok, 6,000 miles across Russia to Siberia on special railroad cars. The Protector, renamed the Osetr, worked and six more were ordered, and built by the Newport News Shipbuilding Co. and formed the basis of the Russian submarine fleet. Other nations took interest, including the Krupps of Germany, as well as England and France.

Meanwhile, the Wright brothers, on December 17, 1903, flew man’s first powered, controlled flights at Kill Devil Hills, and then retreated to their home in Dayton, where they perfected their “Flyer” over Huffman field, a cow pasture that’s now the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and air museum.

While the Wrights too were having a hard time convincing the U.S. Government and the Army of the utility of their new invention, a flying machine, Simon Lake was in Europe selling his submarines to foreign governments.

From the one citation that Ralph Lake noticed in “Argonaut – the Submarine Legacy of Simon Lake” (By John J. Poluhowich, p. 102), there is the reference that, “…Hart Berg asked Lake to review a proposal that had been submitted….Berg said, “Simon, here is a lot of stuff (Flint) sent over. He has evidently got hold of another ‘crazy inventor’, a man who thinks he can fly, and tells me he can get the European rights to this invention if we assist in financing the building of one of these flying machines.” The ‘crazy inventor’ was Wilber Wright. Lake had an interest in flight….and spent the better part of that evening reviewing the Wright patents and came to the conclusion that the brothers’ claims were justifiable and that the plane would fly. He recommended to Berg that he contact Flint immediately and sign a contract with the brothers as their representative. Inadvertently, Lake did not ask to be a subscriber to their venture, a mistake he would later regret. Flint had requested that Lake permit the Wright brothers to use one of his offices as their European headquarters. Lake befriended Wilber Wright and was able to witness one of the aviator’s first flights at LeMans, France.”

While Orville Wright stayed at home, attempting to convince the Army of the usefulness of the airplane for our national defense, Wilber Wright went to Europe to sell their invention to foreign governments, where he hooked up with Simon Lake, already successful in such dealings.

With Wilber in Europe demonstrating the airplane to the skeptical Europeans, Orville flew at Fort Meyer, Virginia. After a few successful demonstrations, a propeller shaft broke and the plane crashed, injuring Orville and killing his passenger, Lt. Thomas Selfridge, one of the first casualties of flying. Eventually, the Army set a requirement of a two seated flying machine that could stay aloft for at least one hour, and when Orville flew around the Virginia country side for over and hour and fifteen minutes before landing, and no other attempts were made, the Army bought a Wright airplane and began training pilots.

In France, Wilber was breaking new duration records every time he went up in the air. In September 1908 at Le Mans, France, Wilber put on a remarkable demonstration of flying, and after he landed, Mrs. Edith Hart O. Berg asked if she could go for a ride. Without further documentation, Mrs. Berg is most probably the wife of Hart Berg, Simon Lake’s assistant who handled the correspondence from Wilber Wright.

Tying her long skirt down with a rope, Mrs. Berg became the first American women to fly as a passenger in an airplane, taking a short, two minute, seven second flight seated to the right of Wilber Wright. According to reports, “A French fashion designer watching the flight was impressed with the way Mrs. Berg walked away from the aircraft with her skirt still tied. Mrs. Berg was then credited with inspiring the famous ‘Hobble Skirt” fashion.” [Photos of Mrs. Berg in the plane are at: http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/berg.html. ]

One other reference to the Lake and Wright brothers collaboration comes from the website Simon Lake Who? [http://www.simonlake.com/html/simon_lake_who_.html ], which notes, “Simon Lake…shared part of his London office with the Wright brothers who were also forced to market their inventions abroad due to lack of interest by the US government. The inventors first met when the Wright brothers submitted their airplane designs to Simon Lake for his review before making their famous Kitty Hawk flight.”

So there you have it, Simon Lake, the man inspired by Jules Vernes’ “2000 Leagues Under the Sea” who developed the first practical submarine, was a mentor, business associate and friend of the Wright brothers, and played a role in the development and marketing of their invention, the airplane.

MLK AT MARY'S CAFE, Maple Shade, N.J.

