Worcester County Council of Defense

In the record (6)

1. 1941 · 1941-04-28

   The machinery that reached Ocean City in December was built in Annapolis in the spring: Chapter 567 of 1941 created a new Maryland Council of Defense and repealed the one left over from the last war.

   1941 was a Maryland General Assembly year — Session 326, 1 January to 31 March 1941, a single regular session with no special session, checked in the Archives of Maryland session table rather than assumed from the biennial rule. Chapter 567 of the Acts of 1941 (Senate Bill 465), printed at pages 978-981 of Archives of Maryland volume 582, added a new sub-title and eight new sections to Article 41 of the Annotated Code: 'The Maryland Council of Defense, hereinafter designated as the "Council", is hereby created', with twenty-six named original members including Governor Herbert R. O'Conor and Attorney General William C. Walsh, and with power in the Governor to name its chairman, fill every vacancy 'however occurring', and enlarge it to forty. Its funding purposes run from 'mobilizing, equipping, compensating, transporting, supplying and maintaining' the National Guard to anything else 'deemed necessary and proper... for the defense of the State, the safety of its people, and the protection of property'. The act expressly repealed Chapter 24 of the Extraordinary Session of 1917 — the First World War body of the same name. Eight months later that chain of authority ran down through a Worcester County Council of Civilian Defense to a Thursday-evening meeting in the Ocean City municipal building.

   Maryland Council of Defense (1941)Maryland Council of Defense

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

2. 1941 · 1941-12-11

   Four days after Pearl Harbor and on the day Germany declared war, the Ocean City council sat down and organised a home defence council — eleven departments, twenty-two names, and a Department of Evacuation.

   The 1940 minute book does not mention the war once, in the year of the fall of France. The 1941 book does not mention it either — until 11 December. The council met at 7:15 on Thursday evening with Mayor C. P. Cropper and Councilmen Harold Rayne and Raymond Bounds, granted a building permit to Chas. S. Powell for a two-apartment dwelling on the alley between 11th and 12th Streets, let the English Diner move to a site next to the Post Office on Dr. Chas. W. Purnell's ground, and resolved to borrow from the Bank of Ocean City to meet bonds and coupons due 1 January. Then: 'Mr. S. Earl Tromley, John I. Timmons and Miss Lena Riggin were present to help in organizeing home defence council and the following were selected to head the orginization.' Those three were not helpful neighbours. As the Worcester Democrat printed a week later, they were the entire executive of the Worcester County Council of Defense — Tromley its Executive Director, Timmons its Chief Air Raid Warden, and Miss Lena H. Riggin its Executive Secretary, all three of Snow Hill — going town to town. They were carrying an order. The same paper prints the telegram that sent them: 'Supplementing my telegram December 10, immediate arrangements must be made to hold blackouts just as quickly as possible. No delay in this matter, as conditions are very serious. Let me know when ready. Col. Henry Barrett, Director of air raid Precaution Service for Maryland.' The roster Ocean City adopted that night, verbatim from the minute: John B. Lynch, Commander. Harold Rayne and L. B. Cropper, Dept. of Public Safety. J. M. Mumford and Robert Allen, Dept. of Public Works. Dr. F. J. Townsend and Guy R. P. Dennis, Dept. Public Health. Archie Davis and Morris Peacock, Dept. Fire Protection. D. Trimper Sr. and Denard Baker, Dept. Transporation. Arthur Davis and Preston Laws, Dept. Gen. Supplies. Rev. Dewees and F. W. Truitt, Dept. Evacuation. Willie Ludlam and Gladys Jackson, Red Cross. E. M. Scott and Chas. J. Jackson, Communication. Bob Jackson and Wm. H. Purnell, Air Wardens. The council adjourned at eleven. Pocomoke City's mayor and council met specially the same Thursday evening and resolved to organise a Civilian Defense Corps of their own, and Pocomoke's published department list — Public Safety, Evacuation, Transportation, Communications, Public Works, Fire Protection, General Supply, Public Health — is the same scheme under the same headings. So the eleven departments were a template handed down, not a local invention; what Ocean City supplied was twenty-two names, and the names are the whole value of the document. By 18 December the county could report that Home Defense Corps in Snow Hill, Pocomoke City, Berlin and Ocean City were 'now complete in every detail', and Mayor Clifford P. Cropper sat on the county council himself.

