Before the rumble of jets became part of the soundscape above Patuxent River Naval Air Station, before shopping centers and neighborhoods sprang up nearby, the landscape of what is now the Navy base hosted farmhouses, two churches, clusters of homes and the town of Pearson.
Ernest Webster Dyson, 91, knows — because he was there.
Dyson, born Oct. 4, 1920, talked this week at the Garvey Senior Center in Leonardtown about what life was like before the Navy arrived in 1943 — a time when he, his eight brothers, three sisters and his parents lived on property that is now part of Pax River.
Dyson affirmed just how drastic that change has been.
“We lived on a farm and had cattle, chickens, turkeys, ducks and some crops, and at times we’d set traps for muskrats for the fur, but other than that there wasn’t too much going on,” he joked. “But we raised tobacco, corn, navy beans — there was a lot of farming down here.”
Dyson’s mother worked at an area hotel while his father tended to the farm. The pair also made their own beer, whiskey and wine on the side, he said. “Of course, Maryland was a dry state then, so bootlegging was a good living,” he said.
The talk was the first of a two-part series celebrating Black History Month in St. Mary’s County.
“Part of our goals at the Garvey Senior Activity Center is to provide quality programs to the citizens of St. Mary’s County, and we think this series does just that,” said Brandy Tulley, senior program specialist for the center. “We just have such a rich history here in Southern Maryland, and in talking to some of the senior members of our community, we have the opportunity to learn so much more about our county and how it has changed.”
Dyson attended school from age 7 to 12, walking 3½ miles from his home to a one-room schoolhouse in California. “Only the white Catholic school children rode the bus to school, Little Flower, but that was just the way it was,” he said.
His school had roughly 35 to 40 students, he said, and all ages were taught at once by the same teacher. In their free time Dyson, his friends and his siblings would spend their time outside playing “round pole,” a sport he said was similar to baseball.
But after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, authorization for the construction of the Navy base was granted, forcing the residents of the 6,412 acres purchased by the U.S. government to move in “just a short time,” Dyson said — usually no more than a month.
Many of those uprooted by the government action stuck around the area to work at the Navy base, which was completed in April 1943, though most of Dyson’s family moved to New York and New Jersey “to be with our people there,” he said. Dyson was living in Prince George’s County at the time, where he had moved to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps in College Park around the age of 16.
“I stayed up around there until I was about 19” before moving back to St. Mary’s County, he said. He met his wife shortly after, marrying in 1941 at the age of 21.
In 1944, Dyson joined the Army, serving until he was forced out in 1946 for having more than three children, the mandated limit at the time for a person in the armed forces. During his tour of duty he served as a medical aide administering shots, drawing blood and taking care of patients, serving at various duty stations in Pennsylvania, Alabama, Georgia and Missouri. He even served a nine-month tour in Korea, during which time his only pay was two cartons of cigarettes and two cases of beer a month, he said. “It worked out for me, though, because I didn’t smoke or drink, so I just sold it all off. But when I got back I got one big check for the whole nine months, so that was good,” he said.
Once out of the Army, Dyson took up wine making like his mother. At one time he had “about 48 gallons of it under my house,” he said, though he was never a drinker, and spent his time tending to his 12 children — seven girls and five boys. “It wasn’t too hard,” he said. “I worked night and day on a chicken farm for a while to support ’em, but they pretty much entertained themselves.”
Dyson also oystered and crabbed for a living after his discharge from the service, all the way up to his retirement. “I gave up oystering in 2004 after my wife died,” he said, back when he was 84 “and could still keep up.”
Dyson said he’s slowed down quite a bit in recent years, enjoying time spent with family in the area. “Now I don’t have nothin’ to do ... ’cept run my mouth,” he joked. “I’ve just got too old. But so far I’m doing pretty good, so I just gotta keep going.”
jgoolsby@somdnews.com
If you go
A discussion on the Drayden African-American Schoolhouse — the second of the two-part Black History Month series — will take place at the Garvey Senior Activity Center in Leonardtown on Wednesday, Feb. 22, at 10:30 a.m. All are invited to learn the history and view photos of the schoolhouse located at its original site on Cherryfield Road in Drayden. Light refreshments will be served. To register, call 301-475-4200, ext. 1050.
