Moses Byington, the Tidewater Girl Scouts and My Crime Characters

What do Moses Byington (a 1918 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy of Annapolis) and the Girl Scouts of Tidewater Virginia have in common?

Pull up a chair by the fire in my den, share a pitcher of Broken Hearts, recipe by Sheila York, and I'll tell you…

It was dawn after one of the worst hurricanes that ever hit Tidewater Virginia in decades. The low-lying city of Norfolk was either under water or frozen in shock at the devastation. Traffic stopped, streetcars stalled, even the world-famous Naval Base was almost at a standstill.

Two high school girls reported at sunrise at the site of Camp Apasus, the Girl Scout Day Camp of the Virginia Tidewater Girl Scouts.

Why? Because we cared. We were junior camp counselors, Melissa Warfield and I, both honor students at Granby High, Senior Scouts who tried to live by the Girl Scout Promise: "On my honor, I will try, to serve God and my country, to help people at all times, and to live by the Girl Scout Laws."

Melissa, a gifted person in outdoor survival skills, would serve later as Dr. M.A. Warfield, Director of the King's Daughters Hospital in Norfolk. I would follow paths of teaching and administration in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Rhode Island and Manhattan, devoting one year as Norfolk Director of the Girl Scouts, under the leadership of the inspiring Georgie Harris, a dedicated public servant, who had trained both Melissa and me, as well as hundreds of other young people, in the arts and skills of outdoor living and surviving, both at the day camp and the regional Camp Matoaka, on the beautiful tree-lined shores of Lake Prince, near Suffolk.

We learned a lot in those years—the meaning of service, sharing, discipline, responsibility, self-knowledge, innovation, creativity, loyalty—the Girl Scout Laws were as a bible to us: "I will do my best to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate and caring, courageous and strong, responsible for what I say and do, respect myself and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, and make the world a better place, and be a sister to every Girl Scout."

Your word was your bond in living that close to nature—open to the elements after a storm, a hurricane, unseen dangers.

When you are raising the roof of a canvas tent to shelter children—you have to work in perfect concert with your peers. There is no room for grandstanding or self-absorption in the deep woods, where underneath wild beauty lurks danger—spiders, poisonous insects, snakes, dark leaves—a hundred species of wild life.

Activities near one of the most powerful naval installations on the planet—where friends, relatives, neighbors were often employees of the U.S. Navy—were permeated with a visible and symbolic presence to us Scouts. Patriotism was as much a part of daily life as breathing!

So, how does this fit into the Crime Writer's Chronicle???

The combination of this heavy naval presence and background, combined with family tales of my relative, Moses Byington, inspired my early drafts of crime fiction, centering around a band of men who had served in the U.S. Navy. The scope included an ex-Navy SEAL, an ex-naval Commander, their women, and extended to other areas of service, such as the NYPD, Tennessee and Rhode Island police, sheriff units, the CIA, the White House and various posts in the nation's capital. And as time passes the circle has widened to include Manhattan psychiatrists, a governor's wife and a raft of other professionals.

To any serious writer, one's characters are as real as the people who inspired their existence, the wonderful professionals I was privileged to serve with—on the shores of Lake Prince and Chesapeake Bay.

As the Girl Scout song goes, "Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver, the other gold."

T.J. Straw

Hurricane of August 1944 Redux

Here's Robin Hathaway's post from August of last year, where she reminisces about the Great Storm that hit Stone Harbor, carrying away their boardwalk, which was never replaced. I thought you might find it edifying this week – Kate Gallison

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MONDAY, AUGUST 29, 2011

Memories of a Hurricane Past
Stone Harbor, New Jersey, August, 1944.

The day began overcast and muggy. As the day wore on the air became more clammy and clingy and there was an eerie stillness. No leaf, flag, or skirt stirred. My brother and I were restless and excited. Our father was nervous, listening closely to the warnings on the radio. Our mother was oblivious, napping on the sofa.

Around four o’clock the sky took on a yellow stain. A little later, the wind and rain began. Our house was only a block and a half from the ocean. My brother and I took up our post on the stair landing, where there was a window from which we could see the boardwalk and the ocean. As we gleefully watched the storm gather strength our father banged doors and windows shut, and our mother slept peacefully on.