   Ocean City Home Defense CouncilBank of Ocean CityClifford P. CropperHarold J. RayneE. Raymond BoundsJohn B. LynchS. Earl TromleyMiss Lena H. RigginGladys JacksonMorris PeacockWillie LudlamFrancis J. TownsendArchie DavisL. B. CropperRobert AllenJ. M. MumfordDaniel Trimper, Sr.W. Preston LawsF. W. TruittEdward M. ScottWilliam H. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

3. 1941 · 1941-12-14

   Three days after naming them, Ocean City sent its mayor, its defence Commander and one of its two air wardens to a 'Council of War' with the Governor in Annapolis.

   On Sunday 14 December 1941 Governor Herbert R. O'Conor held a 'Council of War' in Annapolis for the counties' Local Directors, Chief air raid wardens, State and District defense council members 'and many county and municipal authorities'. Thirteen Worcester County men and women went. From Snow Hill: Mayor John O. Byrd, S. Earl Tromley, John I. Timmons, Samuel E. Shockley and Miss Lena H. Riggin. From Pocomoke City: Eldred C. Hill, Henry P. Walters, Fred U. Henderson, Lacey F. Dryden and William H. Hancock. And from Ocean City: 'Mayor Clifford P. Cropper, John B. Lynch and William H. Purnell' — the mayor, the man the council had made Commander of its home defence council seventy-two hours earlier, and one of its two Air Wardens. The roster written down in the municipal building on the Thursday evening was in the state capital by Sunday. It was the same weekend that the flashes appeared on the Atlantic horizon off the town they had left behind.

   Ocean City Home Defense CouncilClifford P. CropperJohn B. LynchWilliam H. PurnellS. Earl TromleyJohn I. TimmonsMiss Lena H. Riggin

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

4. 1941 · 1941-12-20

   Within a week the county reported itself organized 'in every detail': four Home Defense Corps — Ocean City, Berlin, Snow Hill and Pocomoke City — under a Worcester County Council of Defense on which Ocean City's mayor sat, waiting on a 'zero hour' for a total blackout.

   On Thursday 18 December 1941 the Worcester County Council of Defense announced that 'Organization of Home Defense Corps in Snow Hill, Pocomoke City, Berlin and Ocean City are now complete in every detail', and that its own members had been approved that week by the Board of Worcester County Commissioners. The Worcester Democrat printed the whole slate: Chairman, Maurice Costen of Pocomoke City; Executive Director, S. Earl Tromley of Snow Hill; Executive Secretary, Miss Lena H. Riggin of Snow Hill; Honorary Chairman, Charles L. Mason of Pocomoke City; Chief Air Raid Warden, John I. Timmons of Snow Hill; Chief of Public Utilities Service, R. Harlan Robertson; Chief of Public Information, Jack Culver; Chief of Emergency Service, G. Hale Harrison of Berlin; Chief of Police Service, J. William Hall of Berlin; Chief of Medical Service, Dr. Louis G. Llewelyn of Pocomoke City; and among the other council members Thomas F. Johnson, Samuel E. Shockley and Mayor John O. Byrd of Snow Hill, Dr. Thomas Y. Franklin and Mayor William Whaley of Berlin, Mayor E. Wilford Ross of Pocomoke City, and Mayor Clifford P. Cropper of Ocean City. Two days later, on 20 December, Tromley told the Salisbury Times that 'with defense in Worcester County completely organized', plans were almost ready for a complete air raid blackout across the county 'within the next few nights', which would 'press into action the four Home Defense Corps, now functioning in Ocean City, Berlin, Snow Hill and Pocomoke City, all to act simultaneously at a "zero hour".' The county's first blackout had already been rehearsed at Pocomoke City on the Wednesday night — 17 December — and 'the half-hour test proved successful'; Snow Hill's practice manoeuvre followed at one o'clock on the Sunday. After rumours of a surprise blackout, Tromley said, no test could be held in future 'without official sanction'. Nine days after the Ocean City council named its wardens, its corps was one of four in a county rehearsing for air raids, and its mayor was sitting on the body that ordered them.

   Ocean City Home Defense CouncilS. Earl TromleyMiss Lena H. RigginJohn I. TimmonsMaurice W. CostenClifford P. Cropper

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

5. 1942 · 1942-01-09

   Worcester County taught its people what to do in an air raid at seven meetings on one January night in 1942 — four for whites and three for the colored, and Ocean City was the only town of the four that got a white meeting and no colored one.