MLK at Mary’s Café in Maple Shade (NJ)

Mary’s Café, located at the clover leaf overpass intersection of Route 73 and Main Street, Maple Shade, a suburban town between Camden and Morrestown, is now closed, defunct and owned by the State. When I was riding around the area, my old neighborhood, I stopped by the old highway bar, looked in the door window, and saw the stools upside down on the bar and the interior dirty, dusty and ghostly. But it was pretty much all there, plastic and formica art deco interior that could have been cleaned up and opened as a museum, not of a typical Jersey bar, but the place where Martin Luther King’s attitude on civil rights changed, and thus changed America.

There at least, should be an historical plaque at the curb, letting people know what occurred there on that Sunday afternoon, June 12, 1950.

The account has been memorialized by publishers and ministers, who have taken the liberty to embellish on what they knew of what occurred at Mary’s Café, but the truth is, the experience changed Martin Luther King forever, and was, in retrospect, something of an epiphany that is still having an effect on civil rights in America.

The incident occurred when King was attending Crozier Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. King was driving around that warm Sunday morning with another Crozier student, Walter R. McCall, and their dates, Pearl Smith and Doris Wilson. They stopped at a roadside café, where they were refused service by the proprietor, Ernest Nichols.

When they were refused service, and they refused to leave, Nichols apparently pulled a pistol from behind the bar, stepped to the door and fired the gun in the air. That was enough and King and his party left, but Walter McCall went looking for a policeman and filed a complaint against Nichols, resulting in his arrest. Although there were three other patrons, witnesses there at the time, one reportedly black, they refused to testify and the charges were dismissed, but not before Nichols’ lawyer, W. Thomas McGann, entered Nichols’ statement into the record.

The incident, while not widely known or pulished, is often cited as a key spark to Martin Luther King’s radicalism, instigating his civil activism and the beginning of his attempts to achieve civil rights across a broader spectrum. It is mentioned in most chronologies of civil rights actions in the United States, and is mentioned in most accounts, such as:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/about_king/king-struggle/print.htm

The listing in the chronological history of the civil rights movement simply reads:

12 June 1950

King, Walter R. McCall, Pearl E. Smith, and Doris Wilson are refused service by Ernest Nichols at Mary’s Cafe in Maple Shade, New Jersey. Nichols fires a gun into the air when they persist in their request for service.

There is an account in one crisp paragraph in Bearing the Cross – MLK and Southern Christian Leadership Conference; (p. 40), by David J. Garrow, which won the 1987 Pulitzer and RFK prizes in biography and literature.

“Towards the end of King’s first year at Crozer, another incident involving a gun took place. King, McCall, and their dates had traveled from Chester into nearby New Jersey and stopped at a restaurant in Maple Shade, outside of Camden. The white proprietor refused to serve the foursome, and they chose to remain seated. The owner became furious, pulled a gun, threatened them, and finally ran outside, firing the pistol in the air. With that, the group chose to leave, and McCall sought out a policeman, with whom they returned to the establishment. McCall pressed charges, and three white witnesses initially agreed to testify against the owner. Parental pressure later changed their minds, and to King’s and McCall’s dismay the matter had to be dropped.”

There is no other reference in the records referring to “Parental pressure,” but surely the three witnesses were locals, who frequented Mary’s Café frequently, and would have more to lose testifying against the owner of their local bar than if they didn’t testify at all.

Among those who have called attention to the incident at Mary’s Café, Robert Bogle’s address is a good example.

Listen to how Mr. Robert Bogle, President of The Philadelphia Tribune gets MLK:
Link to Text of Audio File Here 60 second excerpt

King had strong ties to Philadelphia
By Linn Washington Jr., January 14, 2007

Ask 10 people the question which town played a pivotal role in helping shape the Civil Rights philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and 10 out of 10 will most likely name Montgomery, Ala. Not one person would name the small suburban Philadelphia town of Maple Shade, N.J.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1956 may have launched King into international recognition, but King’s first legal fight against racial discrimination took place during the summer of 1950 when he filed a lawsuit against a racist bar owner in Maple Shade.

Ask a different group of 10 the question of where and/or how King developed the intellectual framework for his now legendary strategies on non-violent confrontation, and many will mumble something about influences from King’s childhood growing up in that rigidly racist section of America located south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

However, once again, the Philadelphia area, and not King’s hometown of Atlanta, proved the accelerator for incubating the philosophies that would drive his Civil Rights strategies.