Suddenly, as we watched, the little pavilion on the boardwalk, with its bright green roof, was tossed in the air, as if part of a toy village, and disappeared. About this time, our father decided to evacuate us and return to Philadelphia. “Everyone put on your rain gear and grab your most precious possession,” he ordered. “We’re leaving.”

At this point the lights went out and my mother woke up. “What’s going on?” she asked, innocently. Immediately taking in the situation, she said, “John, don’t you think it’s a little late for that?”

But my father persisted and I found myself in my bedroom facing a difficult decision. On top of the bed lay my violin, newly purchased for the pursuit of a musical career. Under the bed was a pair of fuzzy, bunny, bedroom slippers. After a few seconds, I grabbed the slippers.

Finally gathered on the front porch, clutching our personal treasures, we watched the rushing torrent that had once been 86th Street. Although the water was over the hubcaps of our car, my father, led us bravely down the steps toward it. Just then a police car appeared, churning water right and left. The officer rolled down his window and waved us back. “Stay where you are,” he said. “Your house is on the highest point of land.” {Not all that reassuring since everyone knows, the Jersey Shore is flat.) He churned onward.

Back we trooped into the darkening house, to sit in gloom at the kitchen table eating cold cuts and sipping lemonade. (I think my parents had something stronger.)

Two hours later, the sun burst out in the form of a radiant sunset. The winds died down, the rivers receded, and the streets reappeared. It was one of the most tranquil evenings I can remember. Eagerly, my brother and I set out to see the damage. A strange scene met our eyes. The boardwalk that had stretched the length of the beach for almost a hundred years had vanished. All that remained were the pilings that looked as if they had been measured and sawed off at the exact same height by an unseen hand. At regular intervals along the sand, were neat piles of seashells – exotic conchs that had never graced the Jersey Shore before. An apartment house, a longtime fixture on the boardwalk, had been stripped of its seaward wall, and looked like the back of a giant doll’s house – all its rooms visible with their furnishings tumbled about.

Belatedly realizing that we might be in danger – of exposed electric wires, gaping chasms, etc., – our parents appeared and dragged us home. When I entered my room, the first thing I saw was my violin. Still snug in its case on the bed – a sad reminder of a musical career – lost forever.

Robin Hathaway

Hurricane Irene in Lambertville: How it Went

Here's how the hurricane went in our little town.

As regards our private lives, in the interest of full disclosure I must reveal that Harold, my spouse, grew up on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and knows from hurricanes. It's a rare year when they don't get a tropical storm coming on shore there. So he was an anchor of calm in the wish-wash of uncertainty and fright. I bid goodnight on Saturday to Jim Cantore as he stood on the Battery predicting disaster and laid an untroubled head on my pillow, there to fall asleep lulled by the pleasant sound of wind and rain.

But the public life of Lambertville was going nuts even as we slept.

In the morning the electricity was off. This meant, first of all, no coffee. Secondly, no news. No TV, no internet, nobody in the family had an Iphone or even a battery-operated radio. Church had already been called off, a first in the history of St. Andrews, as far as I'm aware, and there were other inconveniences, other wants, but no coffee and no news were the worst. What of Jim Cantore? Was he standing there still, the water now up to his chin? What of the threatening Delaware River? What of our little town of Lambertville?

Eventually we suited up and went out in the rain and gusty wind, careful not to stand under trees. We looked at the Delaware, high, fast, and full of tree limbs, where the ducks were struggling not to be swept clear down to Trenton. Fly, you ducks! Fly! After we saw the river we walked around town. People were standing together in knots, hanging onto their hats and swapping gossip. We stopped and talked to them. They said, "Did you see the boat?"

The Bridge. Note the urn-shaped posts.

At the bridge where Union Street passes over Swan Creek a startling sight met our eyes: a motorboat on a trailer, upended in the middle of the bridge, on the upstream side of which a ten-foot length of the concrete bridge railing was pushed over and broken in pieces. Police had blocked off the street. The old urn-shaped posts and the newer, oatmeal-box-shaped posts were scattered here and there. Apparently a flash flood had come down the creek, sending debris-filled water into the city parking lot and up the sides of people's houses. High water marks could be seen.

