By Jack McBride White
October 21st, 1937. About 10:30. The kids are in school. The sun shines over Sykesville, and a stiff breeze blows north up Main Street. It’s a cold fall day, and there’s no reason to suspect that disaster is about to strike. But it is, and it does.
Fires were common around Sykesville in those days. Many a large building had been taken by fire, but this was the first time all of Main Street was at risk. The Herald wrote: “Readers are asked to be patient with us for being late. Like other public-spirited volunteers, the Herald force aided in fighting the fire.”
War
They were tough times for the town. World War I. The Depression. The fire on Main Street. And then World War II. Four days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on December 11, 1941, the Reverend Karl B. Justus wrote on the front page of the Herald:
“We now find ourselves embroiled in the second World War. Though this may not be to our liking, it is the real fact of that which seemed inevitable. We must forget our likes and dislikes; we must join the call of our President, regardless of party or politics, in a national unity invincible; and we must prepare ourselves to meet untold sacrifice.”
The April 15, 1943, Herald shows two Sykesville marines, Robert G. Lyons (left) and Harry L. Sandosky shortly after their arrival at Parris Island for training.
Soon, the paper was running a weekly feature called “With Those in Service” to report on those who’d left for the war.
Casualties
On February 3rd, 1944, the Herald wrote lamenting “the grim reality that the war is a long way from being won” and complained of the “draft’s constant drain on the men of the community. This week several more men from Sykesville’s thinning ranks passed their final physicals and were accepted to military service to begin sometime within 20 to 90 days.”
On January 31 of 1944, Lt. Gerald B. Lyons of Eldersburg became the first from the area to die in combat. He was a soldier. In his last letter home, he had written from the Fiji Islands, “The Japs have been bombing us rather heavily. Keep your chin up and don’t worry about me. I know how to take care of myself.”
He left behind a wife and two-year-old daughter.
He was followed by Cpl. Gurney Davis.
Post WWII Blues
Sykesville survived the war. Most of those who left came home. But it wasn’t war or fire or depression that brought Sykesville so low a couple decades later. Rather, it was an accumulation of things — the automobile, the nationwide rush to suburbia in the late 1940s and early 50s, the slow disintegration of American small-town life, and other tragedies, departures and losses, most small, but together slowly devastating.
Not to mention the uncontrolled growth of Eldersburg.
While the High School Burns, Another Struggle for Water
In 1957, eight years after the trains stopped bringing tourists and 20 years after Main Street burned, fire struck again, this time incinerating much of Sykesville High School on the grounds where Sykesville Middle stands today, and once again burning out of control as the local firefighters struggled for water.
The April 18 Herald reported: “Firemen from a dozen companies fought the blaze for five hours. Though handicapped in the early stages by difficulty in obtaining water, they prevented the spread of the flames to two more recently constructed units of the local school, the cafeteria-auditorium and the elementary department.”
In 1937, it was a clogged fire plug. This time it was a problem of distance.
“Hose lines were laid to the nearest fire plug, in the Springfield Hospital grounds, a good quarter mile away. In the precious moments required for this operation, the flames roared out of control. Ironically, a town water line, which would have placed a fire plug within a few feet of the school, was defeated two years ago by a single vote.”
Does anyone want to run this town?
In the same issue as the fire story, the Herald reported that the mayor, R. Earl Carter, had declined to seek re-election after serving since 1949, and that Millard H. Weer, a former town mayor and former postmaster, had also declined the nomination. That left the town’s barber, Leroy “Happy” Keeney, as the only candidate, and the only person in all of Sykesville who wanted the job. He won easily.
Interest in running the town hardly picked up over the next decade. In April of ’67, five candidates were nominated for three council seats at a meeting where almost no one showed up.
The town’s mayor, now a local pharmacist known as Doc McDougall, described the attendance as “pathetic.”
The Herald wrote: “With terms of half of the council at stake, during a crucial period when such major problems as water and sewerage must be met, only nineteen citizens, out of a population in excess of 1200, attended the nominating session.”
One of the attendees was Thelma Wimmer. Then already over fifty and enthusiastic about Sykesville with a passion few others could muster, she was destined to become one of the driving forces behind the effort to save the town several decades later. She was elected to town council that year, but her most important work lay far in the future.
Rats Eating Dog Food on Main Street
Thirty years after the lone Sykesville fire truck failed to save Main Street, Sykesville’s volunteer fire department on Main Street was hard-pressed to save itself, as the station, along with two fire engines and most of the equipment, burned.
Former Sykesville town manager James Schumacher recalled the state of Main Street in the late 1960s.
“Quite a bit of it had turned to slums, and there were serious health problems in the downtown area. When I was 18 or 19, I worked in a food market on Main Street. There were terrible problems with rats. They’d eat holes in the bags of dog food and sometimes you could hear them scurrying around in the back. It was a time that inspired a lot of pessimism in this town.”
To enter town from route 32 on the Howard County side, you passed the Patapsco Inn and the Sykesville Inn, two rowdy bars at the edge of town. In one, at least, a hole in the floor opened to the water below and served as a latrine.
The June 22nd Herald, which came out a day after, included the following.
Bridge Out
Bridge on Old Route 32 going into Sykesville was washed out about 3 a.m. Thursday, June 22.
Trains Out
Rail lines at curve in distance were washed out. All rail traffic south from Philadelphia was cancelled due to area flooding.
Lines Down
Fallen cables resemble a swinging foot bridge looking across the river to Howard County. Rains started on Wednesday morning.
The Bright Side
Ellie Meyd says, “To earn money, I and most of my girlfriends started babysitting when we were about 12 or 13 for 50 cents an hour or 75 cents an hour after midnight. My first real job for one dollar an hour and 20 percent discount was at Harris Department Store, which was next to the Harris Grocery Store.
“Harris sold shoes, children’s, men’s, and ladies’ clothing. We also carried a full-line of nurse’s uniforms for the hospital workers.
“To eat you went to the Fire Bell next to the Fire Hall or to McDougall’s drug store counter. When we needed poster board for school projects, we went to the Herald. As teens we hung out at each other’s homes.”
Darkness Falling
They were boxy concrete dives that looked like they’d been set up temporarily and never shut down. By then they were known as Suzie’s and The Duke’s Place.
Fights were common. Police were seldom called. During one brawl, a man fired a shotgun into the air. Another was stabbed. Finally, in May of 1986, someone was shot.
It happened in the parking lot of Suzie’s on a night when three fights inside the bar had gone unreported to police. Reports vary, but apparently two women got into a fight. Douglas Kennedy of Sykesville tried to break it up, and Richard Overly, who may have been forcing one of the women out of the bar, shot him.
The Spirit Leaving the Corpse
Lloyd Helt, a preacher’s son from Pennsylvania, who served as Sykesville’s mayor from 1982 to 1994, summed the era up this way.
“Sykesville was sleeping for a long time and almost died. There was a point in the seventies when a lot of merchants who ran the town government were very depressed and negative. They just weren’t making it economically. The town council was ready to turn the town charter over to the county and let them run it – to, in fact, dissolve the town. You might say the spirit was leaving the corpse.”
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