King himself acknowledges many transformative experiences he had in and around Philadelphia, experiences that influenced his life in large and small ways.
These influential experiences include King’s attendance at seminary school in Chester, his taking philosophy classes at the University of Pennsylvania and attending lectures in North Philadelphia, which proved important for his life’s vision.

For example, King wrote in his first book, “Stride Toward Freedom,” that he did not begin “a serious intellectual quest for a method to eliminate social evil” until he entered the Crozer Seminary, then located in Chester.

King enrolled in Crozer in September 1948 after graduating from Atlanta’s famed Morehouse College.

King may have climbed to the metaphysical mountaintop in Memphis in early 1968 – hours before his tragic assassination – but the Prophet of Peace’s philosophical views on the power of non-violent struggle took root in Philadelphia when he attended lectures on the Indian independence leader Gandhi.

One influential introduction to Gandhi took place on a Sunday in 1949 when King attended a lecture at the Fellowship House, then located on Girard Avenue in North Philadelphia. The speaker that day was Dr. Mordecai W. Johnson, the president of Howard University, who had traveled extensively in India.

King later wrote that he found Johnson’s speech “so profound and electrifying that I left the meeting and bought half-dozen books on Gandhi’s life and works.” Less than a decade after hearing Johnson’s “electrifying” speech, King wrote the notable figure asking for his assistance in the work of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

King, in a Dec. 12, 1957, letter to Johnson, explained that the SCLC sought to “implement through non-violent actions the decisions the NAACP has won in the courts.” King quickly pointed out that the SCLC had “no conflict” with the NAACP.
The purpose of King’s letter to Johnson was to ask him to serve on a national advisory committee for SCLC’s “Crusade For Citizenship,” a campaign devised to double the number of Black voters in the South.

At that time, segregationist laws and racist practices blocked the majority of Southern Blacks from exercising their Constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. Passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act – in the wake of massive protests organized by King and others – is one of the major victories of the ’60s era Civil Rights Movement.

While living in the Delaware Valley during the late ’40s and early ’50s, as King’s intellectual acumen expanded during his studies at the Crozer Seminary, his philosophical perspectives also broadened, aided in part by classes that he attended at the University of Pennsylvania.

One of the philosophy classes King audited at Penn was a graduate seminar in the ethics and philosophy of history, taught by professor Elizabeth F. Flower.

King was one of 10 participants in the seminar, which met on the first floor of a building on Walnut Street.

“We had to compete with the noise of the trolley cars on Walnut Street as well as the plumbing noises issuing from the faculty ‘gentlemen’s room,’ which abutted the classroom,” Flowers wrote in a letter decades later. 

“Martin Luther King’s contribution to the discussion was solid and articulate. Interestingly, questions of discrimination do not seem to have come up, but questions of peace and of conflict, of moral order and the effectiveness of a moral stance (as in Gandhi) were much in the air,” the letter stated.

King’s “thought was already vigorous and well-forged,” Flowers recalled. She also remembered King being intrigued by the activist Mohatma Gandhi and the philosopher Immanuel Kant.

Kant “provided several themes which run parallel to the tenor of King’s work,” Flower’s letter continued. Kant saw “humans as objects of respect, simply in virtue of their human rationality, uncrossed by any of the accidents of place, color, creed, origin.”

King’s long sought pilgrimage to India in 1959 – the home of Gandhi – was sponsored by the Philadelphia based American Friends Service Center (AFSC).

King’s guide during his four-week stay in India was an AFSC representative named James Bristol, who lived in India with his family.

Bristol, who lived in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill section prior to his death, once recalled that the “humble” King received a far bigger reception in India than many heads of state because he was “leading a Third World struggle for decent treatment, using Mahatma Gandhi’s method of non-violence to achieve that end. Martin was a natural for adulation and enthusiastic praise in India.”

Despite the royal reception, Bristol said King and his wife, Coretta, refused first class accommodations, preferring to live like regular Indians, sitting on the ground and eating off banana leaves.

When King “let his hair down” during late evening talks, three things became clear to Bristol: King was a militant, he deeply loved his enemies and he knew he would be killed some day.

King was deeply appreciative of AFSC’s sponsorship of his pilgrimage to India, which he called a marvelous experience.