No journalists were anywhere in evidence. As a result, exactly what happened there may never be known. As we continued to wander around in the rain talking to people we heard many accounts of the event, most involving greater or lesser degrees of incompetence on the part of the water company and various city officials. It was generally agreed that a four-foot wall of water had come down Swan Creek from the city reservoir, looming above us, confined by an earthen dam. Either water was released from the reservoir to ease pressure on the dam, thereby saving the city from the much worse fate of a burst dam, or water somehow spontaneously erupted from the reservoir as a result of the heavy rain, or incompetent water company minions lost control of a controlled release. People in the streets screamed and ran. "What were they doing in the streets at one-thirty in the morning in the middle of a hurricane?" "Screaming and running," was the reply. Many people had to be evacuated from their homes.

The water swept the boat and its trailer out of a yard that backed on the creek and hurled it into the bridge railing, which broke.

And at that point, Jersey Central Power and Light cut off the power and the city of Lambertville went dark, to remain so for three or four days, depending on what part of town you were in. The water went down an hour later, but there were still problems with the power lines.

When daylight came a tourist with New York plates was seen collecting one of the urn-shaped pieces of the bridge railing and putting it in his car. If ever you wonder why the locals here are sometimes hostile to tourists, this is the sort of behavior that brings it on.

I would love to see this story covered in a newspaper, just like they used to do in the old days. I would love to hear the thump of a newspaper on our porch, open it up, smelling the fresh printer's ink, and read a cogent account of the Swan Creek flood. But it isn't going to happen. In a few months we may read that some of the irate residents are suing the city, or the water company; houses got water in them that never had water before. It must be somebody's fault.

As for us, we remain dry, and hope you are the same.

Kate Gallison

Memories of a Hurricane Past

Stone Harbor, New Jersey, August, 1944.

The day began overcast and muggy. As the day wore on the air became more clammy and clingy and there was an eerie stillness. No leaf, flag, or skirt stirred. My brother and I were restless and excited. Our father was nervous, listening closely to the warnings on the radio. Our mother was oblivious, napping on the sofa.

Around four o’clock the sky took on a yellow stain. A little later, the wind and rain began. Our house was only a block and a half from the ocean. My brother and I took up our post on the stair landing, where there was a window from which we could see the boardwalk and the ocean. As we gleefully watched the storm gather strength our father banged doors and windows shut, and our mother slept peacefully on.

Suddenly, as we watched, the little pavilion on the boardwalk, with its bright green roof, was tossed in the air, as if part of a toy village, and disappeared. About this time, our father decided to evacuate us and return to Philadelphia. “Everyone put on your rain gear and grab your most precious possession,” he ordered. “We’re leaving.”

At this point the lights went out and my mother woke up. “What’s going on?” she asked, innocently. Immediately taking in the situation, she said, “John, don’t you think it’s a little late for that?”

But my father persisted and I found myself in my bedroom facing a difficult decision. On top of the bed lay my violin, newly purchased for the pursuit of a musical career. Under the bed was a pair of fuzzy, bunny, bedroom slippers. After a few seconds, I grabbed the slippers.

Finally gathered on the front porch, clutching our personal treasures, we watched the rushing torrent that had once been 86th Street. Although the water was over the hubcaps of our car, my father, led us bravely down the steps toward it. Just then a police car appeared, churning water right and left. The officer rolled down his window and waved us back. “Stay where you are,” he said. “Your house is on the highest point of land.” {Not all that reassuring since everyone knows, the Jersey Shore is flat.) He churned onward.

Back we trooped into the darkening house, to sit in gloom at the kitchen table eating cold cuts and sipping lemonade. (I think my parents had something stronger.)

Two hours later, the sun burst out in the form of a radiant sunset. The winds died down, the rivers receded, and the streets reappeared. It was one of the most tranquil evenings I can remember. Eagerly, my brother and I set out to see the damage. A strange scene met our eyes. The boardwalk that had stretched the length of the beach for almost a hundred years had vanished. All that remained were the pilings that looked as if they had been measured and sawed off at the exact same height by an unseen hand. At regular intervals along the sand, were neat piles of seashells – exotic conchs that had never graced the Jersey Shore before. An apartment house, a longtime fixture on the boardwalk, had been stripped of its seaward wall, and looked like the back of a giant doll’s house – all its rooms visible with their furnishings tumbled about.

Belatedly realizing that we might be in danger – of exposed electric wires, gaping chasms, etc., – our parents appeared and dragged us home. When I entered my room, the first thing I saw was my violin. Still snug in its case on the bed – a sad reminder of a musical career – lost forever.


Robin Hathaway