Miss Elizabeth Laws

In the record (6)

1. 1945 · 1945-09-18

   Two women came to the Ocean City council in September 1945 asking for help to plan and secure an Honor Roll for the town's service men.

   Mrs. Gladys Hastings and Miss Elizabeth Laws were present asking for aid in planning and securing an Honor Roll for service men. It is the second honour-roll item of the year - in April the council had granted Frank Sacca a permit for a board on the Electric Light lot to carry the names - and the same two women returned on 15 October with Robert Cropper and Mr. Harris to discuss a War Memorial Building and its proposed sites. The same 18 September meeting appointed Mrs. A. M. Ball as the town's auditor, and applied setbacks by hand to four building applications months before any zoning ordinance existed: Ogden Davis changed his own application to read five feet from each party line and not over 80% of ground covered, and was granted.

   Mrs. Gladys Hastings

   Source · checked 2026-08-12

2. 1945 · 1945-10-15

   Ocean City's war memorial was proposed as a building with candidate sites in October 1945, nine months after the council discussed a monument and reached no decision.

   Mrs. Gladys Hastings, Elizabeth Laws, Robert Cropper and Mr. Harris were before the council discussing a War Memorial Building and proposed sites, and the council listened to their plans and took them under consideration. On 9 January the whole record had been one line: 'Monument for Service Men was discussed and no decision reached.' Between the two came Frank Sacca's honour-roll board in April and the two women's request for help with an Honor Roll in September. The same 15 October meeting discussed the widening of the Boardwalk and reached no final agreement - three weeks later it settled on thirty feet.

   Mrs. Gladys Hastings

   Source · checked 2026-08-12

3. 1946 · 1946-04-25

   Ocean City's rebuilt Boardwalk cost the town $18.00 a running foot and the abutting owners were billed $15.50 - $775 for a fifty-foot lot.

   'Board Walk Cost was presented and Secretary ordered to bill the property owners $775. for 50 ft lot, which is $15.50 running foot, and the Walk cost $18.00 per foot.' The figures are internally consistent - fifty times $15.50 is $775 exactly - and the town absorbed $2.50 a foot. It is the first per-foot figure the campaign has for the walk wrecked by the hurricane of 14 September 1944, rebuilt in wood because concrete was prohibitive, and widened on 5 November 1945 to thirty feet from North Division to South Division Street. The same meeting granted building permits to two sitting councilmen without any recusal recorded - R. Dolle to build next to the Comfort Station and five feet from the Barber Shop, with a cement wall next to the Comfort Station, and J. B. Lynch for an ice box - voted $5,000 to the Chamber of Commerce, and heard Bob Cropper ask for somewhere for teen-age children to meet, 'after much debate nothing was decided on'.

   Ocean City Chamber of CommerceRudolph DolleJohn B. LynchRobert Lee Cropper

   Source · checked 2026-08-15

4. 1946 · 1946-04-25

   Ocean City voted the Chamber of Commerce five thousand dollars 'to operate on' in April 1946 - five times what it had budgeted the Chamber the summer before.

   Bob Cropper, Mr. Harris and Elizabeth Laws were present in the interest of finances for the Chamber of Commerce, and after going over the several items the council, on motion by John B. Lynch seconded by C. O. Savage, passed an order to give them $5,000 to operate on. In July 1945 the town's own reckoning had budgeted the Chamber $1,000 against the $3,500 it asked. Three weeks later, on 14 May, Dale Showell and Chas. Jackson got another $500 out of the council for the Business Men's Association, to be matched by them for an advertising fund to be used in 1947 and paid by 1 September. By 26 November the town had taken the Chamber onto its own books entirely.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   Ocean City Chamber of CommerceOcean City Business Men's AssociationRobert Lee CropperJohn B. LynchCranford O. Savage

   Source · checked 2026-08-15

5. 1946 · 1946-06-02

   Ocean City's Honor Roll for its service men was unveiled on 2 June 1946, paid for in part by a hundred dollars from the council - and the two women who had asked for it in 1945 were left to find their own speaker.

   On 14 May 1946 Elizabeth Laws and Gladys Hastings were before the council asking advice as to a speaker for the unveiling of the Honor Roll for service men on June 2nd, and for a donation towards the expense of it. 'Council gave them $100 and left them to secure their own speaker.' It is the end of a thread that runs back three and a half years: the $25 service flag of February 1943; 'Monument for Service Men was discussed and no decision reached' in January 1945; the permit to Frank Sacca in April 1945 for a board on the Electric Light lot to carry the names; the same two women asking for help planning an Honor Roll on 18 September 1945; and the War Memorial Building with proposed sites in October 1945. The unveiling is the only war-related event in the whole of the 1946 minute book. The site, the speaker, the form of the thing and the names on it are still nowhere in the record.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   Mrs. Gladys HastingsRudolph DolleJohn B. Lynch

   Source · checked 2026-08-15

6. 1946 · 1946-11-26

   At its last meeting of 1946 Ocean City took the Chamber of Commerce onto its own books - salary, rent, booklets, postage and telephone - and named the woman who would run it through the winter.

   'On motion by Rudolph Dolle, seconded by Cranford D. Savage, that the City would pay Miss Elizabeth Laws [Salary], pay rent, booklets, postage, telephone; and to give Miss Laws [the] privilege of spending up to $50.00, and on bills over that to get [the] OK of City Council.' The word 'Salary' is interlined above the line in the clerk's hand. It grants, three months late, what Robert Lee Cropper had asked for on 27 August as President of the Chamber - to keep a girl on part time all winter to answer correspondence - and it names her: Elizabeth Laws, who in May had been raising the Honor Roll for the town's service men and in April had come before the council in the interest of the Chamber's finances. Cropper's other request, one or more exhibits in Washington or Boston at about $500 each, is not mentioned and was not funded in 1946.

   Ocean City Chamber of CommerceRudolph DolleCranford O. SavageRobert Lee Cropper

   Source · checked 2026-08-15