“ Words are inadequate for me to express my appreciation,” King wrote in a March 23, 1959, letter to an AFSC official. While praising Bristol in this letter, King declared that “… I am more convinced than ever before of the potency and rightness of the way of non-violence as a method for social change. I believe I came away with a deeper understanding of non-violence and also a deeper commitment.”
Two years before King’s spiritual pilgrimage to India, he accepted a personal invitation from Kwame Nkrumah to attend the independence ceremonies for the African nation of Ghana.

Nkrumah, like King, had his “Philly Connection,” attending classes at Lincoln University and Penn.

Among the African-American dignitaries invited to the ceremonies by Nkrumah, Ghana’s first post-colonial leader, was the noted Philadelphia businessman, scholar and theologian Bishop R.R. Wright Jr., a pioneering Black banker and the first Black to receive a Ph.D. in sociology from Penn.

The sting of living in a segregated society was deeply embedded in King’s psyche before he came to the Crozer Seminary.

King’s first smack of racism came when he was 6 years old, according to an autobiography of religious development he wrote while at Crozer. This ugly incident occurred when the father of a white childhood friend forbade his son from playing with young Martin simply because King was a Negro.

“Here, for the first time, I was made aware of the existence of a race problem,” King wrote in this autobiography. “From that moment on I was determined to hate every white person.” However, King’s parent’s “would always tell me that I should not hate the white man … that it was my duty as a Christian to love him.”

King discussed how he wrestled with the dilemma of how to love people who hated him. King admitted that he “did not conquer this anti-white feeling until I entered college and came in contact with white students through working in interracial organizations.”

That childhood Atlanta experience was King’s first incidence of racism, but it was seeing a white man point a gun at him in anger that spurred King’s first anti-discrimination lawsuit.

One summer Sunday evening in 1950 when King, his seminary friend Walter McCall and their dates stopped at a Maple Shade, N.J. tavern for a beer, they were denied service by the tavern’s owner, Ernest Nichols.

Nichols cursed the two couples, chasing them from his tavern with a drawn gun. Close friends say King was “livid.” As a well-read person, King knew that New Jersey had one of the few anti-discrimination laws then in existence and decided to fight back with a lawsuit.

King pressed charges and Nichols was found guilty of weapons charges and fined $50.

A civil lawsuit King filed against Nichols with the aid of the Camden NAACP office was later dropped. Many agree that King’s critical views on the Vietnam War were influenced by Philadelphia’s vibrant anti-war movement in the ’60s.

King’s linkage of the Black American Civil Rights struggle with the freedom struggles of other oppressed peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America received early expression during speeches in the Philadelphia area. During a June 1958 speech in Cape May, N.J., King stated the Civil Rights Movement of African-Americans is part of “a worldwide revolt against the slavery and oppression of colonialism and imperialism.”

King returned to Philadelphia frequently throughout his career, both for business and relaxation. Fifteen thousand people attended one 1965 street corner rally where King spoke in Philadelphia. In the months before his April 1968 death, King came to Philadelphia often as he prepared for what would be his final major protest campaign.

King opened the first satellite office for his Poor People’s Campaign inside the real estate office on Diamond Street, owned by C. Delores Tucker.

“Martin was a man of peace,” Tucker once recalled. “But he was obsessed with economic and social justice for everyone, Blacks-whites-Hispanics, Christians and Jews.”

The Poor Peoples Campaign was a protest effort planned for Washington, D.C., to improve conditions of poor people of all colors.

A month after his Philadelphia office opened, King was murdered by an assassin’s bullet on April 4, 1968, while he was in Memphis, Tenn., supporting striking African-American sanitation workers.

“ Martin always said Philadelphia responded to him so well and he found friends here who stayed with him for life,” said Tucker, founder of Philadelphia’s Martin Luther King Center for Social Change. “He always found a responsive community for brotherhood in Philadelphia.”

Statement on Behalf of
Ernest Nichols, State of New Jersey

Vs. Ernest Nichols, by W. Thomas McGann

20 July 1950

Morrestown, N.J.