   Ten days before the county's first practice blackout, the Worcester County Council of Defense advertised across a full page: 'DEFENSE MEETINGS WILL BE HELD SIMULTANEOUSLY AT Snow Hill-Pocomoke-Berlin-Ocean City, Friday Night, Jan. 9 At 8 P.M. INSTRUCTIONS TO THE PUBLIC ON WHAT TO DO DURING AN AIR RAID WILL BE GIVEN AT EACH OF THE SEVEN MEETINGS... It Is Important That One Citizen From Every Home, White and Colored, Attend One Of These Seven Meetings.' The seven places, in the same advertisement and again in the news column: for whites, the high schools at Ocean City, Berlin, Snow Hill and Pocomoke City; for the colored, Stephen Long High School at Pocomoke City, Worcester High School at Snow Hill, and the Berlin (Flower Street) High School. Count them. Four white towns, three colored meetings, and the town without one is Ocean City. The county's own civil-defence machinery is on the record telling every household, white and colored, what to do when the bombs come — and providing no room for a Black resident of Ocean City to be told it in. Eight months later the same town's council would send its chief of police to stop the colored excursions. The instruction to attend was county-wide; the provision was not.

   Ocean City Home Defense Council

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

6. 1942 · 1942-05-08

   The Army dimmed out the Maryland coast in May 1942 to stop U-boats silhouetting ships against it — and inside Ocean City and Fenwick Island a car could show nothing but its parking lights.

   This is the order the campaign has been missing. On 8 May 1942 the Worcester Democrat printed it under the headline 'Eight Towns In Co. Fast Blacking Out'. 'All sections of Worcester County are complying fully with the dim-out orders issued last week by Major-General Milton A. Reckord, Third Corps Area Commander, as a precautionary measure to avoid silhouetting of ships at sea.' The eight towns, 'as far as street lighting is concerned', were Bishopville, Showell, Berlin, Ocean City, Newark, Snow Hill, Girdletree and Stockton. The chain of command is in the paper too: 'In Worcester County the official Army dim-out order is being carried out through Chief Air Raid Warden John I. Timmons, of Worcester County, and his staff of Senior Air Raid Wardens in county towns, with the cooperation of Home Defense Corps units at Pocomoke City, Ocean City, Berlin and Snow Hill. Chief Air Raid Warden Timmons receives his orders from Colonel Barrett, the State ARP Director.' And here is the rule that made the war visible from a car window: 'all motorists traveling along U. S. Highway No. 113 or east of said state road, must show only down beam headlights on all vehicles. And upon approaching the coastal area of Ocean City or Fenwick Island (Maryland Beach), all lights on vehicles must be limited to parking lights only.' Every car owner registering for gasoline rationing on 12, 13 and 14 May was to be handed a copy of the regulations. The preamble of the Army's proclamation says why: 'the seriousness of the situation along our Eastern Seaboard requires strict regulation and control of all lighting which may in any way assist the enemy, either in disclosing locations along the coast or creating silhouettes which might prove detrimental to shipping'. The Atwater had been shelled and sunk on Winter Quarter Shoal five weeks earlier. This is what a town does after that. One correction the same pass supplies: this was not the beginning. The Salisbury Times of 4 April 1942 records that a 'dim-out' had been 'adopted by Ocean City last week' - the last days of March - so the resort had dimmed itself more than a month before the Army dimmed the county, and before its own council passed a blackout ordinance on 2 May. — 1943 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The regime this fact describes now has a terminus. Army dim-out regulations at Ocean City were still in force and expressly UNCHANGED on 30 April 1943 ('Army regulations for the dimout at the resort remain the same as last year' — Salisbury Times, 30 April 1943, p5), and the Army-proclaimed coastal dim-out came to an official end on the night of Monday 1 November 1943 across Wicomico, Worcester and Somerset counties (Salisbury Times, 2 November 1943, p1). The 1942 order therefore ran roughly eighteen months. Col. Henry S. Barrett — already a personRef on the 1942 fact — is the source at both ends, which is a pleasing confirmation that the campaign has the right man on the right chain of command.

   Ocean City Home Defense CouncilJohn I. TimmonsMaj.-Gen. Milton A. ReckordCol. Henry S. Barrett

   Source · checked 2026-08-11