On 12 June 1950, King, Walter R. McCall, Pearl E. Smith and Doris Wilson had a confrontation with a New Jersey tavern owner, Ernest Nichols, who refused to serve them. 1. King and his friends charged Nichols with violation of a state civil rights law. Nichol’s statement, prepared by his lawyer, defends his refusal to serve the group and his brandishing of a gun. McGann implies wrongdoing on the part of one of the complainants, who was described as “quite insistent that Mr. Nichols sell him package goods or a bottle and this caused Nichols to become upset and excited because he knew he was being asked to do something which constitutes a violation.” McGann argues that Nichols did not generally refused to serve blacks: “it is well known and can be proven without doubt, that for years Mr. Nichols has served colored persons.” Nichols promises to obey the civil rights statute in the future: “Mr. Nichols steadfastly maintains that he is willing to serve colored folks and knows under the law that he must serve colored patrons.” The case was dropped when three witnesses refused to testify on behalf of the complainants.

State of New Jersey Vs. Ernest Nichols, Defendant.

Around 12:45 A.M., Monday morning June 12, 1950 four colored persons came into the tavern of Ernest Nichols, which is located on Route S-41 and Camden Pike, in the Township of Maple Shade, and the County of Burlington. At the time in question, one of the four walked up to the proprietor, Ernest Nichols, and asked him for “package goods.” This Mr. Nichols refused to sell and stated that it was Sunday and he could not sell “package goods” on Sunday or after 10:00 P.M. on any day. Then the applicant asked for a bottle of beer and it is alleged that Mr. Nichols answered “no beer, Mr.!” Today is Sunday.” The applicant was quite insistent that Mr. Nichols sell him package toods or a bottle and this caused Nichols to become upset and excited because he knew he was being asked to do something which constitutes a violation and which might get him into trouble, were he to submit to the request of the colored man.

It is alleged that Mr. Nichols, while the colored folks were still in his tavern, obtained a gun and walked out the door of his tavern and while outside fired the gun in the air. Mr. Nichols claims that this act was not intended as a threat to his colored patrons. The colored patrons, on the other hand, while they admit that the gun was not pointed at them or any of them, seemed to think that it was a threat. Mr. Nichols on the other hand states that he has been held up before and he wanted to alert his watchdog who was somewhere out side the tavern grounds.

Admittedly my client was excited and upset and perhaps gave the impression that he was and is antagonistic to negroes and did not want to serve them because of their color. On the other hand, it is well known and can be proven without doubt, that for years Mr. Nichols has served colored patrons. I might point out that at the arraignment before Judge Charlton, the Judge, and the prosecuting attorney, George Barbour, Esquire, readily admitted that they knew Mr. Nichols has served colored folks in the past.

Mr. Nichols became so excited and upset because he was under the impression that the visit by the four colored patrons was an obvious attempt to get him to violate the law so that they could report his misconduct and violation to the authorities. He felt that the colored gentleman, who asked for “package goods,” who appeared to be an intelligent man, was well acquainted with the regulation prohibiting taverns from selling bottle goods or “package goods” on Sunday and after 10:00 in the evening. This circumstance, in itself, made my client very suspicious of the actions and requests of the complainants. He thought at the time that surely the colored gentleman knew that his request constituted a violation. I might point out here that at the hearing in Maple Shade one of the colored witnesses admitted that he was asking for something that might constitute a “violation.”

The colored patrons left the tavern within a few minutes and returned again to chat with certain persons at the bar. This tended to confirm my client’s conviction that the complainants were endeavoring to in some way ensnare him in some violation of the law.

Mr. Nichols steadfastly maintains that he is willing to serve colored folks and knows that under the law he must serve colored patrons so long as their requests are lawful and the patrons in question are not under the influence of intoxicants. Mr. Nichols further says that in the past he has served colored patrons and is presently continuing to do so.

This statement is submitted in the spirit of assisting the Prosecutor of the Pleas, of Burlington County in the investigation of the case in question. The statement is submitted without prejudice to the rights of the defendant.

[signed as below]

W. Thomas McGann,

Attorney for Ernest Nichols.

TDS. WTMc

1. Walter Raleigh McCall (1923-1978), a Morehouse classmate of King’s, graduated from Crozer in 1951. He later pursued postgraduate work at Temple University in 1952-1953 and as Atlanta University in 1958. McCall served as dean and chaplain at Fort Valley State College from 1951 until 1957, when he became pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Atlanta. He was the director of Morehouse’s School of Religion from 1965 until 1969.